Becoming a little retrospective about mcbf 2012

At the safe distance of nearly a week, I feel almost ready to re-visit mcbf. How about the rest of you? I guess that even James Draper might have finished sleeping by now.

There are things I didn’t do, apart from author events I just had no stamina to attend. I didn’t make it to Cornerhouse for a screening of The Witches. And it would have been so very suitable too. (Swedish witch, and all that.)

I still have the war books exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North in mind, and will do until it ends.

James had a hard eleven days of it. At one point I thought he would have to finish the festival wearing espadrilles, when his pointy shoes gave up the ghost. And was it tired eyes that caused the spectacles to emerge one day?

Kaye did all right, wearing some lovely outfits and still seeming to feel up to starting to plan mcbf 2014.

There were others who did a wonderful job as well. Claudia travelled all over Manchester, and Kevin smiled in the face of exhaustion whenever I met him. Duncan was elegant in his suit until the bitter end, and Iris continued with her bright spottiness. Anyone else I’ve omitted mentioning will just have to forgive a confused old festival-witch.

I’ll leave you with some more photos, chosen with no plan or reason whatsoever.

That’s a really large pen

Day five of the mcbf and some of us were flagging… But who wouldn’t get out of bed for the lovely Cathy Cassidy? (The cowards among us had to give her Cloud 23 event on Sunday a miss, or risk screaming our heads off. 23 floors up is very high. Isn’t it?)

Monday morning we gathered at Longsight Library, which is nice and large and new. Cathy Cassidy was there to talk about her writing, and to send the Reading and Writing Relay runner off with the baton. I believe they were children from Y5, and they were the best behaved I have ever seen at a book event.

Cathy started to derail their education by suggesting they daydream more. She did it all the time, and look where it got her! (Same place as them, actually; Longsight Library.) On her website they should be able to find tips on ‘how not to get caught.’ She showed them pictures of her shed and her teepee, but I believe we never got to see the sheep…

She talked about her first job on Jackie magazine, and suggested the children might want to start a school magazine, if they don’t already have one.

Cathy’s new book is Summer’s Dream, but she read from the first in the series, Cherry Crush, so once they are done daydreaming the children know how to tip macaroni cheese and chips (where is Jamie when we need him?) onto people’s heads. She had already mentioned an early job as a waitress where she dropped food a lot, so that must be where Cathy learned this particular skill.

To finish Cathy let the children work out which character they are most like, and it came as no surprise that the boys generally ended up as  ’the most annoying boy in the world’ which seemed to satisfy them. Despite Cathy being such a Girls’ Author it was mainly the boys who asked questions afterwards, so hopefully all were happy with the visit.

James then presented Cathy with the most enormous pen for her to sign her book with, before we trooped out into the rain to see the relay runner run off with the pen (it was really the baton) towards the first participating school. The children were given samples of Soreen, and whereas I normally shy away from too much advertising, us adults were all quite peckish by then and I have to say I really enjoyed mine. (I shall place an order with my shopper.)

The children donned their high visibility vests and walked back to their schools, and the rest of us spread on the winds. I will be honest and admit that our diminished stamina meant that your witch and her photographer never made it to see Andrew Cope and his clever dog Lara in the afternoon. We couldn’t cope. Those who did, found him so refreshing that it was easier to cope afterwards.

Sorry to have missed the dog, and I believe there was a trained guinea pigs story somewhere as well.

Bookwitch bites #78

We are all very much for equality here at Bookwitch Towers, as long as people remember I’m a little bit more equal than some. But I was really taken aback when I read the shortlist for the 2012 Queen of Teen. I somehow expected this shiny tiara institution to be a smidgen more traditional than I am.

It’s not. This year we could have a Queen James. Now, trailblazing James Dawson is up against the Cathys, Cassidy and Hopkins, longterm princess Joanna Nadin, as well as Hayley Long, Maureen Johnson, Chris Higgins, Samantha Mackintosh, Sarah Webb and S C Ransom, so might not reach his queenhood. But it’s an intriguing situation, even for an egalitarian old witch.

And because I am presently almost doing my blogging from the bathroom floor, I will leave you with the dog who does his writing on the roof.

Today’s post could have been longer, I know. It could also have been no post at all.

Bookwitch bites #69

Time to do things!  ’Faber and Faber has launched THE SPARK, a place for 13 – 16 year olds who have an interest in creativity and reading. During 2012 THE SPARK, hosted on Facebook, will invite young people to take part in some exciting projects around acting, film-making, writing and music, each linked to and inspired by a Faber Young Adult title.’

Now, you know me. I’m not much of a joiner of things, but I suspect that if Facebook had been invented in the dark ages of the 1970s, I might have found myself wanting to try some of what they are/will be doing on this Spark page.

For people too old to spark there is The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award 2013 to go for instead. Write ‘a manuscript that celebrates cultural diversity in the widest possible sense, either in terms of its story or the ethnic and cultural origins of its author.’ There is a prize of £1500, plus the option of being published.

So that’s 15,000 to 35,000 words by the 31st December 2012. Start writing, or dust off that old ms in your drawer!

