What bookish delights did you get, or give for Christmas? - Linda Strachan

Christmas is a time for giving and what better gift to a lover of words than   a good book, or two, to curl up with.








I received a variety of different book gifts -



I love cookery books and I was delighted by the gift of Mums Recipes Two,
a cookbook with some interesting recipes which helps raise funds for MUMs.


The main focus of MUMs is to help reduce maternal and infant deaths in Malawi. The first volume raised £100,000 and there are now three volumes.  You can find out more about them and the project http://www.mumsrecipes.org/









Michelle Lovric's The  Undrowned Child was another present, and I am looking forward to this trip to Venice




.

 Mark Z Danieleweski's  House of Leaves -  a large tome that is dauntingly heavy and on initial inspection it has a very strange layout.

I'm not at all sure what it is about or if it is something I can engage with, especially at the moment when I am trying to keep my head clear until my current work in progress is completed.

So it may have to wait on the shelf for a bit,. On the other hand I am curious to find out about all this strange layout. I feel as if it is a challenge..... so watch this space!






 I also gave some books as gifts and among those were
             
Gillian Philip's Firebrand                                                 

Lob by Linda Newbery

 and  Cathy MacPhail's Grass  









 



So, what bookish gift did you give or receive this Christmas?



Dead Boy Talking (Strident Publishing)  'will knock you off your feet with the speed of its delivery and the raw, tough realism..'  The Bookette
Writing for Children (A & C Black) ideal reading for all aspiring and newly published writers
For younger children the Hamish McHaggis series (GW Publishing)
Follow Linda's blog  - Bookwords - writingthebookwords.blogspot.com
Visit her website -www.lindastrachan.com

Books Do Grow On Trees - Nicola Morgan

The lovely people at Blackwell's Bookshop in Edinburgh invited me to the launch of a fabulous event but I couldn't go because I was in London, hobnobbing with Brian May, Roger Daltrey, Roger Taylor and a load of other stars. (Ouch, the name-dropping! Actually, there were a lot more I could have dropped but I held myself back. Besides, when I told my daughter the other names, her response was, "What sort of a tacky event was this, mother? Please don't tell anyone you were there.") Anyway, although the launch has happened, the event is still going on, and it's SUCH a wonderful cause and idea that I wanted to be able to say something about it here.

So, here's a message from Julie Gamble at Blackwell's:

"The Children's Book Tree at Blackwell's Bookshop in Edinburgh is a scheme that lets customers donate a book to a vulnerable child in the city who is living in care or in difficult circumstances. We are working together with Edinburgh Women's Aid, Edinburgh Young Carers, Barnardo's, many support units run by The City of Edinburgh Council and Edinburgh Foster Care to find out what each child would like. We then attach their requests to tags and hang them from our 'Book Tree'. From 25th Nov until 19th Dec customers can drop into the Children's Dept. at Blackwell's on South Bridge, choose a tag from the tree and buy a book to go with it. We'll then wrap and send the books in time for Christmas.

If you'd like to gift a book but can't make it in person you can get in touch with us on 0131 6228225. If you would like to buy a book on behalf of someone else we can also provide a lovely gift certificate!

Thanks for making Christmas a little brighter for these kids."

Hooray!! Fab idea. I'm going there very very soon. There's the tree, all ready and waiting for wishes to be fulfilled.

Does anyone know of any other schemes like this in your part of the country? Would you like to name them here? Or, if you don't, why not contribute to the Edinburgh one by dialling that number?

If we believe that books are important and enriching and wonderful, we must believe in their utmost importance for vulnerable children who have had such a bad start in life.

Oh, and as an extra treat, here's a pic of Julie, thinly disguised as an elf, standing with Sarah Brown, whom you might recognise. 

Independent's Day : Penny Dolan.

Writing demands a certain level of ego. I think, therefore I write down my thoughts, or at least something I’ve constructed out of my thoughts. I have hopes this stuff might be worth reading, by myself even if by nobody else. I feel, as so often I do, that there is a vanity about bothering to write at all.

Vanity’s bubble is easily burst, so I have what I think of as my imaginary “iron corset” on hand at all times. It is a very useful protection against the many small pinches of the writing life:

The silence that tells you a submitted manuscript has been rejected.

The email that says, after several re-writes, “we really liked the idea but have decided that now the words aren’t quite right.”

The day when a bookseller tells you that someone at the publishers has told them that your book has gone out of print. Nobody has bothered to tell you.

The moment when someone in a staff-room asks “Should I have heard of you?” Obviously you haven’t, not even with my name written on today’s school notice board.

Every such occasion is an amusing reminder – how else can one look at it? – of how fragile the writer’s role and ego really is. Ouch! That smarts!
So I gird my iron corset around me for extra reinforcement when these small pinches arrive. Now I can pretend the painful digs don’t get to reach me really. Ha, ha, ha!

However, these last two weeks I’ve really needed my clanking virtual corset. Every few days, walking into town, I have passed the only bookshop. It's part of a chain now. I’ve used it over many years and seen many staff come and go.

During this month, I'd had a book out: A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E. Sorry, I know one shouldn’t say this but the book is so good that I cannot believe I wrote it. My name on the front suggests I must have been involved somehow. The thing is a lucky mix of fancy, imagination and words.

Furthermore, the hardback cover looks magnificent. It must be pure cover karma: by some weird chance, I am the author who ended up with all the good luck left over by unfortunate writers who ended up with covers they hate. Before you despise this evidence of even greater vanity, remember that if you don’t love your book, who else will? I feel anyone would be pleased to see the book on a shelf. "Now I have to search for many books in town."

Two weeks ago I was passing the shop, having done the bank and sent other stuff in to Mouse’s publication. Stupidly I was tempted. I thought “Why not?” and edged into the bookshop quietly. After all, I had just had a mention in the local paper, and know at least one person who asked after a copy last week. Was my book there? Nope. Nope. Nope.

Than only a couple of days ago, I needed to get a present for friend so had to call in to the shop. Nope again.

This time I approached the desk, spoke sweetly, humbly and casually to the girls behind the desk. It seems they have only just sorted out who runs the children’s department. The book is definitely on order. The computer says my volume hasn’t come in yet. So odd! Then I recalled grumbles about the company’s central book ordering system in the past, but I laughed too. Ha ha ha! If you’d like me to come in to do some book signing, do get in touch. I said. I felt myself simpering stupidly as I gave my contact details again, again.

Today I passed by the shop. In the window hung a long list of half-term activities. Roald Dahl, Halloween. Horrible Histories, and so on and so on. By now I feel totally in the wrong for even offering anything to the shop. The corset grows stronger round my heart. I am becoming Tin Woman! Clang, clang, clang! You cannot get me now, cruel fate. It is best not to care!

Don’t worry. I’ll be okay soon. If it wasn’t for the support I had from the Children’s Bookshop in Lindley, Huddersfield, and several reports from writing friends who have spotted my lovely tome in independent bookshops all across the land, I fear I might have dreamed the whole Mouse experience up. So long live the great Independent Booksellers of Britain.

I wonder who's your favourite and most helpful bookseller then?

Penny Dolan
www.pennydolan.com

A Boy Called Mouse, published by Bloomsbury October 2010.

