CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

Remember Zoe? The young girl who dreams of playing piano at the Sydney Opera House. Or Carnegie Hall, depending on which continent you read the book.

Author of Kind of Perfect, Linda Urban, has responded quickly to our enquiry and has generously given permission to be quoted:

I’m not exactly sure why ABC thought that my book would be less appealing to Australian kids if it retained its original American setting — but they did and my US publisher encouraged me to trust that they know the market.  After reading their suggested changes, I felt that the essential story remained the same and other than swapping Michigan for New South Wales and changing biscuit for cookie, there really weren’t many differences.

What was important to me was that Zoe’s story — her real dreams, desires, emotions, frustrations — stay true and I think that the ABC editors were able to accomplish this.  If changing the locale and a few details meant that the story would be more accessible for readers, then I was fine with that.

I certainly didn’t give any thought to the notion that this might be misleading.  I’m not exactly sure how the book is otherwise being marketed, so perhaps you are aware of something in the positioning of the title in shops that I am not?

Please thank your reviewer for recommending my book.  I’d love to see the review if ever it is made public.

Another long email to Linda followed - saying in part:

You are right. Zoe’s story does hold true, and this is precisely why there was no need for the ABC to change anything. Kids will identify with her whether she lives in Detroit, Sydney of Timbuktu. I think the ABC has underestimated their intelligence big time! We are always amazed that Australian titles have changes made when they get to the States. Readers are perfectly capable of making linguistic leaps and as I say, this is the first example I have encountered here. Not keen for it to become a trend!

We also commented that:

It seems … utterly patronising to readers [for publishers] to do this … Australian kids are so used to reading books in other settings that a book will always stand on its own merits as originally written. Kids learn so much incidentally when reading books that have settings other than their own. They need a variety of voices and experiences and there are plenty of Australian writers to tell Australian stories.

Linda agrees and says she will be thinking ‘longer and harder’ should she be lucky enough to have her next novel published here as well. And let’s hope she does, for her voice is fresh and funny.

Oh dear. After our puzzled query about possible trends in global publishing (see Zoe’s remarkable international adaptability in Kind of Perfect) comes this report from the Guardian. A taste …

Last year, Tom Becker won the Waterstone’s prize for children’s fiction with his first novel, Darkside; last week he won another award, the Calderdale children’s book prize. The talk among agents and publishers has been about his suspenseful prose, his great potential. But few people have been talking about a more salient fact: that the book’s concept and story was generated not by Becker, but by focus groups.

Focus groups?

Emma John poses the question: Focus groups are muscling their way into the arts. Are they a useful tool - or a death blow to creativity?

Implications? Thoughts? Comments? And is this happening here in Australia? We’d love some discussion.

We have just received a warm review for a new title, Kind of Perfect, by Linda Urban. The review will appear in the next edition of Fiction Focus, which should be in schools at the end of the month.  The reviewer really enjoyed the title and warmed to the young protagonist, Zoe, who dreams of playing piano at the Sydney Opera House one day.  So far, so good.

Published in Sydney by ABC Books and with several other Australian allusions, such as NRMA,  scattered throughout the text you would be forgiven for thinking that this is an Australian book.

But look more closely. The only hint that all is not as it seems are are the words on the verso of the title page :

‘A Crooked Kind of Perfect’ by Linda Urban. Copyright (c) 2007. Published by arrangement with Harcourt, Inc.

Not ‘First published as ‘A Crooked Kind of Perfect’ because, well, it wasn’t technically the same book. In the US edition, Zoe yearns to play at Carnegie Hall and the setting is distinctly American. But nowhere in this Australian edition is this clear. Is this just clever marketing, or is it actually misleading to readers?

BTW, the local cover isn’t a patch on the original, so why have they bothered?

And it begs the question: Do readers in the UK have Zoe playing at the Royal Festival Hall? If we were cynical, we’d start to think that this might be the beginning of a globalisation trend, with copy editors trawling pages of texts published in one country to change all original references to local ones. Surely not.

We have written to Linda Urban for her thoughts. We’ll keep you posted.

The right book for the right reader at the right time - that is a given in the world of children’s literature. But what if the book cover says you are too young / too old to read it? This is a controversy just starting to hit its straps in the UK with publishers there intending to put age guidelines on the covers of children’s / YA books.

More than eighty authors, including Philip Pullman, are fighting back with a letter to be published in Bookseller magazine later this week. Not all authors are against the idea, however. Meg Rosoff says that it could be ‘extremely helpful for parents.’

Read the Guardian report here.

How does Shaun Tan do it? With The Arrival still winning accolades around the world, his new title, Tales from Outer Suburbia is officially released in Australia and New Zealand this weekend.

Shaun gave a glimpse at the recent CBCA Conference, when he shared the story of Eric, the overseas exchange student.

This is no wordless picture book. Far from it. Shaun might surprise many people - he is as adept with words as he is with art. And just as quirky. The fifteen stories are funny, whimsical, poignant, moving and touch on contemporary themes in very strange Tan-like settings with homages to suburban Perth thrown in. It’s hard not to be just a tad parochial as we collectively rejoice in Shaun’s success.

Tales from Outer Suburbia is a treat. Publication in the US is scheduled for later in the year. No British date in sight at this stage.

Gen X and Gen Y we know about, but a long article in Newsweek magazine this week is talking about Gen R. And it’s good news for readers.

Generation R (R is for Reader) talks about the boom in YA publishing, and how it’s not all about Harry Potter. David Levithan is quoted as saying we are in a ’second golden age’ for young adult books - ‘the most exciting time for young-adult literature since the late 1960s and 1970s when ‘The Chocolate War’ [by Robert Cormier] and ‘Forever’ [by Judy Blume] were published.’

We knew that, but it’s great that Newsweek is spreading the word.

For many of us, Web 2.0 is radically changing how we live and work. It’s all about collaboration, the teacher-librarian’s mantra. Web 2.0 underpins blogs, wikis and social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, allowing us to share as never before.

And now a publisher has joined the Web 2.0 party. Yesterday at the London Book Fair, Random House unveiled a widget that will allow readers to browse the complete works of 500 authors online. By the end of the year this number will have expanded tenfold. Young adult authors have not been forgotten, with Jacqueline Wilson and Christopher Paolini at least two that have been included in the initial roll-out.

How does it work? Random House’s UK site explains it all.