Libraries: nostalgia may soon not be what it used to be: Gillian Philip

Better and more dedicated bloggers have blogged about the crisis facing our libraries, including Lucy Coats, Keren David and Candy Gourlay. Please read their posts from yesterday, because I can't put it better than they can.

I can, though, tell you what my local library meant to me as a child, because I'll never forget standing at my bedroom window one night, with my parents and my brother, watching the glow light up the sky as it burned to the ground. I remember being heartbroken, because it was the place I loved to be: the place that brought me Paddington Bear and the Famous Five and so many other worlds of wild excitement.

All I could think of that night, and the next day as we went to look at the ruins, was all those worlds, all those words, all those books going up in smoke. At eight I could think of no greater tragedy. I fantasised that the local press would interview me, as the library's most fanatical client. I even practised what I'd say.

I'd discovered Snoggle in that library, an odd little egg-shaped alien created by JB Priestley. He was as alone and far from home as ET, and even more heart-tugging. Obsessed, I'd taken the book with me into the garden, then left it lying there to be rained on. I had only recently returned it, terrified and guilty, to the librarian (who was very kind and forgiving, and who didn't have me arrested as I assumed she would). That night I remember wishing I'd kept it. More than thirty years later I had to track down a copy for my own kids, but I'm still afraid to read it, afraid to shatter the memory of one of the best-loved books of my childhood.

They rebuilt Wishaw Library: that's it in the photo above. It will have changed with the times, adapted, modernised. It must offer so much more now than it used to. I'd love to visit some time (hint hint). My nostalgic memories of the old library won't be any stronger than the memories the new one is creating right now for its thousands of visitors.

But looking for images of the beautiful old library, or even of the fire that destroyed it, I can't find any. Not one. It's as if that library never existed. Maybe I dreamed it.

Horrible, horrible thought. Let's not let it happen to all the others.

Shock, Stories and Statistics: Gillian Philip

All the fretting I do about what is 'appropriate' in a teenage novel was put into some perspective on Saturday as I listened to Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent. There was a report from Uganda by Anna Cavell about children's literature in Uganda:

The book How Kwezi Got Into Trouble has a picture on the cover of a girl sobbing into a tissue at a school desk.
So when I saw it, I thought Kwezi might have got into trouble for handing her homework in late, or perhaps she had been copying somebody else's exam paper.
Then I looked at the text on the back cover and got quite a shock. It read: "At her mother's funeral, Kwezi is raped by her late father's best friend.
"Kwezi has no-one to tell but her mother lying in the grave. Though she gets Aids, Kwezi is determined to let other pupils know how dangerous Aids is."
It is a surprising storyline for a book aimed at eight-to-10-year-olds.

Uganda once had the highest HIV infection rate in Africa, and that's saying something. There have been some strange and frightening responses to the epidemic, from the assertion that condoms are a western plot to spread AIDS, to Thabo Mbeki's bizarre herbal prescriptions, right up to the rumour that sex with a virgin will cure HIV.
In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni's response has been very different. 'When a lion enters your village,' he declared, 'you must raise the alarm loudly.'
Anna Cavell, surprised by the subject matter available in a children's bookshop, spoke to a mother of two, who was more than happy to use the stories to stimulate discussion with her 11-year-old daughter. She also spoke to older ladies who disapproved of such reading matter, and longed for the days when people 'behaved decently'.
The whole story, here, mentions some of the other books on offer - subject matter which would be challenging for adult books in the UK, never mind teenage lit. In Uganda, the books are for younger children.
A few years ago the HIV infection rate in Uganda was over 20%. Today it's down to 6.7%.