Once was bookseller

The last in our current series of blogs by booksellers who work with children’s books, this time by our own Leila Rasheed. These blogs have been intended to give a glimpse of relationships between booksellers and children’s writers, something usually transacted behind the scenes. Leila has been both, as you’ll see in this fascinating account of life in a cross-Channel Waterstones. We hope you’ve enjoyed this ‘Month of Sundays’ and we plan to bring you more tales from behind the till next year. Meanwhile, we at An Awfully Big Blog Adventure would like to thank the contributors and also all those who opened out and enriched this discussion with their thought-provoking comments.

Round about the same time I decided to take my writing seriously I met a random Danish composer and we moved in together in Brussels. I found there was a Waterstone’s, applied for a job and went to Italy. I rang from a phone box in Italy to see if I’d got the job and apparently that swung it. I was now a bookseller. It was 2002.

Waterstone’s Brussels was a WH Smiths from 1921 until 1997. It was once managed by Marina Warner’s father. During the 2nd World War it was a Nazi officer’s mess. It is the bottom two floors of a typical central Brussels mansion, and the building has a faded, stately huge heaviness, like a woman who’s grown too thick around the waist for her crinoline. On the third floor, where the offices are, corridors and false walls maze like secrets in a heart. It smells of dust and creaky, twisted wood.

I loved working in that bookshop. Loved it. The staff (hello guys) were amazing: bookish, funny, intelligent, crazy (literally, not ‘wooo, I’m so crazy’), arty, cosmopolitan. I loved the books. I quickly got to be in charge of the children’s section, probably because no-one else wanted it. This was bliss. I loved tidying my section so it looked enticing, like rearranging the sweets in a shop window. I loved unpacking boxes of new stock. I loved selling books, I loved people buying books. I loved writing shelf-talkers (those little bits of card under a book that say how great it is) and seeing people read them and smile and pick up the book and buy it. I loved poring over the publishers’ catalogues, thinking, ‘That’ll sell here’ and buying it in and seeing it fly out. I loved seeing my profits go up, my section do well. I even loved stickering and de-stickering (de-stickering less so; it wrecks your nails). I did not love the waste; the piles of 3 for 2s shed like Imelda Marcos’ last week’s shoes.

Waterstones in Brussels and in Amsterdam, the chain’s only two branches abroad, sell the same books as you would find in a Waterstones in the UK. There is a huge audience for English language books in Brussels. Belgium is a country of two parallel languages: French and Dutch. English is a neutral space between these two language communities, whose inability to get on with each other, politically at least, has led to the country entering the record books as the country which has taken the longest time to form a government after an election. (It’s like some incredibly unstable chemical compound, as soon as a government comes into being it decays). Middle class Belgians, especially Flemish Belgians, almost without exception speak fluent English. Ex-pats working in Brussels will frequently speak and read English as well as their own native language/s, French and Dutch. University courses are taught in English. Many of the international schools there teach curriculums in English. It is the official language for many if not most businesses in Brussels. Aside from Waterstone’s, Brussels supports an independent English bookshop, Sterling , many, many independent bookshops specializing in (for example) art and travel that sell books in English as well as other languages, Passaporta, which is a multi-lingual bookshop and includes a residency for writers, and an independent English language children’s bookshop, Treasure Trove, which has been established over 20 years. There are of course local French bookshops and Dutch bookshops and the Dutch bookshops in particular will also stock some English language books.

In the Waterstone’s chain, some books were assigned ‘core’ status and had to be kept in stock. Beyond that we were fairly free (depending on space, not much of which was left after the core stock, a fair amount of which was dire TV tie-ins and so on, was on the shelves) to buy what stock we wanted. Our customers were typically Eurocrats, politicians, diplomats and business people, some English teachers and many students. Our strongest sections were therefore politics, business and economics, while core stock memoirs of C-list British slebs languished un-sold. Good books for bright children to learn English as a second language were in demand. There seemed to be very few around, and I would say this is a gap in the market waiting to be filled by any clever publisher out there. The Usborne First 1000 words in English was a strong seller when put face-out with a shelf-talker. Not on Waterstone’s core stock, but we could shift 5 or 6 a week on average, a lot for us. Overall, we sold books. We made a profit, unlike some other flagship branches. We were therefore allowed to behave in many ways like an independent bookshop but with Waterstone’s purchasing might behind us. Glory days, etc.

To begin with, there was a form I had to fill in stating what I had spent on stock. But that vanished, and then there was no budget. Managers came and went like stressed moths. Now and then a bigger manager came from London and zoomed up the stairs to the office and zoomed down the stairs again and out to the pub. There was a mysterious thing called CPD that was meant to happen. I wrote my novel on the staff computer on Sunday afternoons. There was a revolution against uniforms.
The international schools came and swooped upon us and spent hundreds of euros. We did events. A customer asked Jackie Kay to direct her to the gardening section.
Once there was a thunderstorm and the roof came down in the children’s section and drowned several Enid Blytons. We mopped and dried out stock on the radiators. I collected things people lost in the children’s section. I considered making a little museum.

We had Johnny Depp in there once, filming up the road. I served his bodyguard, a tall, sad-eyed man in a ten gallon stetson. Michael Jackson visited before I arrived, the shop was closed for him and he bought children’s books. We had theft. I never noticed, I’m a bit rubbish that way. People would walk in and walk out again with overcoats full of hundreds of euros worth of dictionaries and Tintin books which they sold on the black market. We had two armed robberies. I wasn’t there at the time. We got a security guard.

We were sandwiched between a gun shop and a porn shop, behind us junkies slept in doorways, on the other side of the street was the red light district. A footstep behind us was Rue des Cendres, where the Duchess of Richmond’s ball before Waterloo was held. The rain ran down the arch of the disused cinema opposite and dripped like saliva from an open mouth. It’s the most beautiful city I’ve ever lived in. Last time I was there a man tried to slash my face with a knife as I walked down the street. We sold crackers at Christmas and Cadburys’ Crème Eggs at Easter. We were an ex-pat institution. Why do I say were? It’s still there. It sells coffee now. We angled for a coffee shop for ages and now there is one. You could go there and get a coffee next time you're in Brussels.



If I could do anything in the world, I would go back to bookselling as a career (alongside writing). I think I was a good bookseller and I know I enjoyed it. But I don’t think it would be practical in the long term. Why? Well, there has been some good news for bricks and mortar bookselling, there’s no doubt about that. Children’s publishers are springing up everywhere. That has to translate into sales. Waterstone’s has a new beginning. I have been following the James Daunt news on the Bookseller and am very excited at the changes. Scrapping the 3/2 is good. It’s good for customers who now have real choice rather than the illusion of choice. It’s good for staff who are trusted to do their jobs and know their books. It’s good because it gives value to something other than price, and this is what bricks and mortar bookselling has to be about, because it simply cannot compete with big online booksellers for price or convenience.

And there’s the rub. The bricks and mortar bookshop faces huge, specific and fundamental challenges – online bookselling, e-books, rise of the self-publisher - and all against a backdrop of worsening economic conditions. So much so that I cannot imagine career bookselling will last into a new generation in any other than a very boutique form. I hope that I’ll be proved wrong. I hope commenters can persuade me that I'm pessimistic. But in Birmingham we do not have one single independent general bookseller. Do you know how many people there are in Birmingham? One heck of a lot, that’s how many. You’d think they could support one single sole little independent bookseller. But the last, Bonds books in leafy Harborne, shut a couple of years ago. Over in equally leafy and more intellectual Moseley/ Kings Heath, we’ve got an Oxfam books that is usually jammed. That’s doing well – the second hand bookseller with the cheap charity rates to help it make a profit. The organic yummy mummy cafes have Usborne stands in them.

