Bookwitch

Jacqueline Wilson has done death before, so I don’t suppose I should say that she seems to have caught the latest death book bug. The cover is very nice, all purple and to my taste. The story even has a witch or two in it, seeing as it covers Halloween. Should have been an autumn book, really.

Daughter loved My Sister Jodie, and was most affronted when I said I didn’t, to be quite honest. Maybe it was something about that boarding school, which didn’t feel right. And I’ve never been a fan of Jacqueline’s mothers, but this one really annoyed me.

Loved Harley and the badgers. Even quite liked the bad gardener. Contrary, is what I am.

I mentioned the anthology Like Mother, Like Daughter the other day. I have a couple of other story collections too, that were both published in aid of charity. Unlike Amnesty International’s Click, which was one story written by different authors in a literary relay, these are simply short stories by well known authors.

Higher Ground is all about the 2004 tsunami, and was published only months after the disaster. Sixteen children’s authors each wrote a story based on what happened to a real child, somewhere in the world during that period. It’s very sad and very uplifting. Definitely worth having a few hankies standing by for when you read it. The authors are Melvin Burgess, Gillian Cross, Tim Bowler, Bernard Ashley, Eoin Colfer and many more, with foreword by Michael Morpurgo. Highly recommended.

Last year ten authors, hand-picked by readers of Cosmo Girl, wrote a short story each for Shining On, sold in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust. We’ve got Melvin Burgess again, as the lone boy, with girl writers Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine, Malorie Blackman, Rosie Rushton, Sue Limb, Meg Cabot, Cathy Hopkins, Meg Rosoff and Celia Rees. The stories are as good as you’d expect from the star-studded line-up.

The witch is slowly - very slowly - collecting her signatures in these two anthologies. It’ll take me years.

There was Richard & Judy’s Best Kids Books on television, and it was much as you would expect. A selection of good(ish) books and many eager young readers, who had plenty of opinions on what they were given to read. I made notes, but there’s no need to use them.

After R & J Channel 4 broadcast something called Last Chance Kids. This was an altogether much more interesting programme, despite R & J offering me both Jacqueline Wilson and Philip Pullman. The last chance kids looked much the same as the former reader panels, but of course they can’t read. 20% of Year Six children can’t read, and in the featured school it was more like 25%. Luckily for them, their head teacher decided to change this state of things.

It’s not surprising some children don’t learn to read, when their parents left school illiterate. Thanks to enthusiastic staff and a new reading technique, they finished the school year with all children able to read at least a short sentence. Not much, but the smiles on their faces were really something.

I don’t believe these children could even imagine the pleasure they’d be able to get from books like the ones on the R & J show. I just hope they learn enough to have the opportunity some day to try a proper book like that. One boy had even started dreaming of going to university, to make his Mum proud. I expect she was anyway.

Benjamin Zephaniah had visited the school, and inspired some of the children to recite poetry. For the first time ever the school entered the borough’s poetry recital competition, and one of the participants was a recent non-reader. They won (this was television, after all), but that’s almost beside the point. The skills learnt, and enjoyed, are much more important.

I’ll soon need to keep a large stack of hankies by the television.

Jacqueline Wilson is working her way through difficult subjects; one after the other. Last autumn it was pupil-teacher relationships, this October Jacqueline is taking on homosexuality. It’s a good idea, particularly considering how many readers she has. At a time when young people can do with some solid guidance, it’s good that authors with influence can put across a level way of looking at awkward topics.

Kiss is about Carl and Sylvie, childhood best friends. They have always done things together, and Sylvie has always expected them to get married, and so have those around them. Now they’re fourteen and Carl is changing. Sylvie has to learn to make new friends, and to let go where Carl is concerned. It’s obvious to the reader that Carl is gay, but the way to discovery for Sylvie is a hard one.