The Chicken of Time: Gillian Philip

It all started with Charlie Brooker. As someone who was frittering away much of his time on Facebook and Twitter (there are many of us - mea maxima culpa) he needed something to focus his attention on the paying job in hand. If you haven't read it already, his article on the Pomodoro Technique (the solution he discovered) is almost painfully sharp and funny. As he put it, "I was trying to write a script in a small room with nothing but a laptop for company. Perfect conditions for quiet contemplation - but thanks to the accompanying net connection, I may as well have been sharing the space with a 200-piece marching band."

Ouch. The article, Google Instant is Trying to Kill Me, was all over the writery part of Facebook in the time it takes to get up for another cup of coffee and idly check Twitter.

I already know people who are trying it out, and swearing by it. Kathryn Evans, fellow children's writer, has not vanished from the online world - not at all - in fact, she's posting just as often. But she's only visiting the gossipy virtual water cooler every twenty-five minutes, when her chicken timer tells her she may. For five minutes. And then it clucks again.

She's getting a lot of work done.

I don't think Twitter and Facebook are a waste of time. They're sanity-saving, they're mines of research and news and ideas, they're wonderful places to meet and talk about work, and they're places where I've met some of my very best friends.

None of which stops them being vampires of work-time. I'm going out today. I may be some time, but I'll have more of it when I get back. I'm going to hunt for my very own chicken.

http://www.gillianphilip.com/

Call Me Irresponsible: Gillian Philip

I'm going to apologise in advance because this will be short, and much of it is based on this post from Pete Hautman, which is an incredibly interesting account of another author being 'uninvited' from a teen literary festival, and how Pete Hautman himself withdrew in solidarity. It isn't just the post that's interesting but the comment thread (I love it when a comment thread is smart and fascinating instead of just abusive).

The reason this is rushed and half-stolen (bear with me while I explain my tortuous train of thought) is because I've just arrived at the Edinburgh Book Festival, which is just as fabulous as always. Anyway, my new book FIREBRAND was published just in time to be on the shelves, and will be launched here at an event on the 27th, so I took the chance to vandalise some copies with a signature or ten. As I was doing this, along came a curious 9-year-old, who wanted to know if she could read the book. And since I won't let my own 9-year-olds read it, I said I didn't think that was a good idea. (Which wasn't that virtuous, actually. I sold one to her older brother and said she could read his copy in a few years.) But the point is that my (many would say underdeveloped) sense of responsibility did actually overcome my commercial instincts. I think all YA/teen authors would say the same. Wouldn't we?

This brings me back to Pete Hautman's post. I was uninvited once. I'd been asked to speak to primary pupils - just about the business of writing, and what was involved in doing it for a living, and how I went about it. I'd already explained that my work wasn't suitable for younger children, and they'd understood that, and agreed I'd simply talk about being a writer, and the invitation stood. But then they panicked. What would the parents say if they googled me? So the invitation was withdrawn at the last minute.

I'm still not sure how I feel about that, and I'd love to know what anyone else's perspective would be. I sympathise with the nervousness about a pack of angry parents; but I can't help feeling they were confusing me and the writing profession with my characters and storylines. Are we simply not trusted if we address certain issues in our work? Should organisers capitulate to a vocal minority (or even the prospect of them?)

Answers on a postcard, or possibly the comment box. And now I had better get this posted...

Harry Potter and the Celluloid of Terror: Gillian Philip

I took my ten-year-olds to see Harry Potter the other day. There were three of us in that front row, trying to make sense of the slightly distorted soundtrack, and only one of us had read the book.

To the ten-year-olds, it didn't matter that for a good deal of the running time, they couldn't quite follow what was going on. It was, as Girl Child announced within five seconds of the credits rolling, the best movie they had ever seen. And with mother giving whispered side-of-the-mouth explanations of the tricky bits, the plot was perfectly comprehensible.

The cinema - an old-fashioned, sticky-floored, numb-bum relic of the golden age, and one of my favourite places in the world - was teeming with three- to ten-year olds who hadn't read the books, along with a lot of teenagers and young adults who had clearly grown up with them. I had high hopes that my two would ask to read all seven books afterwards, and when they didn't volunteer, I offered.