Books are selling but bookshops are closing. People will browse and pick up a second hand book but they’ll do their serious book shopping online. I cannot help thinking that much as I love real proper bookshops, all things pass. Like cassette tapes or VHS, or the steam engine, or the Bronze age.

Still, if a dedicated independent bookseller can stay afloat anywhere, it should be able to do so in Moseley/Kings Heath. Does anyone out there want to open one? And give me a job?

leila rasheed once was bookseller; now is book writer.

www.leilarasheed.com

BOOKSELLER SUNDAYS - To Be Free or Not To Be Free, by Elaine Penrose of Books at Hoddesdon

The third in our warmly-received series of guest blogs by booksellers who work with children’s authors in different ways. These guest blogs are designed to show life behind the scenes of a crucial but neglected relationship – the one between a writer and a bookseller. These days, such relationships are more intense and more important, as increasing numbers of authors go on the road to promote and sell children’s books – a goal shared by the booksellers who will contribute to this series

Never has there been such a volatile time as now for independent bookshops. Every week we hear of further closures. The net is tightening. I have worked in our local and now only independent bookshop in East Herts, Books @ Hoddesdon, since it opened in 2005 and we strive to maintain our presence when others are folding around us.

Not a day goes by without us being reminded of the increasing competition. We are fully aware that some of our most loyal customers are now buying from other sources and have succumbed to the Kindle. We can’t offer books at the same prices as supermarkets, or big internet sites! Unlike them, career booksellers can offer customer service, and that’s what keeps people coming back. We don’t just say, ‘the computer says “’no”’. We say, ‘You can only remember a few words of the title ? Half the author’s name? You mean x, perhaps? Sorry, that’s not in stock but we can order it for you. Yes, we’ll let you know when it’s in. And meanwhile have you seen this book by the same author? It’s really good.’

Customer service goes beyond the shop. Books @ holds regular ‘Meet the Author’ events at local theatres, village halls and even in restaurants. Many writers, both famous and emerging, have now given our audiences an insight into their worlds. We work hard. And, like children’s authors, we booksellers also wonder why it is that television producers seem almost exclusively prepared to promote authors who write for adults? What about publicity slots for children’s books on peak-time shows? We may see an occasional children’s author on breakfast TV. Yet we know that the public is enthusiastic about children’s literature from the queues at the many book festivals around the UK, and from the people we meet in the shop.

Adults may read on Kindles, but let’s hope they will still recognize that children need to handle books, turn pages, smell a new book and feast their senses on picture books. We need to encourage all reviewers of adult literature to consider featuring children’s books as well, and giving them a bigger share of the review space. Why do we have a Bestsellers List of books for adults but none with such a high profile for children? The answer is that it’s adults who buy and the impulse, other than for titles such as Harry Potter, never occurs with children’s books until the child comes of an age to express a true interest. When will we see a billboard featuring the work of members of the Scattered Authors Society? If Martina Cole, Jackie Collins, Ian Rankin, or Sophie Kinsella were to venture into children’s books it might just happen. But there is already enough talent out there to justify it, without celebrity authors from the adult world …

Children are our future readers and we should raise the profile of all children’s books, starting with those for the very young. Many parents have no idea what to buy, other than the books they remember from their childhood. It’s great to sell the Classics, but we need new books to offer a wider range – these could go on to be future classics. We need such greats as We’re All Going on a Bear Hunt, The Gruffalo and The Tiger Who Came to Tea, but what about the hundreds of wonderful new titles that yearly get lost on the shelves? It’s a sin.

Parents and families need to be better advised of the choice available to them. Booksellers need to rise to the challenge and make people aware of the vast number of wonderful children’s books on offer. Otherwise, we are doing ourselves a disservice. We try to display all new titles in the bookshop, but space, of course, is an issue. We’d love to work together even more with authors and publishers in raising awareness, in contacting local papers, local schools.

If you are a real bookseller, you don’t park your passion for books when you shut down the till. Career booksellers work in their own time to host events and organise festivals. Our work invades our bedside tables, as we try to read all the books we want to promote, and in order to be able to have sensible, welcoming conversations with our visiting authors.

And this raises a thorny question.

I know everyone wants and deserves to earn a living but sometimes giving time for free gives authors a valuable chance to promote their work. It’s a tricky issue for authors, and one that needs more open discussion between booksellers, publishers and writers. What do the Scattered Authors think? What do other readers, publishers and booksellers think?

Books @ Website

Picture shows Elaine Penrose reading Icky Sticky to nursery children at Duncombe School, Hertford, with author Claire Burgess demonstrating each page.

BOOKSELLER SUNDAYS – The Essence of the Process, by John Newman of the Newham Bookshop

My Dad always said I should open a bookshop and although we disagreed a good deal about what I should do with my “education” he was absolutely right about me and books. I have been very lucky to have had a relationship with the Newham Bookshop since 1983 after we had set up home in East Ham. It was also around this time that I met Vivian Archer who then ran the Paperback Centre in nearby Green Street and who in 1987 moved over to the shop in the Barking Road where she has presided ever since. I initially worked part-time in the shop but when our second child came along I returned to social work.

It was Vivian who encouraged and supported me to return to bookselling when John and Jean, stalwarts of the children’s shop, began to plan for their retirements. I have never regretted the move for one moment and despite the almost ceaseless changes within the publishing industry I never ever wake up reluctant to go to work! I love living and working in a vibrant and diverse part of London where I spend most of my day enthusing and sharing information about books and reading. My mission has always been to try to bring the best books to the community and to endeavour to ensure children see themselves in the stories and pictures. I value the conversations I have with customers of all ages and the feedback I receive on what worked and what did not! We have been privileged to have been supported by our local community as we look ahead to our 34th year of trading in 2012.

There is a process which I have been involved in on countless occasions. It begins with the arrival of a manuscript or proof copy which I usually open with all the excitement of a child anticipating a long awaited birthday present. It can then lead to attending a launch event where it might be possible to congratulate the new author and wish them and their book well. An event might follow which wherever possible is carefully planned and executed in an effort to ensure everyone benefits from the experience. If all goes well there may be other events with a successive title or even a new series. The venue may need to change to accommodate a bigger audience. The quality and quantity of questions may then encompass matters relating to plot or characters rather then simply the usual round of probing for details of earnings accrued or how long it takes to write a book.

We have been supported by many authors over the years who have regularly returned for events and signings. One of our earliest and most important supporters was the writer and compiler of oral histories Gilda O’Neill who very sadly passed away last year. Gilda was always generous with her time and never missed an opportunity to point people in our direction. Benjamin Zephaniah and Michael Rosen have also been hugely supportive of what we do and our work with them was inspirational in giving us the confidence to develop the events work which is now integral to our business. It is a must for bookshops to cultivate relationships with authors and illustrators and develop mutually supportive ways of working together. It is also vital to have contact with sales reps and it is sad to witness them becoming a diminishing part of the trade. I always look forward to being shown new titles and love the fact that this will often spark off ideas for promotions and activities both within and outside the shop!


