Meeting Michelle Magorian

The importance of Goodnight Mister Tom is such that I have long had Michelle Magorian on my top level of ‘really good authors’. The kind you need to worship from afar, someone who is unquestionably great. So meeting her in person at last year’s launch for Just Henry wasn’t a case of your everyday garden variety of a book launch. Having found Michelle reassuringly kind and friendly and normal, I came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be out of the question to consider interviewing her. Would it?

When by happy coincidence Michelle turned out to have an event on my home ground, I simply had to ask to meet her again. So you could say that I waited as eagerly to meet her, as I did for Just Henry after I’d read Michelle’s first five novels. I’d been so happy when I discovered her, and my assumption that readers can expect a new book, if not every year, then at least every two or three, meant that my patience wore very thin over the ten-year wait. But as you can read in this interview, it was for a good reason, and it was worth waiting for.

I just ‘happened’ to bring along my copy of the anthology War, edited by Michael Morpurgo, which contains a story by Michelle. It seems we have a lot to be grateful to Michael for, since it was he who got Michelle writing again after her long break.

In her talk at the Imperial War Museum Michelle told us how she first wrote Goodnight Mister Tom, and after that she decided to attend a writing course, which may be an unusual way round to do it. And when she has to write horrible and upsetting scenes, she goes for calming walks in between.

There is another book on the way, but read my interview with Michelle while you wait. And then any book of hers that you have inadvertently overlooked. Perhaps between us we can have a late run on A Little Love Song?

(Photo D Giles)

Nominations for the 2010 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award

The ALMA people have a long longlist of 168 nominations for next year’s award, and I won’t write them all down here. I had a little look for individual authors that you may know and be interested in:

David Almond, Quentin Blake, Aidan Chambers, Morris Gleitzman, Margaret Mahy, Michael Morpurgo, Walter Dean Myers, Axel Scheffler, Kate Thompson, Tomi Ungerer, Jacqueline Wilson and Diana Wynne Jones.

There are absolutely masses of Scandinavian writers, as well as others from countries we rarely pay attention to in the English speaking world. And then there are the organisations. Boring as it may seem to vote for a group that brings books and reading to many children, I wonder whether that is what they should do after all.

The above writers are all good and worthy, and as Sonya Hartnett found last year, five million kronor will do a lot for a person. But the good the money will do through an organisation is very different.

I also wonder why these particular authors are on the list. Presumably because they have someone who campaigns for them and who are allowed to nominate. I need to find out who does get to nominate. I can see myself nominating, you know.

Some more photos for you…

if you haven’t already had enough. In fact, here are more photos even if you have.

And that’s it. So called ‘normal’ service will resume here really soon.

‘Do you know Donna?’

I do. Sort of. I was going to meet Donna Moore, author of Go To Helena Handbasket, and the best blogger in Glasgow, on Day 4, but she was attacked by migraine, so didn’t make it. I don’t mean she’s dead; just that Edinburgh was too much for her. But I didn’t quite expect to have one of Donna’s fans come up to me, knowing who I am, too. Bloggers are the next super stars, I suppose. Tim – the fan – found me in the children’s bookshop in Charlotte Square, and we had a long chat. I sort of knew who he is, seeing as he’s featured in yet another blog. Small world.

It was hard work getting out of bed on Saturday. Early start. I woke at 4.20, and just couldn’t work out if I had 30 minutes or 90 until the alarm was meant to go off at 5.50. (I don’t need answers on a post card; I know now.) First out was Debi Gliori, with her un-green dragons, whose life style threatens the survival of the planet. Recycling for the youngest readers. (Fittingly my copy of  The Trouble With Dragons had arrived in my recycling bin, when the postman failed to find me in.)

Debi had some very good photos and ideas to bring environmental awareness to the young. It’s not much fun if Father Christmas has to wade in water up to his knees because the snow melted, is it? Debi drew and read and generally educated and entertained her audience.

I’m amazed that so many people turn up so early. Andy Stanton and his Mr Gum had a tremendously long queue first thing, even though adults like Tim had no idea whatsoever of who that funny looking man might be. Adults! They don’t know much.