No takers. It's the films they've grown up with, and the Xbox games. Boy Child has spent the summer-holiday days since then watching and rewatching the earlier movies, and begging for the Xbox game. Girl Child has preferred more and more and different movies (and books) involving death, sacrifice, love, hate, good and evil.

I'm not sure they'll ever read the books, now. And I have wildly mixed feelings about that.

My strongest reaction is that these are my kids, dammit. MY KIDS, for whom the purchase of books by readers is the wellspring of the finance that buys them DVDs and Xbox games. What are they THINKING?

A subsidiary, guilty feeling, is that I'm probably even more of a movie addict than I am a book addict, and that's saying something. I'm not sure I'll read The Lord of the Rings again, however many times I've read it in the past, because the movies distilled the best of the books, while holding onto respect for them, and the pictures I made in my head weren't ever quite as good as the pictures made since 2001 by Peter Jackson.

At school talks, I torment myself and the audience with the question 'Books or Movies?' And while we all tear at our scalps shouting 'BOTH', I always advocate BOOKS with the argument that however many girls in the room love Edward Cullen, only around half think he truly looks like Robert Pattinson. For the others, he'll always be the perfect sparkly beauty they formed in their own heads, and R-Pattz will be no more than - well, not an impostor: just someone who once played the part.

I feel quite sad that my kids are unlikely to read Harry Potter as he was originally wrote - or not for a few years, anyway. They won't grow up, as so many young adults did, with a boy who grew up, slowly, on the page, along with them.

But the movies have created another part of the myth, and one of their own. My kids have grown up with Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, and when I really think about it, that's fine. There are so many other books now - in great part thanks to the Potter phenomenon - that they can film for themselves, inside their heads, just like I do with my own characters while I'm writing. For them, Harry can be a movie.

Films make their own mythology. The story of the Lions of Tsavo is a true one, while the film version - The Ghost & The Darkness - follows to a great extent the template of Jaws. I honestly don't think that destroys its validity as a story. I remember being terribly upset and angry when I first saw James Cameron's Titanic, because why would anyone want to add fiction to a truth that had its own perfect tragic narrative and human pathos? Since then I've watched it often, and always cry - because I never believe in Jack and Rose, but they symbolise the real people dying in fractions of screen moments in the background.

Maybe it's distance that lends both enchantment and forgiveness - recent lies and distortions are less forgiveable; but is Troy, if it ever existed, diminished by being relegated to myth and a bloody good story? A seriously bad movie certainly didn't hurt that immortal myth.

We're humans, and we love a narrative arc. The best of them will survive in any form, and many. They start, and end, in our heads.

www.gillianphilip.com

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Five Barnstorming Books-to-Movies: Gillian Philip

I know I’m going to get myself in hot water with this one. Books are so personal, and movies are so personal (but in a different way). There are films of children’s books that I should have seen but haven’t – The Secret of Moonacre (The Little White Horse) for instance, or How To Train Your Dragon (which I am desperate to see, but I’m having to wait for the DVD).

I think it’s harder with children’s books than it is with adults’ to find a movie that’s better than the book. Is that an indication of the higher quality of children’s books? I like to think so. At any rate, I can think straightaway of many adult movies that are better than the book – The Godfather, Jaws – but that very rarely applies to children’s books-to-movies.

I can, though, think of lots that are just as good but different. I actually think the different is important. I'm not crazy about films that are true to the book, which is why you won’t find any Harry Potter movies on my list – for me they are too faithful to the books and (with the exception of the third) don’t really have their own identity as films.


I don’t mind one bit when films take reasonable liberties with a book, because they need to be good in their own right, not just exact translations of page to screen. I want to be transported by movies and books in entirely different ways. I’m swept away far more by Inkheart the novel than Inkheart the movie. But (if I’m allowed to count abridged versions as children’s favourites) I’m far more enchanted by Last of the Mohicans (1992) and Tarzan (1999) as movies than as books.