Some years ago now Bali Rai was being his usual entertaining self in an event at the central library here in Newham. A young and dedicated teacher had managed to persuade three teenagers who were not keen readers to come along to the after school session. As Bali wrapped up the question element of the evening the lads made there way to the exit and disappeared into the night. “Oh well”, said the teacher, “at least they nearly stuck it out to the end” As the signing queue began to lessen the same three boys were suddenly very much back in the room. “Sorry sir”, one of them said, “but we had to go and get the money to buy the books” This is perhaps one of my favourite stories from many years of organising events and I never tire of telling it because it validates all the efforts of the author, publisher, bookseller, librarian and teacher to organise community based events.

Things do not always run smoothly or go according to plan. I must admit to anxiety about getting it right and when I don’t I am pretty hard on myself because whatever happens on the day is ultimately down to me especially if I have instigated the process and identified the venue. I recognise that for an author to give up a day of their time is a big commitment especially if they are in the middle of a writing or editing phase. But over the years I have met some wonderful people and have been regularly delighted in the way children and young people have responded to having an author in their midst. Long may this continue!

The Newham Bookshop website

Finding a long-lost friend - Anne Rooney

This is just a little post to lighten the day with a tale of happy, bookly serendipity.

In 1985 I finished my PhD. It was referred - I had to move a few pages around and resubmit it, waiting the statutory six months even though I could do the required work in a week. I was cross, so I had it bound in lurid, fluorescent pink to annoy the University Library, who liked to have the stacks full of uniform navy, black and bottle-green theses. There are only two pink copies - my own, and that deposited in the University Library. The thesis was published as a book and I forgot about the pink copies.

Twenty five years passed, during which my copy got lost somehow. Sad - all that work.... But I had the published book so it didn't hugely matter.

Two weeks ago, a new twitter friend, @PoultonSmith, mentioned that one of his books was on sale on Abe Books for a ridiculously large sum even though it was only published three years ago. Ever ready to avoid work, I searched Abe for my most expensive book. And there it was:

Anne Rooney, Hunting in Middle English Literature, 1300-1500; original PhD thesis, Cambridge 1985, A4 size, bound in pink cloth, gold lettering, £65.

It was on sale from Plurabelle Books in Cambridge. I emailed them and explained that it should not be for sale - they were wonderful, replying immediately to say they would set it aside and I could collect it. I asked where they had got it from - it was one of 20,000 volumes they bought from Emmanuel College when the college was renovating its library several years ago. And so the pieces fell into place. My PhD supervisor was the Master of Emmanuel. I had no doubt lent him my copy for some reason and then forgotten about it. He had died, and the college had stuck it in the library. And so it got to Plurabelle.

Looking at it now, reading the acknowledgments, I can see the germs of my current writing style:

'My greatest debt is due to AS, who has patiently endured life under a sea of papers and a barrage of abuse...'

If @PoultonSmith hadn't looked for his own books on Abe and then tweeted about it, I'd never have found this old friend. And if I was more diligent about working I'd never have found it. Skiving puts you in the market for serendipity - long live skiving!

www.annerooney.co.uk
http://stroppyauthor.blogspot.com

BOOKSELLER SUNDAYS - Gamekeeper turned Poacher, by Tamara Macfarlane of Tales on Moon Lane

One of a series of guest blogs by booksellers who work with children’s authors in different ways. These guest blogs are designed to show life behind the scenes of a crucial but neglected relationship – the one between a writer and a bookseller. These days, such relationships are more intense and more important, as increasing numbers of authors go on the road to promote and sell children’s books – a goal shared by the booksellers who will contribute to this series.

Tamara’s first book, Amazing Esme, is just out with Hodder & Stoughton.

My own first author event – as an author – passed recently in a blur. I have yet to recall a word I said, as all that passed through my head for the entire session was, repeatedly, ‘It’s just an hour of my life. If I’m still alive at the end of it, how bad can it be?’

I had taken all the necessary precautions and a few extra ones. I had guaranteed myself a full and willing audience: it was an hour out of lessons and school. I would have to be really bad to stop those advantages winning the children over. I had learnt how to use prezi.com and I’d created what I thought was a really impressive presentation. I had rehearsed, collected props, remembered a few golden rules from my four years of teacher training and seven years in the classroom. And then I had gone one step further and enlisted the help of one of the best children’s entertainers in town, Gilbert Giggles.

A little over the top perhaps, but having been in the fortunate position of being a children’s bookshop owner, one who had organised and seen numerous fantastic author events, I of all people knew that the stakes were high. I had observed giant bogies being bounced around auditoriums, been fascinated by virtual tours of exotic places, been entertained by re enactments of bloody battles, seen fake sick in a bag and watched countless teachers climb into wigs and giant pairs of knickers.

I have also, perhaps just as importantly, seen some terrifyingly dull events, the kind where you mourn desperately for the hour of your life that you’ve just had stolen from you, the kind where you daydream of piercing your own ear drums with a couple of HB pencils and you start wondering why the children haven’t realised that they’ve got the advantage in terms of numbers, and, if they got organised, they could overthrow the dull event that’s torturing them. Having resisted the urge to rally the children to arms, on the basis that it would be unprofessional, I resigned myself to using the time to work out how to avoid falling into the same trap.

At Tales on Moon Lane, author events are a vital part of what we do. Done well, they offer a rare kind of symbiotic magic where all involved parties come away happier people. They genuinely offer children an open door into literature by opening the book for them, showing them the way in and enough of the workings to create questions. They make the possibilities tangible and offer the idea that the hard work (that reading is for many children) might just offer them a genuine return of pleasure and interest.

For a generation of children, many of whom arrive at school without having ever owned a book, this experience isn’t just an escape from death by phonics. It is essential.

At the shop we also have a cosy little room at the back where we run a small after-school book club for especially keen readers. These lucky children are often addressed by the authors of the books they are reading. And we have been known to supply cupcakes with book illustrations printed on the icing, just to make the storytelling go down even more pleasurably. It’s little things like that which can make all the difference.

And so, with the weight all of this experience on my shoulders, I stepped out on to the stage at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and wondered what on earth gave me the right to demand these children’s time and attention – because on the other side of what authors bring to children is the fact that no other industry would conceivably be expect their top salesperson to be supplied with 300 children for an hour of direct marketing. Authors are after all also at author events to sell their books, not just to entertain. It is not heroin or junk food that they are peddling, but it is still a sales pitch. And on top of this authors are quite frequently being paid to stand there and sell their own merchandise. Does this view cheapen books? It’s a tough marketplace out there. A huge number of authors make their livings from events and yet the book sales at the end of the event would not cover their train fair in many cases. But I think that authors need to consider the other side of the picture when planning their events. Are they offering schools that can barely scrape together money for enough support staff true value for money? If not, what should this value for money look like?

At TOML, we spend a great deal of time going to watch author events and getting to know the schools with which we work really well, in the hope that when we stage one ourselves, there will a happy marriage of expectation and delivery. Many excellent author events have fallen on stony ground because the publishers have been misguided about the target age group or because the literacy co-ordinator was hoping for a session of deep literary insight and ended up in a giant pair of knickers. There are a few wonderful authors who can cross all these boundaries, but it is a lot to expect form anyone not trained at the RSC.

