Dina day

Even if Adele Geras hadn’t so carelessly asked me to write about what I got up to yesterday, I would have bored you with it. Truth is, I’m so tired I can’t think of other things. It was a day of culture and fun. Not that culture can’t be fun, but you know, the less “worthy” stuff.

I have seen the crack. The Tate Modern crack. It was quite good, and no, I can’t work out how they did it either. Took a sledgehammer to the floor? Funniest sight, of course, are all the visitors slowly walking along, staring down at the floor and even filming it with their mobiles.

I returned to the Cottesloe after an absence of nearly thirty years, to see Victoria Benedictsson’s The Enchantment. Very good. I do so like an unhappy ending. (No, I don’t, but it was good anyway.) As a teenager I was very taken with this Swedish author, who like her heroine committed suicide. I’ve done some detective work this morning and come to the conclusion the play is called Den Bergtagna in the original. One of the nice things with the National Theatre is that you don’t necessarily have one actor playing four different characters. And they are always good actors, even when their names mean nothing to me.

Too much culture can be, well, too much, so I moved swiftly on to some shopping. The Resident IT Consultant will be surprised to hear I didn’t buy any shoes. I bought cheese at Neal’s Yard to bribe Daughter with on my return home. This meant I had my own Three Men in a Boat moment on the train home. My bag stank. In the nicest possible way, naturally.

Dinner at the Masala Zone after only ten minutes of queueing to get in. I find it rather reassuring to have a new food establishment to eat in that is situated in my old haunt Cranks, in Marshall Street. I virtually lived at Cranks in the olden days. The Masala Zone offers not only really good Indian food, but some charming staff. Hadn’t the heart to tell the nice young man last night that it wasn’t my first Thali and no instructions were necessary.

I finished another Cathy Hopkins Zodiac Girl (Recipe for Rebellion), which was fun as usual. Though possibly Cathy needs to sort out her ideas of half term holidays and nit nurses. Or that could be a message to the editor; it’s your job not to have half term at the end of November. On the other hand, a book that has Gods all over the place could possibly be allowed to have school holidays at funny times, too. Correct me if I’m wrong, but whereas I’ve seen plenty of nits, I have never come across a nit nurse in this century.

Before falling asleep on the last train north I started another Sara Paretsky. And all the witch’s activities meant she completely missed the Doris Lessing announcement.

TOYPD 3

Are there still a few of you who haven’t bought Dina Rabinovitch’s book Take Off Your Party Dress yet? What are you waiting for?

I was really meant to go to London today to hear Dina speak at Hampstead Theatre, but she has been unwell for a couple of weeks and was in hospital, so has had to cancel. She came out of hospital to a full blog comments box where worried friends and fans had posted their thoughts.

I got a bunch of copies of TOYPD recently, that I’ve been handing out to people instead of flowers. Unlike flowers the book will keep, and it won’t make anyone sneeze.

I’m off to London anyway, and will make this my Dina day with whatever I end up doing.

Your job for the day is to get a copy of TOYPD.

Astrid and Pippi

It was almost like seeing and hearing Astrid Lindgren herself at the Gothenburg book fair, but in reality it was Astrid’s daughter Karin Nyman. 2007 is the centenary of Astrid’s birth and there were Astrid Lindgren talks all over the place.

The facsimile of the original Pippi Longstocking has just been published in Sweden, with Astrid’s own drawing on the cover. This is Pippi as we have never seen her – much worse behaved, if that’s possible, and no Tommy and Annika. It’s the manuscript that one publisher took so long over, that Astrid wrote and asked if they could speed up their rejection of it…

After considerable editing and with more child friendly language, the book became the huge success we know it as now. Interestingly, some of the edited out parts from the original have since turned up in Astrid’s other stories. Waste not, I suppose.

Pippi has been blamed for the bad behaviour of children over the years, but I doubt it’s her fault. Astrid once wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper complaining how hard life was for a child, and I believe this was about 75 years ago. Her daughter seemed very well mannered, and I didn’t once see her walk backwards or throw any policemen about.

Even Astrid’s British publishers have been gripped by centenary fever and brought out a new version of Pippi Longstocking. New translation, which is very good, and new illustrations.

I was concerned to hear that Lauren Child was to illustrate the new Pippi, as I didn’t feel she does very Pippi like pictures. And I worried in general over MY childhood Pippi.

But I’ll eat my hat, or whatever, and concede that the new look Pippi is quite appropriate. The long stockings are wrong. I’ve never imagined them to be striped. But otherwise the illustrations have a 50s feel that is about right for this book.

I’m trying to decide that it’s much better to have lots of new interest in Pippi Longstocking, even if it means that everything has changed. Judging by the glowing review the young reviewer from Simply Books wrote, Pippi isn’t past it yet.

Hanging on

The word cliffhanger comes to mind, but it’s more like bridgehanger, if there is such a thing. If I add the words train, nightmare and by the edge of your seat, I’m getting close to describing Malorie Blackman’s new book The Stuff of Nightmares.