I seem to have gone for five very recent movies (sorry, Bambi, I did want you). And I wanted more than five. I wanted Stuart Little, too, and Shrek, and Stormbreaker, and The Black Stallion, and I desperately wanted The (supremely quotable) Princess Bride, and... oh, that’s cheating. Get on with it.

Each of the five had to pass a simple test: do my children – one girl one boy – ask to watch it over and over again?

Peter Pan (2003)

A Peter who is ‘the personification of cockiness’ and whose American accent only makes him more otherworldly. Lost Boys you don’t want to throttle. Terrifying mermaids and thoroughly sinister pirates. A scheming, naughty, funny Tink. Jason Isaacs as a deliciously wicked and handsome Captain Hook - but ‘not wholly evil’. A soaring soundtrack. Scenes that make my spine tingle no matter how many times I watch them – Mr and Mrs Darling running home in slow motion, only just too late! Bankers and strict aunts and sleeping children chanting that they DO believe in fairies, they DO, they DO! Ah, I love this movie.


Stardust (2007)

I know, I know, it’s allegedly the nadir of Robert De Niro’s career. But I like his turn as an effete, cross-dressing pirate captain. I like the seven fratricidal brothers, too, both alive and dead. Jokes, danger, thrills, romance, unicorns, views of Skye. If I was gay I’d want to marry Claire Danes, and if I was younger I’d want to marry Charlie Cox, especially after his ‘reverse haircut’. What’s more, I’m a soft touch for a cheesy Take That song. I adore this movie so much, I can even forgive a Ricky Gervais cameo.

Coraline (2009)

Another Neil Gaiman adaptation, this time a captivatingly beautiful animation. Coraline is a clever, likeable heroine whose terror and danger seem very real, and whose bravery is therefore all the more impressive. The houseful of eccentrics are beautifully balanced by their vicious alternates, and I am a huge fan of that scrawny, smart cat who moves so comfortably between the worlds. As for Coraline’s button-eyed Other Mother: she’s evil enough to send even a parent diving behind the sofa. And (shhh) she makes me feel better about my own maternal inadequacies and laptop time.

Nanny McPhee (2005)

‘Once upon a time there was a huge family of children; and they were terribly, terribly naughty.’ And then Nurse Matilda went Hollywood and became Nanny McPhee, and disciplined a whole new generation. I came late to this one, and I watched it reluctantly, not expecting to like it. I laughed out loud as much as my children did, and I (surreptitiously) cried at the end. I’m a little afraid to see Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, because I don’t trust sequels. But I might have to try.


The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Oh, I had to sneak this one in. Not strictly a children’s book, but like many, many others, I first read the trilogy as a young teenager. The Two Towers and The Return of the King are grander, more threatening, more epic in scale, and you do get Gollum; but there’s something so watchable and entrancing about the first instalment. Aragorn’s rough and enigmatic and sexy, Boromir is still around (I always liked Boromir), the Black Riders are far more dreadful on horseback than on their flying mounts, and Arwen shows a bit of gumption, some blade and a nice way with a horse. And they dropped that ghastly old singing hippy Tom Bombadil. I could watch this one over and over, and I do.

Go on, I know your five will be different. Do tell...

http://www.gillianphilip.com/

WIN a Faery Like This One - Gillian Philip

He’s stroppy, bad-tempered, loud-mouthed, occasionally rebellious but very loyal and is willing to do his share of the dishes. Every home should have one, and now you can – just by answering one question and a tie-breaker.

The Rebel Angels series (contains no wings, despite the title and the presence of faeries) follows the adventures of Seth & Conal MacGregor, sons of a Sithe clann chief assassinated by the Faery Queen. The story began in 16th century Scotland with Firebrand; it comes right up to date with Bloodstone, the brothers having somehow managed to survive into the 21st century. And now things start to get difficult...