Have changed from gamekeeper to poacher, I’m understanding that a lot better these days.


Tales on Moon Lane website
Amazing Esme website

Indie bookshops - Josh Lacey

There was a piece recently on the New Yorker’s book blog about independent bookshops, asking if we should fight to save them. Why do we worry when they shut down? And, if we do care about them, why don’t we spend more of our money in them?

The article made me think about the independent bookshops that I’ve visited recently, doing events, talking about my books, and how each of them has its own flavour, its own way of presenting books, its own voice in which it addresses customers, browsers, book-lovers. Each of them is embedded in its community, giving locals what they want, and, just as importantly, each of them had a very secure identity of its own.

I went to the Wood Green Bookshop in North London, where alongside new and secondhand books, they sell jewellery and other bits and pieces made by locals. The owner gave me a cup of tea; our conversation was constantly interrupted by locals coming in to chat or ask whether a book had arrived; then a group of mothers and babies arrived for storytime, and I headed off.

On the other side of London, and closer to where I live, is the Kew Bookshop, a lovely little place in a row of shops between the train station and Kew Gardens. In the summer, I spent a couple of hours there, signing books and watching customers come and go. Every writer should do that, to see how people buy books, how bookshops work. My favourite thing about this particular bookshop is the taste of the owner, Mark; unlike in some bookshops, I absolutely trust the little handwritten notes that he puts under books on the shelves.


Last weekend, I went to Woolfson and Tay in Bermondsey, which opened just over a year ago. It’s part of a modern development near the chic delis and galleries of Bermondsey Street, and feels like the model of a modern independent bookshop, where the books compete for space with a gallery and a cafe. As I left, one of the owners thrust a little book into my hands, a collection of essays written by locals, who have been coming to a workshop in the bookshop.

Thinking about these bookshops, it struck that their importance isn’t simply the difference between the small and the vast, the individual and the mass, the local and global; it’s not just the difference in taste between a loaf of bread made by hand in a village bakery and a plastic-wrapped packet of sliced white from a factory; but there’s a deeper difference too, to do with the love of books, our reverence for the printed word, and our passion for particular kinds of books, the slippery ones, the difficult ones, the ones which sit uneasily on a supermarket’s shelves, the ones that don’t jump out of the screen as a recommendation from an enormous database. These are the books that you’ll only stumble across unexpectedly, and pick up, and read the back, and flick through the first few pages, because you’re browsing along some bookshelves that have been carefully selected by someone with impeccable taste.

Josh Lacey

http://www.joshlacey.com

Things I Learned On The Road by Penny Dolan

Two weeks ago I was out on the road on a publisher organised tour. No doubt many Awfully Big Authors have done many such trips and tours but this was my first “official” time on show.

I am not new to the game. I’ve been doing school & library visiting for year – and still do if asked - but this was the first time I felt part of somebody else’s plan. Usually I’ve been a big part of the organising chat so have picked up some sense of what I’d been meeting, and been able to spread the events out to give some recovery time. This time, the knowledge was just a five-day paper schedule.

The trip was – with due respect- a low-key version. It wasn’t me swanning about among the venerable stones of Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, Cheltenham. Edinburgh. There were no hotels away from home, no glam meals and not even a Hogwarts express to whirl me along.

This was me, alone, driving to Lytham St Annes, Rotherham, Leeds, Stockton and Preston version, and not truly the worse for that. My publicity manager came all the way up from London to support me on Day One and Two, as well as meeting new on-the-ground contacts with a view to future visits by other authors.

So what do I know now that I didn’t before?

I know that having a kind of ”visit uniform” - no matter what style this takes - to put on in the groggy time after the alarm rings get greater as the week wears on but also that the putting on the "Showtime Coat" - as we call it home here - gets easier as the rhythm of the week goes on.

I know now that the sand dunes of Lytham St Anne’s are closer than I thought. I love learning the landscape, even when there are gale warnings across Lancashire and Yorkshire. The A59 has wonderful early morning views unless you get so dreamy about the hills (and the hour) that you forget to watch out for the pushy lorries, erratic tractors and slow tankers.

I know that a using a fixed book talk with powerpoint – rather than segueing through various titles as I have usually done - makes it much harder to edit down a talk when you must cut twenty-five minutes or risk book sales because the visiting schools arrive late and want to leave early and the kind bookseller is sitting there with piles of books on view.

I know that technology is definitely not all. The power behind the lamps of projectors is very, very variable which mattered when some of the images in my talk were archive photographs. One morning I had brand-new double screen clarity and brightness. That afternoon, even the best images could only be seen in the front row on a tiny unfolding screen. Ah, bless those 60’s plate-glass libraries with their daylight! So back to the original version, the "plain" author talk complete with a large display book of illustrations carried around the corners of the audience.

I know to check the tour sheet well. The schedule had a blip, a cut and paste address sent in that didn’t match the named school. If I hadn’t neurotically googled all the venues, we'd have lost one of the most positive and delightful schools of the week.

I know now that Publicity Managers need special skills. They need to be full of energy to cope with the early mornings, long days and late nights; full of calmness when not everything is as they had been told by their contacts and full of diplomacy when they have to witness the usually private witterings of pre-session authors. Time after time.

I know that I have met some brave people out there working as independent booksellers: the Storytellers Inc bookshop and creative space in Lytham St Annes, Silverdell of Kirkham which is both bookshop and ice-cream parlour, and Radish, a small eco-bookshop in Chapel Allerton, Leeds.

Last of all, I know that at the end of the day, I just love the Go Home button on my satnav and that any form of speech or sociability has given out by the time I get there.

But thanks to all involved!

It's A Child Eat Dog Food World

Surprising numbers of children have eaten dog food.

This was the unexpected finding of my first bookshop signing. Determined to have plenty of interesting things for kids to do (and to avoid ending up behind a table bleating “Please buy my book!”) I had compiled a quiz on childhood misdoings. A sort of survey, if you like. As the heroine of my book, Martha, is a real “little stinker” I thought it would be fun to find out how many other little stinkers there are out there. So I compiled a list and handed it out.

Well, it turned out they were a pretty well-behaved bunch in Waterstone’s. However much they enjoyed reading about naughty characters, and chuckling at their exploits (they were good enough to chuckle loudly at Martha’s) they scored low on the naughtiness index. A more polite, obedient, considerate bunch I have seldom met. Maybe this is a sign that reading books makes for a well-behaved child? (And is yet one more reason to reverse those library cuts?)

Except when it came to eating dog food. Then it was a different story.

A little girl came up to me. Did cat food count, she wanted to know?

Certainly, I replied.

Include cat food, and everyone seemed to have tucked into their pet’s dinner, one time or another. One parent revealed that the family cat could only be fed when her son was elsewhere; another waxed nostalgic about the childhood joys of nibbling Whiskas.

Hmm. I grew up with a family dog – and somehow I never once felt like sharing his supper.

Anyhow, it certainly broke the ice, and the signing went with a swing. There were ups and downs, of course. I had brought too few colouring sheets. A friend of mine went dashing onto the street in search of photocopiers: thank you, Thomas Cook, who gallantly responded to his plea and ran off extra copies! Thank you everyone who did so much to help in different ways.

