CONTENTS 2 Editorial
___________________________________
3 Life’s Too Short for long books says Barrington Stoke MD Mairi Kidd
_________________________________________
4 Ten of the Best: books about other places. Daniel Hahn selects books to take you ‘elsewhere’ this summer
_________________________________________ 6 Windows into _________________________________________
Illustration: Kate Greenaway Medal Winner William Grill says illustration is all about communication
8 Queen of Teen _________________________________________
Brenda Gardner of Piccadilly Press looks back over 30 years of publishing for children
9 Drawing with words, _________________________________________
writing with pictures: get children hooked on drawing through cartoons says Hannah Sackett
10 Authorgraph: Elen Caldecott interviewed by Amanda Mitchison
_________________________________________ Little Island 14 CLiPPA Poetry Award _________________________________________
2015: celebrating children’s poetry by Roger McGough
16 This summer’s best events for children chosen by Clare Burkhill-Howarth of Book Events for Children
_________________________________________
18 I Wish I’d Written… Guy Bass chooses
_________________________________________
18 Good Reads chosen by pupils at Manor High School, Oadby, Leicester
19 Two Children Tell: The Wiz-a-Woz and Nicholas
___________________________________
20 Reviewers and reviews Under 5s (Pre-School/Nursery/ Infant) 5-8 (Infant/Junior) 8-10 (Junior/Middle 10-14 (Middle/Secondary) 14+ (Secondary/Adult) + Editor’s Choice + New Talent
_________________________________________
32 Classics in Short No. 112 The Old Woman who Found – what?
_________________________________________
Crowns and Codebreakers (The Marsh Road Mysteries) by Elen Caldecott. Thanks to Bloomsbury Children’s Books for their help with this July cover
This issue’s cover illustration is from COVER STORY Books for Keeps
May 2015 No.212 ISSN 0143-909X © Books for Keeps CIC 2015 Editor: Ferelith Hordon Assistant Editor: Ruth Williams Managing Editor: Andrea Reece Design: Louise Millar Editorial correspondence should be sent to Books for Keeps,
c/o The Big Green Bookshop, Unit 1, Brampton Park Road, Wood Green, London N22 6BG
2 Books for Keeps No.213 July 2015
Books for Keeps is available online at
www.booksforkeeps.co.uk A regular BfK Newsletter can also be sent by email. To sign up for the Newsletter, go to
www.booksforkeeps.co.uk and follow the Newsletter link. If any difficulty is experienced, email addresses can also be sent to
enquiries@booksforkeeps.co.uk*
Email:
enquiries@booksforkeeps.co.uk
Website:
www.booksforkeeps.co.uk *Email addresses will be used by Books for Keeps only for the purpose of emailing the Newsletter and will not be disclosed to third parties.
_________________________________________
12 Ireland’s first Children’s Laureate Siobhán Parkinson on creating her children’s list
T
editorial
he summer holidays are here, and children have lots of time on their hands. What to
do? One obvious solution is to visit the local library
– no cost involved – and sign up for the Summer Reading Challenge. The challenge is to read six books (or more) on the theme of ‘record breakers’. Children collect a sticker for each book read and once they’ve read at least six they receive a certificate.
Reading widely like this exposes children to varied writing styles, which is important to their own writing. A recent article in the Guardian –
www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/23/ national-curriculum-is-damaging-childrens- creative-writing-say-authors? CMP=share_ btn_tw – raised the concerns of a number of children’s authors over the way children are taught to write creatively in schools. Spearheaded by C J Busby, the authors claim children are encouraged to choose long, multi-syllabled words over the short direct ones. So ‘wonderful’ is preferred to ‘good’ for instance. They say that elaborate, over-complex language is required to meet assessment criteria and the result, as Busby says, is ‘awful flowery language’. The situation has led Busby to write a letter to the education secretary, signed by other authors including Tanya Landman, Tim Bowler and Mary Hoffman, to highlight her concern.
_________________________________________
In contrast, MA courses for writers advocate simplicity and avoiding adjectives and adverbs; one does wonder how Dickens would have fared on a current writing course. While I deplore the idea that the use of long or unusual words is the best way to achieve good grades, I recently attended a Carnegie shadowing event and was told by the young readers that they’d dismissed one book because it contained too many words they didn’t know; a puzzle since the text in question wasn’t difficult, just rich in vocabulary and imaginative images. Perhaps, too great an emphasis on stripped down prose can also have dangers and can be as boring (and tiring) as too many adjectives.
Surely the aim is an effective and appropriate use of vocabulary. As John Dougherty, author and poet and another signatory of Busby’s letter, points out, good writing ‘is
about
communication and will vary depending on what you are trying to communicate’. It requires imagination, but a prescriptive approach does not encourage this.
The authors who have signed Busby’s letter are clear
that all school assessment should
be designed to reward ‘good clear and fluent style’. They themselves are masters of their craft having honed their styles over many years. They all write in very different ways adapting how they write to achieve the best effect.
Good style is not a straitjacket as suggested by the current SATS approach, but a question of real choice. Clearly, teachers need good guidance to help them assess children’s writing, and it is really to them that the authors have directed their very timely criticism. Just as children need to be exposed to rich and varied writing styles, so too do teachers. Perhaps more needs to be done to encourage teachers to encounter language. A Summer Reading Challenge for teachers? That’s a thought.
Ferelith Hordon, Editor
In Nicholas Tucker’s article about the shortlist for the CILIP Carnegie Medal in our last issue, Elizabeth Laird’s book The Fastest Boy in the World was described as being set in Afghanistan: it is of course set in Ethiopia. Thank you to everyone who pointed that out.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32