That was proved when we discovered Malorie Blackman being photographed outside the yurt, just as we gobbled down our lunch sandwiches inside. No official photo session for her (after all, she is ‘just’ a children’s author), but we dashed out and begged to take a few more photos. Very pleased to find that Malorie’s minder was Random’s wonderful Kelly, who was more than helpful when she realised she was up against the witch. I was eager to undo the damage to Malorie’s image I caused with my poor photo skills back in November. The other photographers fell out of their own little yurt in order to find out what they were missing. Hah. It’s high time the paparazzi learn to recognise authors, too. Read books, boys!

Anyway, we left Debi’s talk a little early (sorry) to catch Henning Mankell who had agreed to face the cameras. I was surprised to find he didn’t bolt, but he’s a big fish these days, so maybe has to give in occasionally. We ran back to see Debi sign books, only for me to remember that her signings are the slowest in town, and she hadn’t got very far, what with all the friendly ‘doodling’ she does. (Debi –  just joking, you know. You draw, you don’t doodle.)

This being before the previously mentioned sandwiches we were feeling a little peckish. But that’s nothing compared with the family who decided to have a picnic right on the floor in front of the unoccupied signing table in the bookshop. They all settled down and opened their bags and tucked in.

Another eye opener was the fantastic tantrum over the book Olivia by Ian Falconer. He must have just left, but his fans were still milling about in the shop. One pretty little girl was very set to have the book. Mum said no. There followed the kind of tantrum you see over the sweets in Tesco. Mum grabbed her child and threw the book on the table above the picnic and left. We stared at each other. Within minutes I caught sight of the girl again, back in the shop with another copy of Olivia in her arms. Mum explodes back as well and throws this book on top of the first, and drags her very unhappy child out. I hope there was a good reason, as you’d kind of expect people going to book festival events and visiting bookshops to be pro-book.

Apologies to the bookshop, because it must have seemed as if the witches had put down camp in the shop for the day. Emily from Bloomsbury was kept busy, too, with Sarah Dyer signing next to Debi, once the ruckus and the picnicking was over. When Tim found us, we were overseeing Malorie’s signing, and had managed to snatch a quick word with Oliver Jeffers, as well.

One signing we failed spectacularly with, was Michael Morpurgo’s. He had an interminable queue, but in the end we left it too long. We did, however, get a good photo session with him and his new friend Sarah. She’s the eight-year-old who won a competition to spend a day with Michael Morpurgo. Sarah got to introduce Michael at the start of his event, which she did very professionally. On the whole, I have to say that Morpurgo fans are very clever and capable.

Sarah likes Michael’s adjectives, and it seems he quite likes hers, too. He spoke about the three new books that are published this autumn, but I have to protest a little here, because one of them sounded very familiar to me. It must be based on the short story he wrote for the Amnesty International anthology Free. He is also improving on the traditional Nativity for Christmas, because it seems a shepherd will never leave his sheep. As a farmer, he knows this. And there is a tsunami inspired novel out soon. Michael made the children in the audience hold their breaths, and he also has opinions about the number of books J K Rowling has written. So, a pretty mixed sort of talk.

Daughter, meanwhile, listened to Malorie over in another tent, and by all accounts it was full and it was good. Malorie read to her audience, and she showed them how happy she was when her first book was accepted. And she is writing something now, but won’t say what.

By now you are all begging me to stop, and that’s what we did, too. With a heavy-ish heart I decided we didn’t have the strength to stay on to see Alexander McCall Smith in the evening. Maybe another time!

(All photos H Giles)

‘what should have happened’

Day 3 was short, but sweet. Being in the same room as Joan Lingard is quite a bonus. And the press pod was full of people wanting to interview Griff Rhys Jones. Daughter said ‘who?’, and I tried to explain, but could come up with nothing that worked. Even seeing Griff being interviewed did nothing for her. Hopeless.

The witch and her very useful photographer had gone to some trouble to beg tickets for Friday’s event, and we were delighted to meet up with the lovely Georgia from Random, who puts lots of great books our way. We were even introduced to her equally nice Random boss. (That’s Random, not random, btw.) A bit of networking may even make me think I’m doing something grown-up, rather than just play.

Just one event made the day feel almost like a holiday. Theresa Breslin had  worried she’d have no audience, seeing as she was on at the same time as Michael Morpurgo. But she did have an audience, and between you and me, the smaller venue was preferable, and the feeling of not being a sardine was beneficial. Not standing in a Morpurgo-sized queue was another bonus.