So here you go (be honest now):

• Have you ever flushed your sister’s homework down the toilet?
• Have you sneaked food from fridge, cupboard or biscuit tin?
• Have you ever tried to sell your brother?
• Have you eaten dog food?
• Have you ever made a cake from dog food and served it to your family?

I’m glad to reveal that nobody said “Yes” to the last one. It wasn’t one of Martha’s misdeeds either. It was my sister.

Yes, I remember it well.


Read about Martha's exploits in How (Not) To Make Bad Children Good
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The Naked Emperor - Karen Ball

Following on from Nicola's fascinating post yesterday, I thought I'd take a snapshot of publishing as it is right at this moment, for a typical book buyer - me! The above photo reveals three purchases that reflect what my money is being spent on, why, and what this means for our future as authors.

The hardback reference book

I read about 'Merchants of Culture' by John B Thompson online. In a blog or on Twitter, I can't remember now. I ordered it from Amazon UK - and then waited four weeks for it to be delivered. (I think it's a US edition that probably needed to be ordered in.) Wow, this book is fascinating. As soon as I tore open the box, I had to start reading. As my computer's desktop sluggishly opened, during my lunch hour, on the tube home. It's an assessment of the publishing business in the 21st century. Undoubtedly, it became out of date the moment it hit the printing press but it is the first study of its kind in 30 years and oh-so-timely. It's frank, comprehensive, well-researched, with lots of interviews with people who know - and it pulls no punches. Want to know about the rise of the literary agent or why your mid-list books aren't marketed properly or what the digital revolution means for the author in the street? Then buy this book. It's not cheap - I paid £15 - but it's brutally honest. Can your author ego take the straight-talking of 'the jackal' - America's notorious literary agent, Andrew Wylie? Here's his assessment of the writers he first encountered, putting their faith in old-school literary agents who fitted snugly in the pockets of publishers: 'the writers, were uneducated, uninformed, sentimental, self-interested fools, children.' Ouch. I think I may actually have winced at that point. But there's a lot of solid opinion and information alongside the occasional insult (!) and if you want a book that's going to tell you how it is right now and what you need to wake up to, buy this. I can't stop thinking about it.

The first edition

So, the book is dead and long live the app. Right? Well, maybe not. Some of my money recently has gone towards this gift, a first edition copy of a friend's favourite book. (I've blocked out the title to avoid spoiling surprises, in case he/she is reading this blog!) This book wasn't cheap, but it was a no-brainer as the perfect item. If we're all so fed up with books, then why are charity shops and online secondhand book traders flourishing with their sales? I think this item is a wonderful balance to my final purchase...

The app

I'm going to Paris next month, so I've downloaded the Lonely Planet Paris app. It won't be as heavy as carrying a guide book around in my tourist bag, and there'll be lots of extra features that I wouldn't enjoy via the printed page. All for £3.95 and perfect for my needs when I'm pounding the streets of a foreign city. What's to complain about?

What do these purchases tell us? I like to think that they're a fair reflection of how publishing is and will continue to be. Books flourishing alongside exciting new apps, expensive reference books still being purchased, first editions being cherished. There's room for everything. But as authors, we need to look at ourselves afresh in this brave new world. Things are changing. They've changed even since this time last year when I remember some people saying to me, 'What recession?' Now, they're saying, 'Ooh, publishers are being cautious, aren't they? And what's all this about electronic royalties?' We really need to be on our toes. Nicola Morgan has been one of the first British children's authors with a strong online presence to dare cry, 'But the emperor has no clothes!' Our authorial wardrobe has been depleted. Contracts suspended or terminated, perfectly good manuscripts rejected, names removed from party guest lists (I'm not bitter), advances reduced. All this has been stripped away and replaced with... That's the problem. Nobody knows what. Publishers are reticent and cautious and scared. They don't know what's going to happen next and they're waiting for someone else to make the first move into the future. Someone will make it - someone brave. As authors, we don't want to be left behind. My own policy is to stay connected, stay informed, keep watching, keep writing - have an opinion when it matters.

And in the meantime? Going naked can be a bit chilly, I'll admit. But it can also be exhilerating. Skinny dip, anyone? There's a big, inviting pool just waiting for someone to break the surface.

For a fascinating article on Andrew Wylie and the electronic rights debate, click here.

You can visit my website at www.karen-ball.com.

From Corpse to Zombie With a Single Shamble - Charlie Butler

There’s been much talk about e-books lately. Wherever you look, authors are publishing their out-of-print backlists and unplaced books on Kindle and other platforms. Agents and publishers, rowsed from their e-slumber, are trying to catch up, wondering what is a fair percentage for e-book rights - or what they can get away with (which is the same thing, so my free-market friends tell me). According to a powerful post written last month by Kristin Kathryn Rusch, we are witnessing a paradigmatic shift in the way that people think about publishing, and about books themselves. Who needs publishers when the internet lies trembling at our fingertips? In the age of the DIY download, need books ever go out of print again? On the other hand, with no quality control mechanism, some fear that e-literature is destined to be no more than a new recipe for spam.

These aren’t questions I feel qualified to answer, but they were in my mind when I visited Hay-on-Wye with my son the other day. As most UK readers of this blog will know, Hay is a small town on the border of Wales and England, just at the northern tip of the Black Mountains. It is also the home of more than twenty second-hand bookshops, the largest concentration in the UK by far. We were only making a day trip, nothing like long enough to plumb its treasures, but we still made some great discoveries, and it would be a poor soul who could visit Hay without doing so. To be tired of Hay is to be tired of life – or at least of reading.

All the same, when I find a wonderful book that’s been forgotten by all but the cognoscenti (who hug their enthusiasms to their chests like so many racing tips), and especially if that book is going cheap, I feel melancholy as well as triumphant. For Hay is, as well as a great shopping experience, a vast Necropolis. It is a graveyard for out-of-print books – and those of us who stalk its chambers, ripping the jewels from bony necks and fingers, cannot help but feel like tomb raiders – and not in a sexy, Lara Croft kind of way. If we are writers, a trip to Hay is also a plangent reminder of our own mortality, and – perhaps worse! – that of our books. Occasionally I meet one of my own offspring, staring back at me from the dusty shelves like a memento mori. “Buy me!” it seems to beg, in mute appeal. I generally oblige.

We all have our unjustly-forgotten writers, and Hay is a good place to find them. Whatever happened to Nina Beachcroft, for example? Her first three books, Well Met by Witchlight (1972), Cold Christmas and Under the Enchanter (both 1974) are a wonderful debut set, showing mastery of a variety of fantasy genres, from comic supernatural to traditional ghost story to occult tale of possession. But her footprint on the literary foreshore was soon obliterated, and although she produced half a dozen more books (many very good), it’s almost twenty years since a publisher put out an edition of any of them. I can see why they wouldn't do so now: to the omnipotent marketing departments Beachcroft's world of middle-class, largely rural childhood would seem dated. And, although I rate her highly, she's not quite good enough to face down such objections. All the same, I regret her absence from the shelves, and not just for sentimental reasons.

E-publishing may allow such neglect to be put right – and if it does, I’m all for it. I doubt whether Nina Beachcroft’s works will ever storm the bestseller lists, but they deserve a second life. It may be only a zombified half-life, subsisting on electronic downloads rather than good honest paper – but then, perhaps it's better to be a zombie than a corpse?