I quite liked Sylvie’s new friend, the naughty Miranda. It’s not clear whether Jacqueline Wilson intends her to be “good” or “bad”. I also felt that Carl was too perfect, and that maybe his and Sylvie’s childhood game was that little bit too childish and unlikely. There are some interesting minor characters, and unusually for Jacqueline, some decent men.

All in all, Kiss is a good story on an important subject.

I’m trying to decide here. Who to see, or even how to choose. I’m going to that fun place again - the Gothenburg book fair. They have a few hundred events over four days and I won’t be up to going to quite all of them.

There are less seminars to my taste this year, which in a way is good, as exhaustion might take longer to set in. But when there are three or four all starting at the same time; which do you pick?

Shall I go for the “biggest” name or the worthiest subject? Do I prefer the President of Estonia to Che Guevara? Yes, I know Che is dead, but something about him. One of Sweden’s biggest pop stars or some new Swedish crime?

Who knows. Sometimes events take care of themselves. Last year I sent Son on his own to waylay Orhan Pamuk while I cured my galloping migraine with smuggled-in Earl Grey and Jamaica cake. And then he went and got the Nobel Prize. Pamuk, not Son.

I have that afternoon down as a bit of a hit and miss. As I was about to sink my teeth into the medicinal Jamaica cake I spied Librarian Husband of Cousin, so needed to delay the cure for a chat. LH of C was chasing Jacqueline Wilson. He kept missing her, and I kept seeing Jacqueline. That’s life.

Regarding choice of seminars; suggestions are more than welcome.

I’m getting doddery. But I’m fairly sure Melvin Burgess is supposed to be writing his memoirs. Can’t find the information now, but I believe it’s something covering Melvin’s teen years. So, roughly the age his readers are, which makes sense.

Earlier this year it was Jacqueline Wilson’s turn with Jacky Daydream. That story takes the reader from Jacqueline’s birth to the age of eleven. Again, this is logical, because many of Jacqueline’s books are stories about young girls of that age, and it’s easy to recognise quite a few of her fictional girls in her own story.

Jacky Daydream is both a charming modern history lesson and a lovely introduction to one of our most popular children’s authors. Perfect reading for adults and children alike. And I do hope Jacqueline will write a sequel.

Thanks to a blogger colleague who recently stumbled across a second hand copy of Yesterday by Adele Geras, without her glasses on, even, I went in search of a copy for myself. And thanks to Dina Rabinovitch it was easy to find. It’s a short book, and it mostly deals with Adele’s late teens, primarily her time at Oxford.

Not wanting Adele to sound ancient in any way, but this little book provides a slice of history, about a time and a place that has changed quite a bit since. The book left me surprised that Adele got her degree at all, after so much clambering through college windows in the middle of the night, hanging out with really cool people (even in those days…), and singing and acting.

Right now I feel I could do with many more memoirs of this kind. I love my fiction, but it is so interesting simply reading about the memories of real people.

So come on, reminisce away for me!

I never thought I’d be singing the praises of my holiday newspaper Hallandsposten here in the blog. But it really is pretty good on books and culture. I have no idea how many copies they sell, but the borough of Halmstad has a population of about 90,000. Most households subscribe to the paper, which is cheaper than buying it in a shop. If it’s not with you by five a.m. you have cause for concern.

Three pages on books yesterday, with one on children’s books. Three reviews of girls’ fiction; two Swedish books and Jacqueline Wilson’s Midnight which has just been translated. They have a serious backlog of Jacqueline’s books here, which can only be good news for girls, who have plenty to look forward to.

Large spread on Liza Marklund and her latest book. All I know about her is that one of her audiobooks (in English) had a warning in the BBC catalogue for language and explicit content.

And it seems that the publishers Wahlström & Widstrand can’t have heard of meettheauthor.co.uk, as they have just launched a few of their authors on youtube instead. People seem to think it’s a good idea, which will help them decide if an author is worth reading.

It’s best to admit immediately, before clambering up on this soapbox, that I’m far from an expert on this subject. But I obviously support it wholeheartedly.