Theresa is a former librarian, who even as an adult was so scared of the librarian from her childhood library, that she crossed the road to avoid meeting her. And writing historical fiction, she has been contacted by her former history teacher, too, so her past seems intent on catching up.

She picks up the oddest ideas and sentences wherever she comes across them, and writes a story around them. It can be simple things like selling your alligator at a car boot sale, or the more advanced notion of collecting amputated limbs in a bucket. And stuff in-between.

We should believe in horoscopes and it’s apparently ‘normal’ to be loopy around a full moon. I think that Theresa was trying to tell us that her scientist husband can prove that the planets rule our lives, or some similarly far fetched idea. Mr B wore his Nostradamus tie, and Theresa read from The Nostradamus Prophecy, and as a witch I sort of have to agree with all that stuff. Sort of.

The next book from this Dickens-reading library-ticket-cheat is about the Spanish Inquisition, and we got to hear a little from the first draft. No doubt she will now go and change it all. And her editor will find more things still that hadn’t been invented at the time, thus having no business being in Theresa’s book.

(Photos by H Giles)

A desk job

Once, I lived without a desk for a year, when I was about twenty. It was horrible. The being without a desk, not the whole year. So as long as I live somewhere reasonably normal, a desk will be a necessity, even if it’s small. I’m no Michael Morpurgo, in more ways than one, but writing in bed will not happen any time soon. He’s welcome to it.

I think I’ve mentioned my wardrobe study in Sweden (does a wardrobe rank above a kitchen table?), with the ghosts gliding past every now and then. I moved into this small space after Mother-of-witch died, and we allowed ourselves to stay on in her house. Not only do we use all the bedrooms for sleeping in, but to be able to let other people stay here occasionally, I needed somewhere other than a public area for my desk. The wardrobe has a door and a lock, and room for a desk.

The desktop has deteriorated over the twelve years I’ve resided in my clothes cupboard, and badly needed some attention. Daughter gasped as we arrived here this time, because it has had some love and attention at long last. It’s what being alone does for you. I actually had time to tidy up.

I am writing this sitting on the chair you can’t see here. It creaks, so there is never any sneaking. It came from the college Mother-of-witch taught at, a very long time ago. When they refurbished the classrooms in the early 1960s she carried home a typewriter table and a swivel chair on the back of her bike. One at a time, I hasten to add, and with the witch walking next to the bike, holding on to things.

The desk is vintage IKEA. The various pots for pens and stuff are a collection of memories, which is why they have been spirited away like this. They clash in style and are lacking in taste, but they have meaning.The paintings are early Mother-of-witch ones, and the photos are early Offspring.

Two paperweights were collected down on the beach by me, whereas the third was given to Mother-of-witch at a conference in Edinburgh. Interestingly the Resident IT Consultant’s parents had one just like it. Same conference. Coincidence, or what? The phone, regrettably, is pink. It was the cheapest phone in the shop. We murder telephones with regularity here. Lots of thunder. Lots of dead phones afterwards.

New gift wrap in rolls on the right, and old wrapping paper and ribbons in the bag by my feet. I’m a real cheapskate, and if the wrapping on your present looks wrinkly, you’ll know why. The ribbon most likely came from the baker’s, safeguarding some wonderful cream concoction or other.

The pile of papers on the left are my ideas. I optimistically believe that one day I’ll get round to writing about ‘those things’. The smaller notes on the right are more likely blog subjects. One pile for books and one for culture. And don’t you just wish I’d get on with something useful rather than tell you more about my wardrobe?

Going online, however, is something I do elsewhere. So in a way I have two desks. Should I get seriously low on blog subjects I may tell you about my Salvation Army bargain, too.

Book Fairs and Festivals

Programmes have been perused at length. Why do they have to be quite so long? Could be because book events have a lot to offer, which is good.

I’ve had the printed programme for the Gothenburg Book Fair for a few weeks, and it’s made me see spots. Probably due to the cover being very spotty, in black and white, and I hope they’ll do something less dizzying next time. Might mean that the book bags and the water bottles available at the Fair will be spotty, too. Won’t find out, as I most likely won’t be going. If money grew on trees I would. The programme lists many of the usual suspects, like the archbishop and Mark Levengood and Henning Mankell. Plus lots of Spanish writers, as the emphasis is on Spain this year. ¡Hola!

