CONTENTS July 2018
2 Guest editorial: Carnegie winner Geraldine McCaughrean praises words
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3 Celebrating 20 years of the Foyle Young Poet Award
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4 Rhythm and Poetry: an interview with CLiPPA winner Karl Nova
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6 Authorgraph: Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet interviewed by Michelle Pauli
In Praise of Delicious Words by CILIP Carnegie Medal Winner 2018
Geraldine McCaughrean My first
recollections of a library are dark and _________________________________________
8 Windows into Illustration: Bruce Ingman
12 Beyond the Secret _________________________________________
Garden? Portrayals of Mixedness
14 Choosing the IBBY List of Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities by Rebecca Butler
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10 Ten of the Best summer special on the best books set on islands, chosen by Tricia Adams
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forbidding: a dim Labyrinth of shelving, and no toilet. The up side was the iced buns Mother bought us on the way home. But later there was the junior library, where there were friendly librarians, sunlight, horses, cowboys and knights.... And, of course, words. At home, Mother quoted from Bible, Shakespeare and poetry. My sister brought home Obstipui! in place of Wow! My brother spliced radio sound tracks into new plays. Words were fun; we collected them, like cigarette cards or stamps. Everything entered the family lexicon, alongside Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon. We formed a writing club one summer, a poetry club another. As for reading... Tiny house. Tiny bookcase. No money. But there was always the library. How different would our childhoods have been without the local library and those sunny librarians with their stable of horse books? I visited recently two state-of-the-art schools with
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16 Sydney Smith: Ferelith Hordon interviews the winner of the 2018 Kate Greenaway Medal
18 Two Children Tell: ‘I Weigh Infinity Metres’ children and numbers
extensive libraries. Both were dispensing with their librarians for lack of funds. But shelves and shelves of books can be intimidating, bewildering. How do you find the book that will like you, speak to you, open up to you, stay with you, sing to you? School librarians are how. They are satnav in the Labyrinth. We float on an ocean of language. Toddlers pick
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19 I Wish I’d Written… Emily Gravett chooses
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19 Good Reads chosen by Chatterbooks groups, Petts Wood Library
words up like mud, to delight in letting them spill out again from their mouths. The young brain has a phenomenal facility for acquiring language – which tails off the older we grow. So how did the thought ever surface that we mustn’t overface young children with too rich a diet of words; that vocabulary must be kept simple? Naturally,
the _________________________________________
20 Reviewers and reviews Books about Children’s Books Under 5s (Pre-School/ Nursery/Infant) 5-8 (Infant/Junior) 8-10 (Junior/Middle) + New Talent
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10-14 (Middle/Secondary) 14+ (Secondary/Adult) + Ed’s Choice
32 Classics in Short No. 130 Peep Behind the Scenes
_________________________________________ COVER STORY
This issue’s cover illustration is from Supertato Veggies in the Valley of Doom by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet. Thanks to Simon and Schuster for their help with this July cover.
internet and messaging were
bound to reduce communication to a convenient shorthand. But children need more than that particular word-pool to equip them for life. It’s certainly not a reason to make the vocabulary in their books match the terse cyberworld. All processing of information, all deep thought, all good conversation needs more than basic vocabulary. Strong emotions need more of an outlet than a punch, a snog or a swearword.
Eloquent
villains lie in wait, ready to seduce, scam or belittle us: we need to be able to call their bluff. It’s disconcerting,
isn’t it, to be in a country
whose language we don’t know. Young children are obliged to live in just such a place until they have enough vocabulary to feel confident, competent,
Books for Keeps
July 2018 No.231 ISSN 0143-909X © Books for Keeps CIC 2016 Editor: Ferelith Hordon Assistant Editor: Ruth Williams Editorial assistant: Alexia Counsell 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.231 July 2018
not lost, not second-rate, not full of feelings they can’t adequately expel. Readerly children appear to me to ‘think
for
themselves’ more than non-readers. They express original opinions. Herd beasts tend to think corporately; readers break away from the herd every time they open a book of their own choosing. They can travel to Past and Future, faraway shores, meet interesting strangers... and words. But
beyond all the delight of Story and
Knowledge, there is the sheer delight of words themselves! The way they can clump like rusty nails or slot together into a silver suspension bridge: the way some settle softly on the inner ear, or please by their mere shape. Similes and metaphors join things up like dot-to-dot puzzles in our heads. We are the only animals in creation who can gain mastery of such things. Over the centuries, every generation has added to the treasure horde, bequeathing it to the next. Who’d dispossess their child of that kind of birthright for a mess of potted phrases and emojis when we can shower them with words they can claim or ignore, as they care to? That’s my argument for gradually and painlessly enriching language in young children’s books so that they can progress, rather than tread water amid simple words they already know. They deserve a springboard to propel them over the gap between functional language and sumptuous, entertaining language. That’s my argument for (later on) offering the ‘literary’ novel. Giving a book by Pullman, Peet, Mark, Fforde is neither overly optimistic nor child cruelty. It’s a gift: “Take it or leave it, friend.” And it might just be a ladder over the wall separating childhood from emerging adulthood. The term ‘literary novel’ is a confusing one. We associate it with the adult market, where it tends to mean ‘books written by really clever people’. This may well describe some ‘literary’ writers for the young, but that’s entirely beside the point. ‘Literary novels’ for children simply delight in words and style. As for me, I’m still basically a tongue-tied kid playing in the button box of words and making up stories using the shiny ones.
But if there’s
one thing age has taught me, it’s that if I enjoy something, plenty other kids out there do, too.
Congratulations to Geraldine McCaughrean, winner of the 2018 CILIP Carnegie Medal for Where the World Ends.
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