I’ve long been a fan of Malorie’s and I was glad to take this book off the hands of someone so fainthearted she couldn’t face reading it. Though I didn’t expect quite this amount of excitement. I suppose I felt that after the Noughts & Crosses trilogy anything else would be tame. Malorie is more back to her old scary story type of book, but there are bits of N&C in this one too. And bits of lots of things. I recognised at least two former short stories incorporated into the book.

That doesn’t detract from the quality of the nightmarishness at all. I think Malorie must have sat down and decided to put as many nightmares as she possibly could into the one book. I went on a train today, and it crossed a very tall railway viaduct. Twice. Out and return. I also went to the Arndale, where Adele Geras still has me frightened, so I had a lot of potential nightmare stuff in one simple outing. And I read the book on the train, which is maybe even worse than late at night, which the book cover advises against.

Some of the minor nightmares were so fascinating, that I’d hope Malorie will consider writing something longer on the subject.

Daughter read the book long before the witch, and couldn’t put it down. But she called it thrilling, rather than scary. Don’t know what gave her such a silly notion.

And they didn’t like it much either

Today the time had come to discuss that book I moaned about a couple of weeks ago. I’d worried that as an older person maybe I’d got it wrong and the hated book would turn out to be second only to Harry Potter in excellence.

One in my group of five readers had finished the book. It took very little for them to give up on it, and these are the children who will doggedly persevere with proofs by unknown authors that they find difficult. They couldn’t understand the plot, or didn’t feel that there was one. I asked if they liked any of the characters, but none were attractive in any way. They even volunteered off their own bat that it seemed as if someone had forgotten to edit the book before printing.

I’m impressed that they showed so much maturity. One boy had refused to take a copy on the grounds that an earlier book by this author had been awful.

The publishers want feedback, and I believe they’ll get it. Question is whether they’ll feel like passing it on to their author.

Pippi in the Guardian

While you are waiting for some wise words on the new Pippi Longstocking, feel free to read about her on the Guardian’s book blog.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/10/should_pippi_wear_new_longstoc.html

I would welcome comments on there, too. Thank you.

Useless lists

Philip Ardagh; I love you. Again, or still, or whatever. Philip Ardagh’s Book of Absolutely Useless Lists for absolutely every day of the year (phew, got there at last) was out yesterday.

Just reading the inside of the dust wrapper made me smile. The corners of my mouth went up to at least well above my ears. After browsing through the book for a short while I had tears streaming down my cheeks. And not because it’s a bad book. The headache that had been with me all day was almost gone, so no, it’s not an entirely useless book either.

Looked up the dates for our family’s birthdays. The Resident IT Consultant and the witch got very short lists, whereas both Son and Daughter got really long ones. Unfair. Son got a list on art. He hates art. Hah.

I’m a listwriter myself, but only of the kind that says clean house, buy food and mow lawn. Things you tick when done. Philip’s lists can go on and on, with no ticking required.

Is there no limit to how funny Philip Ardagh (the very lovely one…) can be? This is a great book (yes, quite big too) and would make a very good Christmas present. And if you suspect nobody would think of buying you a copy, get one for yourself.

The footnotes are almost better than the lists.

Guardian winner

This year’s winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize is Jenny Valentine with her first novel Finding Violet Park. It has been on my to-read list for a while, because it sounded like a very good book. I think I can take this award to mean that it really is. Look forward to seeing much more about it soon.

The Hawkings

This will have to be a two-parter, because I haven’t actually read George’s Secret Key to the Universe by Lucy and Stephen Hawking yet. But I met Lucy today, along with her father’s very charming research assistant Christophe Galfard.

Judging by the star treatment from publishers Random House, Lucy is big. They even sent Elvis along, which is a sign of greatness. (We want to know who does his hair, but were too shy to ask.)

Lucy reckons that the timing for this book was “spot on”. She had to persuade her father to work with her on this. I think that means Lucy wrote a story about space travel, and her father and Christophe told her what was wrong, scientifically speaking. So the book should be pretty accurate. (I’ll get back to you when I’ve read it.)

Today it’s fifty years since Sputnik, which the witch feels was almost yesterday. I’ve always been fascinated by space, and want to know why it always came last in the school year and got skated past or missed altogether.

And it’s reassuring to hear that not all Stephen Hawking’s children turned out to be scientists. You’d think it was inevitable. A day on Uranus (Daughter needs to stop laughing…) takes 42 years, which is a bit Douglas Adamsy.

The witch tried to make herself useful today, by assisting with the signing of books. I didn’t sign them, but helped lift, sort, open and dried the ink(?). And when they thanked me, I muttered something about it not being rocket science. Of all the times to use that cliché, I had to pick today!

Christophe can tell me about the solar system any time. Though preferably not in French. It’s odd that I’ve had two French encounters in a week. But very nice.

Kiss

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.