Bath is also on in September, and usually clashes with Gothenburg in my diary. Bath is special, being children’s books only, so it’s right up my street. Except it’s a bit further away than that. The annoying thing with events spread over two weekends with a week in the middle, is that there is usually something particularly good on at each end of the thing, and you either go for too long, or have to go twice. Or, horror of horrors, you may have to choose.

Most of my recent muddling has been around the Edinburgh programme, which I’ve tried to decipher online, which is very green of me. Or maybe not, as I burn electricity every minute on the computer. It’s a lovely, long programme, covering three weekends with two weeks in the middle. ‘Luckily’ Daughter’s needs mean that the beginning and end of my available period is decided for me. So I have a shortlist of people I want to see. Except by now most events are sold out, so I have to hope that they will want to consider this outstanding (!) blog as press-worthy. Don’t know yet. But do feel free to tell them that you need to hear what went on in Edinburgh from me.

Free?

The older of us grew up with the idea of the United Nations as something good and natural. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was also a very obvious thing to believe in. And to belong to Amnesty International was more or less expected. At least where I came from. So, what happened?

Here is a new anthology to mark that it’s been sixty years since those rights were put down on paper, and things are still not right. They are not right, somewhere worryingly close to home. Because it’s quite natural that things can be bad somewhere else, somewhere far away, isn’t it?

In Free? fourteen writers give us stories, each connected to one or two of the rights on that list. Some are set in the recent past, but most are from the here and now, and things are not good. Hopefully young readers will learn from this collection.

There are some very big names in the children’s fiction world on the list of authors, but as with many anthologies, it’s not always that the best stories were written by the people you know. That’s what I like about collections. You find new people who write very well indeed. I may not be able to pronounce their names, but we all speak the same language.

I was interested to see that Malorie Blackman’s poem, set in the future, echoed the ideas that she mentioned in the interview in November. And I can’t help but mention the story by Sarah Mussi, about the boy scout from Ghana who accidentally stole the Crown Jewels. Your Crown Jewels. That story belongs in my Aspie list, whether or not the adorable Prometheus Prempeh has AS.

Read!

Witch journalism

Shock, horror! None of the children’s laureates chose Harry Potter for their favourite children’s books!

Well, why would they? They are old people. (No offense intended. I’m old myself.) They will pick what they liked as children, or something that stands out as excellent over decades of reading. Harry will be chosen by the children’s laureates in forty years’ time.

I just don’t get this newspaper/journalism thing. Are they stupid, or do they go out of their way to appear as stupid as they think we, the readers, are? Or do they hate Harry with a vengeance, so must rub his, or rather JKR’s, face in it as often as the opportunity arises?

Don’t worry about me. I might have got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.

But it would be nice if things weren’t always dumbed down or ‘over-scandalised’. I love Harry Potter, but even I can see that it’s possible to discuss children’s books without him.

And of the books listed in the Guardian article, the ancient witch has read very few. Nesbit. Treasure Island. Have naturally seen Mary Poppins the film. Have to hope that I have read all that was not listed. I’m not laureate material, that much is clear.

Private Peaceful

Following on from Michael Rosen’s Guardian blog post on getting children reading, yet again, comes my report from Daughter’s reading group at school. As far as I can ascertain it’s for confident readers in Years 10 and 11 (ages 15 and 16 to ‘Yanks’ and others), which makes for a better group and better choice of books, but sort of defeats the purpose. Perhaps I’m just being negative?

One of their first books was The Kite Runner, which took me by surprise, and I never quite worked out how they got on with it. Black Beauty was another choice, coming in at the other end of the spectrum. And now, this week while she’s been under the weather, Daughter finally read Private Peaceful, which is one of the few Michael Morpurgo books I feel ambivalent about.

Daughter saw it as another War Horse, and liked it. I thought it was too much Cider With Rosie, which I never felt comfortable with. There was an undertone of bullying at home in the lovely English countryside, which gave me the creeps, so I preferred the scenes of war, as they felt more honest.

Also, surely Private Peaceful is potentially for very young readers, in which case I wonder about the ‘duplicity’ in who is doing the court martial narrative. The end is sad, if inevitable, and whereas you can’t have a world war end happily ever after, I just wish the book didn’t finish at the end of June 1916, near the Somme. Does Michael expect his readers to understand the dire circumstances, or not?