If you have your eye on a very special prize, however, I can recommend the Booktrust short story competition. 500 words on the riots in 2011, and you could win a day in the company of Bali Rai. I’m tempted to pretend I’m aged 13 to 17 just for that.

An ‘ethnic’ book for fans of Jacqueline Wilson or Cathy Cassidy (I’m just quoting here…) is Lolly Luck by Ellie Daines. I was blogging about minorities last week, and it is so wrong that ‘black’ books for children should have to be considered ‘minority’ or ‘ethnic’. You wouldn’t say that about characters from Yorkshire. (Or would you?) But on the basis that young black readers might well want to read about children with darker than the British average skin, I’m glad that Lolly Luck is here.

Let there be plenty more like her.

I have heard a rumour that there is a Blue Peter book programme on Thursday next week. I’m advising you now, just so you remember to tune in, because I might very well forget as the week careers ahead in the way weeks do.

And I feel some careering coming on.

Young and hot, or perhaps not

Mary Hoffman went on a book tour to America last week, leaving us – her blog readers – with some exciting men to think about. I bet she did that on purpose.

She writes about some very attractive young men in her own books, and I trust Mary has done a lot of research to make our reading experience the best ever. But I am too old for her boys. I simply cannot lust after a teenager. Even setting propriety aside I find I can’t. I need older men.

Like the ones I was too young for when I was a teenager. Except in those days there wasn’t much in the way of teen books, so a girl had to lust after grown older men, or not lust at all. Lord Peter Wimsey is one such example mentioned by Mary. (And don’t tell anyone, but I did like him.)

That’s life. Nothing is ever right.

So, in those days I liked the Scarlet Pimpernel (even without Leslie Howard), and I adored Steven Howard in MM Kaye’s Death in Cyprus and Richard Byron in Mary Stewart’s Madam Will You Talk. Various Alistair MacLean heroes, and Carl Zlinter from Nevil Shute’s The Far Country. (Go on, ridicule me!)

If there were any boys, I have forgotten them, which means they can’t have been all that special.

More recently I have liked Margery Allingham’s Campion, Mr Knightley, and Robert Stephens’s voice as Aragorn in the radio version of Lord of the Rings. There aren’t all that many attractive men in modern children’s or YA books, but there is Lupin. And from an old classic we have Daddy Longlegs.

If I absolutely have to find young men in current fiction they won’t be vampires. Not even faeries (sorry, Seth McGregor). I liked Wes in Sarah Dessen’s The Truth About Forever, and Sanchez in Ribblestrop by Andy Mulligan is quite a boy. And now that I think about it, the Cathys (Cassidy and Hopkins) do lovely young ones.

Men on the screen, however, have got easier with age. The ten-year-old me knew it was wrong to be in love with Ilya Kuryakin, 23 years my senior. But he was so cute! And this being a lasting kind of passion, it was David McCallum who got me started on NCIS. He is still very good looking for a man approaching 80. And it was at NCIS I found Very Special Agent Gibbs, a man of the right age. At last. I reckon he is a modern Mr Knightley.

So, for me it is No Thanks to ‘hot young men.’ I need them to be grey these days.

(Link here to an older post about pretty boys. I seem to have grown out of them.)

Edinburgh 2011

It is pretty dreadful. But on the other hand it could have been a lot worse.

I’m talking about the freshly released programme for the Edinburgh International Book Festival. And before you jump to the erroneous conclusion that the programme is bad, I’m simply bemoaning the fact that I will miss ‘a few’ people by not getting there for the first week.

No doubt it will come as a relief to Meg Rosoff and Tim Bowler and Cathy Cassidy that they will miss me too. Not to mention Julie Bertagna and Lucy Hawking. Derek Landy, arghh. Elen Caldecott. Lots of lovely people, who all write great books.

On the plus side, we have Nicola Morgan with Celia Rees, and there is always Patrick Ness and Darren Shan. Janne Teller and Fabio Geda from my foreign reading challenge, and also Mal Peet, Morris Gleitzman and Debi Gliori. And many more. So plenty of little rays of sunshine, in the shape of authors. We know more than well that last year’s lack of mud must be compensated for, so it will rain. Plenty.

How will I find the strength to do all this? Last year – sunny weather notwithstanding – nearly finished me off. Would they frown very much if I were to erect a tent in Charlotte Square? Silly me, the place is full of tents. No need to bring my own. It would be convenient, if a little uncomfortable and against the rules. So I guess it will be the Stirling commute again. All that walking is good for me. (To and from the train. Not all the way.)

As for the programme, it looks very, very tempting. It was at this point last year that I threw caution to the wind and opted for the whole caboodle. I can’t this time, so I won’t. Which doesn’t mean the temptation isn’t there.

Sweethearts

The leap couldn’t be bigger. From the two Aspie books straight to a girls’ book which is anything but. Jo Cotterill’s Strictly Friends is purely for the Neurotypicals of this world, but very nicely so. I have to admit it took me a while to work out the title. It’s a book about dancing. Duh.