Books, bacon and chain bookseller of the year - by Nicola Morgan

Gosh, how proud I am of my favourite supermarket! It has a fantastic selection of bread, and beans and bacon and even lots of other foods that don’t begin with b. Yes, I know: man or woman cannot live by bread (or beans, bacon and baking powder) alone, but fear not because Sainsbury’s has just been honoured for its bookselling wondrousness. Yep, it’s won the “Martina Cole General or Chain Bookseller of the Year” award.

Admittedly, this surprised me a little. I tried to think where the books were in my large branch of Sainsbury’s and I couldn’t quite remember. I thought that might be because when I go to Sainsbury’s I’m usually focused on the beans etc and don’t expect to see books. And the brain often doesn’t see what it doesn’t expect to see.

Anyway, according to the citation, this award was for “reinvigorating book zones, increasing book sales by more than 33% and attracting new book buyers to the market.” Book zones? Fab!

Despite knowing that you can’t believe everything you read in the papers, I was cautiously optimistic when I went to look at my nearby Sainsbury’s. After all, it’s big and has very recently been refurbished, so it must have a book zone.

And there, behind the clothes, it was! Just the green bit, as the rest is toys, but it was verily an actual cardboard shelfy thing, all for books. Well, three titles. And did you spot that it has some batteries hanging from it, just in case you need those for your torch while reading under the bedclothes?



But no! Silly me. This wasn’t the real Book Zone, merely the taster, the introduction to the gloriousness of the real Book Zone.

Look! Books! Please don’t be surprised that it took me a while to find. It was right at the back of the shop, in a corner. I’d literally never seen it before.

Also, I didn't notice at the time but if you look very closely at the top right hand corner of the photo, you'll see a big sign: WE'VE DUMPED THE JUNK! Meh. (By the way, yes, that is my shopping trolley in the shot and yes they are my bottles of pink Cava. I got those from the Wine Zone.)

Anyway, no time to lose. I measured the Book Zone: three metres long, with six shelves. I counted the books. There were between fifty and sixty titles – it was difficult to count because everything was a bit of a mess and people kept coming past to get to the DVDs. There were the forty best-selling paperbacks (I’m not too sure whose chart that was) and a few scruffy picture books, Jeremy Clarkson’s latest and some pink things that looked like cupcakes. Oh, and two cupcake recipe books.


I went looking for something to compare this with. Now, I could have chosen crisps or yogurt, each of which occupied metres and metres and metres of shelving and countless products, but a) that’s a lot of measuring and counting and b) it would have been unfair to books and c) they don’t begin with b. But, just round a few corners, was the bacon. The Bacon Zone.

I did some measuring and counting again – I was quite enjoying this, along with the surreptitious photography. (Not that I think I was doing anything wrong, just that photographing bacon is not a very impressive thing to be seen doing.) Three metres, six shelves, and 55 products. (Also a bit difficult to count, not because people kept coming past to get to the books but because people kept wanting to buy the products, which hadn’t been a problem in the Book Zone.)

Well, zone-wise, books and bacon pretty equal, possibly even a few more products in books than bacon. But I needed to be sure. And sure enough, round the corner, a whole other Bacon Zone. And, what’s more, in pride of place at the end of an aisle. Clearly they really wanted to sell this bacon stuff. Victory to bacon! Maybe Sainsbury's are going for the Dan Brown Bacon Retailer of the Year award.

So, “reinvigorating book zones, increasing book sales by more than 33% and attracting new book buyers to the market,” eh? Give me a break. That book zone needed a rocket up it. There were no book sales going on while I was there and no book buyers at all, let alone new ones. Actually, a man in shorts did come by and lingered but I think he was hiding from his wife. He didn’t buy anything.

If Sainsbury’s wants to enter the book-selling game with a mission to “attract new book buyers”, that’s great. After all, we’ve just heard that 30% of UK households own no books. But you do that by supporting and enthusing libraries, schools and families with your passion for books, not by filling a dark corner with the top forty, chucking in a few scruffy deep discounted publisher promotions, some cupcakes and Jeremy Clarkson.

Listen to me, Sainsbury’s: people come to your stores for the bacon and the beans. (And in my case the very cheap and decent pink Cava at £4.89 a bottle.) If you really care about books more than bacon, then here’s an idea: fund book-buses, full of the lovely books you want to sell, and take authors into schools. Pay the authors a reasonable fee and we’ll talk about books, not just ours, but any books, good books, fascinating books, inspiring books. We’ll do the enthusing, we’ll display the knowledge and the passion and we’ll help you sell the books. Just think of the good publicity you’d get for your lovely supermarket, too.

Then, you really would deserve the Martina Cole General or Chain Bookseller of the Year. In the meantime, frankly, you don’t.

By the way, this evening I'm having my launch party for Write to be Published. In a bookshop. But not Sainsbury's. The Edinburgh Bookshop. I did buy my fizzy wine from Sainsbury's because Vanessa doesn't yet stock it. Come on, V, what are you waiting for? You could be the Nicola Morgan Cava Retailer of the Year!

Creating Pisstory Meg Harper

There used to be a beautiful garden on the corner of our road. Not the sort of cottagey, lush, chaotic garden I’d rather like myself but a traditional, rather formal combination of greensward and floribunda roses with a few tastefully placed specimen shrubs. There was also a gleaming penny farthing as a feature, incongruous but appealing, always delicately outlined with tiny fairy lights at Christmas.
The creator moved away last year and yesterday the new occupants committed an act of dire destruction. Diggers arrived and the entire garden had gone by 11am. Perhaps the owners are going to create something wonderful themselves. Judging by the number of huge white delivery sacks sagging in the wreckage, however, I suspect that they want something low maintenance – a parking lot, for example.
Far be it from me to decry progress or personal freedom of choice. The new owners clearly need something other than a formal garden and fair enough; it is their property. Nonetheless, I wept over the glorious rose bushes which I hope have at least reached the municipal composter and I find myself asking questions about our responsibility to the community in our public acts. That garden gave me great joy and I used to tell the creator so when he was out there tending it. He still lives locally so he will have the pain of seeing that his work has been destroyed. How much should we reign in our personal desires out of consideration for others? A big question. How much value should we put on that which already exists when it stands in the way of something new? It’s a question which town planners and developers constantly battle with and which Capability Brown and his sponsors didn’t seem to consider at all!
What has all this to do with children’s books?!
The other day I did one of my occasional reccies in Waterstones. What’s being promoted, what’s new, what haven’t I read that I should have etc etc. To be honest, I was appalled. There was nothing like the wide selection carried by my local independent. That’s normal but this time the range was even narrower than usual and the blocks of books by the usual suspects were vast. More shocking, in my opinion, was the increased shelf-space given over to the Snot and Bogey brigade. The desperation to publish books that boys will read is getting alarming. Humour revolves around poo and flatulence (we now have the adventures of a farting dog, for goodness sake!) and history is degenerating into pisstory. I’ve recently had a short fictionalised biography of Elizabeth 1st published. ('Elizabeth 1st - The Story of the Last Tudor Queen') Imagine my delight at my most recent school visit when I was approached by a child who wanted to ask a question about it. And the question? Was it true that Elizabeth 1st had used the first toilet ever? Elizabeth 1st must be one of the most formidable personalities our national history offers – and a child’s interest has somehow been reduced to where she went to the loo!
It seems to me that what happened to my neighbour’s garden is happening to children’s literature. In pursuing current agendas (getting boys to read at any cost, for example) we’re trashing a great tradition. I think of the heritage that lies behind the early readers that are being churned out now and I’m asking questions. I’m a left-wing, liberal, armchair revolutionary but I’m also a Christian (albeit a heretical one!) and I’m thinking about what it says in Philippians 4: 8 ...’whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.’ It seems to me that instead we’re asking our children to think about poo. We are replacing what has traditionally been seen as worthy content of children’s books by something far inferior. The same goes for what seems to be happening in my neighbour’s garden.


www.megharper.co.uk

The Noble Art of Laureateship - Lucy Coats

Last week it was announced that there would be a change of name for the role of children's book champion--the new incumbent (to be announced in June) will now be known as the Waterstone's Children's Laureate.  I'm not really sure how I feel about this.  We do live in a world of sponsored literary prizes--the Costa Book Awards spring to mind, as does the Man Booker.  But doesn't putting a commercial logo on a post such as that of a laureate diminish its effectiveness and raise doubts as to its future impartiality? 