Bloodstone isn’t published till August 16th, but you can get your hands on an advance signed proof copy PLUS a signed copy of Firebrand PLUS (when they’re printed) a poster of the final Bloodstone cover (since I’m offering Seth as a prize, and the proof cover is plain), created by the amazing Lawrence Mann.

Just to keep you on your toes/confuse the issue, my question isn’t going to concern the Rebel Angels series at all. Just tell me the heroine’s name that connects my first book Bad Faith, the Darke Academy series (which I write for Hothouse Fiction under the name Gabriella Poole), and an ancient Greek prophetess with believability problems.

And for a tie-breaker: I’m always looking for a new name for a Lammyr. They’re the cousins and enemies of the Sithe: cool, skinny, sociopathic and sarky. I already have Skinshanks and Slinkbone - go on, help me out and suggest a third...  


Post your answers in the comments. Remember to either include an email address or to check back here regularly to see whether you're a winner. Closing date 20th July, noon British time.

And finally: Happy Birthday to ABBA! It’s one of the best, brightest, smartest and most varied blogs out there. Live long and prosper, Awfully Big Blog Adventure!


You can find me at www.gillianphilip.com or at www.facebook.com/gillianphilipauthor - or follow me on Twitter: @Gillian_Philip

Mad, Bad and I Wish I'd Known This Earlier: Gillian Philip

This is my old school. Posh, eh? (Oh all right, it was a comprehensive by the time I went, but it looks very smart.)

And out front, that's its most famous alumnus, Lord Byron. I passed him every morning and afternoon for six years (except during holidays and illness) and sadly, never appreciated him. All I knew of the man was that extraordinary sheet that makes him look not unlike Sally Bercow, and the fact that he was responsible for one of the songs on my mother's Alexander Brothers LPs. (Dark Lochnagar. If you know anything of the Alexander Brothers, you'll know that's no way to get to know a poem.) Oh, and the fact that I didn't get to be in Byron House (bunch of jessies).

Why didn't they tell us? Why didn't they tell us he was a rake, a rogue, a soldier of fortune, probably bisexual and incestuous, and that he actually looked like THIS?

Nom. Anyway, if I'd known he was as interesting as THAT, I wouldn't have walked past him every day with a roll of my eyes and my nose in a Marvel comic.

Maybe nowadays the students get, to paraphrase Horrible Histories, literature with the babe-a-licious bits left in. I hope so. Anyway, I remembered the old stone bloke the other day when reading Leslie Wilson's terrific post about language and sex in young adult books. If he'd been around today, I'm sure the young scoundrel would have been a proud presence on many a banned books list.

Anyway, I wish I'd discovered Byron a lot earlier. I think I would have, if they'd left in the language and sex.

What's not to like?

www.gillianphilip.com

I do bite my thumb, sir: Gillian Philip

I don't watch EastEnders. It's on at a bad time for me, and I don't want to get caught up and addicted to the plot. I'd barely heard of Ronnie and Kat before last week, and leaping to their defence isn't something I'd ever planned to do.

On the other hand, I love the internet. I do. Some of my best friends are internet friends, whether on Facebook, Twitter or email.

The net has its drawbacks, though: like its potential for the manipulative and the mob. I daresay 6,000 members of Mumsnet were truly, authentically upset by the famously 'offensive' EastEnders storyline in which a mother devastated by a cot death swaps her dead baby for someone else's live one.

Harrowing, yes. Off limits? Oh, yes, for the Mumsnetters who cannot distinguish between issue-led fiction and... well... issues. Or indeed fiction.

Sorry, but I don't have shades of grey on this one. If I want to write about an individual - an individual - who has been turned completely barking by a terrible tragedy, then I hope I'll always be able to do so. I was going to add 'without being accused of offensiveness and insensitivity by those affected by the same kind of tragedy', but that's always going to happen, isn't it? What I hope is that I won't get the media tarring-and-feathering for it, and I hope I won't ever be bludgeoned into a humiliating climbdown for the crime of writing fiction (as the BBC was this week).