14-year-old Megan moves from Yorkshire to ‘the south’, and she does so extremely unwillingly. She didn’t want to move. Her parents did. But here she is, in a new town where she knows no one, and where it seems she can’t even continue her ballroom dancing. Bad enough that her partner Jake has been left behind, and now she has to find something else to do.

There is the gorgeous Danny in the park, who lives for danger. He skates and he is into bikes and go-karting. Megan falls for Danny and she starts to enjoy what he does. She also goes to salsa classes – for beginners! But at least she meets the local girls and makes new friends.

Great book about how hard it is to move house, and about how important real friends are. The dancing makes it quite irresistible. What’s not to like about silver shoes and glittery swirly skirts?

The excerpt from book two looks pretty tempting as well. I can tell that Jo must have danced and skated her way through lots of activities for this series. And she probably went to the Cathy Cassidy Factory For Really Wonderful Boys. Wish I knew where it is.

Getting paid for daydreaming

Buses may come in threes, but recently I had authors coming in fives. It’s that fact, and nothing to do with me engaging in daydreaming, which has delayed the interview with the ever lovely Cathy Cassidy.

But hopefully she has had her head full of chocolate and cute boys, so that she never noticed that she was last in line at Bookwitch Towers.

Admire her crinkley hair curtain and read about her love for her fans. Cathy may get paid for daydreaming, but she gives the job 110%, so I forgive her.

I’m still slightly under the influence of that pixie charm, so will go and lie down now…

Our City

It just appeared there in the corner of my eye. Not literally, obviously. But as I meandered through the children’s bookshop at Charlotte Square, mentally ticking all the books I had read or already had waiting for me, I noticed one I didn’t know at all.

Our City is an anthology in support of the OneCity Trust, just like the adult crime anthology I read a while ago. They clearly know what they are doing, getting great authors to write short stories for free and publishing them for the good of Edinburgh’s less fortunate inhabitants.

Ever the autograph hunter I couldn’t help noticing that five of the ten authors were at the book festival, and that in itself seemed like a good start. Reader, I bought the book. The only one I bought. And it’s a good one.

Julie Bertagna, Cathy Cassidy, Alison Flett, Vivian French, John Fardell, Keith Gray, Elizabeth Laird, Jonathan Meres, Nicola Morgan and Alison Prince have all written a story that has something to do with Edinburgh. That in itself made it the best possible souvenir from the festival.

John Fardell has illustrated not just his own cartoon contribution, but the stories of all the others and also the front cover. It’s the sort of cover that had me turn the book round and round, as John has drawn a circular Edinburgh, with all the bits from the stories fitting neatly together. So you can twirl and twirl, and then you fall over.

There are historical tales, a story about witches (what else?), a sad story, an almost political story, a traditional fairy tale, and science fiction even. They are all marvellous in their own way. I liked the pied piper. I enjoyed the sad bus story. The smiling alien was good. The cruel stepfather was interesting. How to beat the school bully. Cathy Cassidy managed to incorporate her friendship bracelets into hers. And then there’s the witches. Nice ladies.

I love anthologies. Especially when they are made up of the right kind of short stories written by my kind of people. And this charitable type of effort is a wonderful idea. I was going to say we need more of them, but I suppose if you have too many the idea stops working.

But is is a good idea.

Bookwitch bites #25

Author-wise it was a busy Wednesday over at the local bookshop. Not only did Cathy Cassidy do her friendship thing for younger readers, but she had barely left when it was time for Adèle Geras and Sophie Hannah to do their event. In fact, she hadn’t left, as Adèle arrived too early and caught her as she was running for her train. It was admiration all round, as they are fans of each other’s books. Adèle read from Dido, and Sophie read from her latest crime novel, A Room Swept White.

Another criminally minded lady is Donna Moore, who can now add the job title Writer In Virtual Residence at the schools in the Kuspuk School District in Alaska. Donna was last there in the spring, yoyo-ing between schools, talking to the students about writing. When we saw Donna in Charlotte Square in August, she was saying how she hoped this would happen, but wasn’t sure they’d want her! Of course they want her. I think she’ll be really good for these children in the middle of ‘nowhere’.

And as I almost mentioned last week, Fiona Dunbar has a new series of books for 8-12s about a girl called Kitty Slade who develops ‘phantorama’, the ability to see ghosts. Each story contains a mystery that she solves with the aid of her phantorama. Fiona started out wanting to do a sort of Famous Five for the 21st century, but ended up with something more like Ghost Whisperer for kids. The first title is Divine Freaks and it’s out next spring.

To avoid this being an all ladies affair, I’ll round off with Alan Garner, over in Alderley Edge. It’s not far, but I don’t go very often. I mainly dream of the date loaf from the baker’s. It’s fifty years since The Weirdstone of Brisingamen was first published, and there is a new special edition, along with the paperback of The Moons of Gomrath. Alan Garner is the kind of author everyone admires tremendously. Coming to his stories as an adult, I may not have the same feelings for them as those who grew up reading Alan’s books. We used to listen to them in the car, and I have to admit to never having quite understood The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. Lots of running around in tunnels under the Edge. I think.