The children's laureate should be, above all, an ambassador for children's books.  Each of the six holders of the post so far has highlighted different areas of concern--the latest, Anthony Browne, has concentrated his two years on showing the vital part illustrators and picture books in general play in the education of children.  But is a chain-bookstore branded ambassador going to be welcomed by, forinstance,  independent booksellers?  Kate Agnew, (of the indie Children's Bookshop in Muswell Hill) has warned that the laureateship might be marginalised by such a move. "It could be seen as a trade thing rather than as an ambassadorial role," she said to The Bookseller last week. That, I feel, would be very a very unfortunate outcome indeed.

But we do live in a world of financial cuts.  The current government grant for the laureateship has been halved and compromises have had to be made. Waterstone's have been major supporters of the laureateship ever since its inception, and the new branding is 'payback' for their loyalty in a time when every penny spent by a company has to show a result.  They themselves say that they will be 'upweighting' (a word I have never seen used before, but still...) their activities around the role, and will promote heavily.  Indies will get a 'non-Waterstone's logo to use.  In principle it could all work out just fine. 

I do think though, that the new Children's Laureate (sorry, I mean WCL), will have to be very strong-minded--and be prepared to fight their corner and not be pushed around.  More than ever now, we need someone highly visible and vocal to stand up and speak for children's books, for libraries and school libraries, for reading in general--and against the cultural policies of the Government of the day if necessary.  I hope the Children's Laureate Steering Group will bear this in mind when they are making their choice--and I trust that Waterstone's will give our new champion--whoever he or she is--all the support they need and deserve, free of any strings or caveats.

Lucy's Website
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Death of a Bookshop – Michelle Lovric

In view of the date, you’re probably expecting something romantic. If so, hie thee to Loveydovey.com or FuzzybearluvsMaggotyknickers.blogspot. I object to institutionalized romance, and disapprove of commercialized love, so instead I’m going to tell you a sad story: it’s my blog-day, and I’ll cry if I want to.

Venice has suffered a bereavement. (And, as ever, Venice functions as a microcosm of the bigger world.) Venice’s bereavement is literary. She has lost her one large bookshop. After seven years trading, la Libreria Mondadori has closed its doors just steps from the Piazza San Marco.

The Mondadori bookshop has not failed. It was not downsizing. It has simply been evicted by its landlords, Benetton, in favour of a Louis Vuitton shop.

(In scandalized tones, Lady Bracknell: ‘A HANDBAG shop?’)

For Venice, the loss of Mondadori shows just a little more dumbing down, a little more bully-business trouncing the arts, a little more globalization, a little more bling, another dark inkling of la Serenissima’s bleak destiny as a picturesque high-end shopping ghetto rather than a cultural destination. Venice becomes a shop window – people look at the merchandise, not at the city. So Venice’s identity is eroded. So the world goes.

For me, the loss is also personal. I have lost my local bookshop. My fellow-writers will know how nasty that feels.

As far as bookshops are concerned, I am a little promiscuous. Or, as it's more charmingly put in Italian, sono un po’ farfallina – I’m a bit butterfly. There isn’t a bookshop in Venice that I walk past without entering for at least a browse. But that Mondadori bookshop was the one to closest to home, the one that I visited most often. The staff were ever kind to my novels – which were frequently placed in the window, and were always in stock. My third novel for adults, The Remedy, had its launch in Mondadori’s third-floor event space, which hosted 1200 such ‘appuntamenti culturali’ in its too-short life. The children’s book section was particularly magnificent, so when I heard that the wonderful Italian publisher Salani had bought the rights to The Undrowned Child, the first thing I did was rush to the Libreria Mondadori to see how Salani style their covers and what kind of production they do.

When the news came out about the planned closure, there were eloquent editiorials. Two thousand signatures were collected in a petition. To no avail. On January 5th the shop held a final stock sale with discounts of 20 per cent and offered a farewell drink to customers. Then it closed its doors.

So. Designer bags instead of books. It makes you wonder what plans our politicians have for the shells of Britain’s closing libraries, doesn’t it? Somehow I doubt there’ll be a rush of Louis Vuittons to rent the British libraries that will soon be stripped of their books and readers. The lights will go out. They’ll shut the door. And file the key under ‘Irreparable and Senseless Loss’. But has anyone, i.e. the cost-cutters, given thought to the built environment of the post-library world? The best way to keep a building safe and sound – is to fill it up with people. Turn your back on it, and a building weeps angry leaks. It crumbles. Lonely, it invites in a rat or two. A rough sleeper. A woodworm or million. Some kids break in, start a fire. The pipes burst. A sodden beam comes down. A year or two later, the building is condemned. Then there’s a scar on the environment where a beloved library used to be.

A curmudgeonly Happy Valentine’s Day from me, then.

(I did give you a heart at least, even though it’s dark and made of stone.)

Michelle Lovric’s website

See the new video trailer for her children’s novels, The Undrowned Child and The Mourning Emporium.

Angel heart tombstone from DecoratingWithElegance.net

Just Imagine – some good news at last by Lynda Waterhouse

Just Imagine if, in these difficult times, there were to open a specialist children’s bookshop complete with events space for reading groups, writing courses, author events and much more. Imagine if this place was created by a passionate champion of children’s literature and run by enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff.

Thanks to the vision of Nikki Gamble on Saturday 15^th January it happened in Chelmsford! And I was lucky to be invited to the Grand Opening. Husband and I arrived late in the afternoon just in time to witness a re enactment of the opening ceremony by Dr Who author Steve Cole and the brilliant Sarah McIntyre. Marcus Sedgwick was there looking suitably brooding and gothic.

I was delighted to grab a copy of ‘When Titus Took the Train’ written by fellow Buzzaboutbooks.com author Anne Cottringer and illustrated by Sarah. I had heard it before read out in one of our sessions and it was wonderful to see it in book form and to admire Sarah’s illustrations.

Whilst husband was busy talking post apocalyptic novels I chatted with Mike Dodsworth about the power of dance and story and shallow creature that I am I tried really hard not to scan the shelves for copies of my books…..

Check out the Just Imagine Facebook page for details of regular events , contact nikki@writeaway.org.uk or visit the centre at 64-68 New London Rd, Chelmsford, UK