It’s very easy for all of us who can read normal print, to assume that not only are there not all that many people with sight problems (as if a low number would make it all right), but that their needs are being taken care of by the authorities. After all, there are audio books out there.

For every one hundred books published in Britain, less than three make it on to audio cassettes. And when they do, they are nearly always more expensive than the paper book. I’m guessing here, but I expect that those who are registered blind get their audio books free from the library. Always assuming the library has them. But just as “ordinary” library users sometimes want to own a book, so might readers with sight problems. Except they will have to pay so much they possibly can’t.

Take Pride and Prejudice. A new paperback might be six or seven pounds, or in one of these cheap classics ranges, possibly only a pound. Used from Oxfam maybe two pounds. The last time I looked, an audio book in MP3 format was as cheap as twenty something pounds, while the more accessible cassettes cost around seventy. You’re not going to own many books like that.

Jacqueline Wilson has joined the campaign for more large print books and audio books, and she’s setting a good example by demanding they are available at the same time as the book is published.

For Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows JK Rowling had also joined. Except for audio cassettes. Anyone who wants (or needs) those can wait another month or so, while the rest of the world joins in the reading frenzy.

This reminds me of the children’s television cartoon Arthur. Some years ago there was an episode featuring the much awaited publication of a thinly disguised Harry Potter. All the children got their copies, while the blind girl had to wait for her Braille version.

Years ago when one of my children needed audio books to access age appropriate books, but not on grounds of eyesight, I wrote a wish list to the local library of books they should buy so we could borrow them. I was pleasantly surprised to find enthusiasm and a new code on the library card giving entitlement to free audio books due to the “handicap”. But they never bought anything that I could see, and after a while they got irritated when I asked if they had anything we hadn’t already had.

So, we headed into the arms of Cover to Cover audio books, who were excellent, until they sold up to the BBC and things started to slide downhill. Plenty of titles, just not the right ones.

Any author reading this; if you haven’t already done so, could you add a clause to your contract asking publishers to produce books in all formats simultaneously? Please.

I haven’t read the winner. Yet. I only had time to read the children’s book shortlist. They were all good, but some better than others.

I was pleased Linda Newbery won with Set in Stone, or SinS as she calls it. Our family read it on holiday last summer and the difficult reader (Daughter 13) loved it. We went to the beach for a swim. She sat on a sand dune and read. We went to an art gallery. She sat on a bench and read, moving to the next bench as we went along. Thought Linda might be interested in the effect her book had, so I emailed her. And she apologised for ruining our holiday! Aargh!

Always thought how hard it must be for the winner not to go round grinning like some Cheshire cat after they’ve been told and before the news has been made public. Who do you tell? And how do you avoid inadvertently letting on you’ve won? Heard about some of the non winners on the shortlist emailing each other to see how they’d done. A couple even discussed it in the school playground, what with their children going to the same school. And if you’ve won, do you say so, or do you lie through your teeth? While grinning.

The fashion report from the Costa Awards ceremony is black. How come all these exciting writers and other types who get to go still only do black? (Please invite me next time and I’ll show you!) Though Jacqueline Wilson didn’t wear black for a change. Adele Geras admits to her shoes, non black, killing her, but says she’ll wear them soon again. Really. I’d have thought they wouldn’t have survived ploughing through the snow to get home. The shoes, I mean.  Anne Fine’s agent wore a black tie. Literally. Carol Thatcher talks a lot and Sophie Kinsella is very small and wore a properly sticking out skirt. It’s entirely possible that Esther Rantzen’s jewellery was real, and she once shared a boyfriend in Oxford with Adele Geras.

Having a great deal of understanding for agoraphobics I will now go and read the winning book. Which, horror of horrors, was written by an author who’s not been to Canada. As someone commented in the Guardian’s blog, Douglas Adams presumably never went to Betelgeuse. Or maybe he did?

Surely this is what a good writer does. Makes things up.