I'm not saying issues shouldn't be approached with understanding and sensitivity. But there has to be room to treat fictional individuals as just that - individuals, with the same quirks, traits and madnesses they'd have in real life.

So maybe it stings a little when miscarriage is portrayed in a TV soap - and happening to a horrible character who had it coming. I remember watching Secrets and Lies, and the ghastly recognition that the infertile wife was a bitch of the first order, and mostly because of her infertility. It touches awful chords when a fictional couple is faced with a possible abnormality showing up on an antenatal scan. Tonight I've just finished watching Silent Witness where, as so often, the killer was a disturbed gay guy. But as Sophie Hannah put it so well in this Sunday's Herald, Psycho is deeply offensive to hotel owners who don't go around stabbing their guests in the shower.

But I have no right not to be offended. You have no right not to be offended. You start ring-fencing fiction with the fear of offence, and it's dead. So is a lot else.

Of course we should write with sensitivity and awareness of the effect of what we write on whoever may read it. But to self-censor for the fear of upsetting anyone? I hope I never do. And kick me if you see me doing it. My editor already has, once or twice.

Forgive me if I start with a still from a frothy soap, and finish with a shot of a man who has been garlanded and showered with rose petals for shooting another man. The victim wasn't actively offensive, but he had defended the rights of people who might be accused of being offensive.

Maybe the comparison is a little offensive, but maybe it's the time of the month for me.

And if my husband said that, I'd be furiously offended...

www.gillianphilip.com

It's Our Turn Now! Celebrating Project #UKYA - Lucy Coats

If you haven't already heard about it, I'd like to introduce you to Project UKYA, set up in September 2013 by Lucy Powrie, a teenage Force for Good, and a manic bibliophile. Essentially, Lucy has come up with the brilliant idea of blowing the trumpet loudly and publicly for UK Young Adult authors and their books, with a different 'project' happening each month. Right now there's a marvellously wide-ranging series of chats going on on Twitter under the hashtag #ukyachat. People are sharing books they love, and talking about different aspects of UKYA. Next month a new longterm project launches - a monthly (to begin with) 'livechat' on YouTube, talking about the latest UKYA releases, discussing UKYA books and much more, including special guests and author Q and As.

Why does this matter? It matters because YA from the US has held the balance of power in the public perception of YA for far too long. While the likes of Twilight, The Hunger Games and The Mortal Instruments have all sold millions of copies and had films made in a relatively short time after publication, UK YA authors have been lagging behind in terms both of sales and of international recognition. We need to try and change that, because the pool of UK writing talent is immense, and yes, I'm going to say it, just as good if not better than anything coming out of America. All of us who care about books and reading need to work together to get the word out there to YA readers about just how good British books are at the moment.

This is absolutely not to denigrate US writers - I'm very excited currently about Laini Taylor and Sarah J Maas's forthcoming titles, among others. It's just that I'm equally excited - or more so - about Clare Furniss's Year of the Rat, Keren David's Salvage, Teri Terry's Shattered, Claire McFall's Bombmaker, Ruth Warburton's Witchfinder, Gillian Philip's Icefall, Ellen Renner's Tribute, James Dawson's Cruel Summer, Candy Gourlay's Shine and the new film of Anthony McGowan's The Knife that Killed Me. And that's just touching the surface of what's out there right now. I could spend the rest of this post just making a list of great UKYA books and writers (don't worry, I won't).

So, really what I'm asking you to do here is to support Project UKYA. Follow it on Twitter and take part in the chat, join its Facebook page, read and comment on the blog - but above all, spread the word about its existence to everyone you know who loves good books. UKYA books and authors deserve to be known and celebrated all over the world - let's be the pebbles which start the avalanche.