Misrule

This is a bit overdue, but better late than unrecorded!

I attended two lovely book launches at two iconic Sydney sites on Friday 14 September.

First, in the morning, with lots of yummy sandwiches and cupcakes (and I had skipped breakfast, so much appreciated they were) was the launch of the Robert Ingpen/Walker Books illustrated edition of The Wind in the Willows. The launch was held at the Sydney Botanical Gardens, and the launchee was Phil Koperberg, NSW MP and long-time fan and collector of editions of the book.

It was a perfect Sydney spring day, and the launch was made particularly memorable by Mr Koperberg's plainly expressed affection for the book. He brought with him his rare 1930s edition illustrated by EH Shepherd. (And yes, he's a politician, so there were a few free shots made, but fair enough given Mr Ingpen has said that his Mr Toad was inspired by a certain current-but-hopefully-on-his-way-out Australian Prime Minister.)

I had never met Robert Ingpen before, and what a charming man he turned out to be (and his wife, Angela, was equally delightful). And I was thrilled to learn that his latest project is a Walker Books classic edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I can't wait!

The photo below is of Robert Ingpen (r) with his long-time great friend Maurice Saxby. Two finer gentlemen you could not hope to meet.

The other launch that day was held in the evening at the Museum of Contemporary Art at Circular Quay.

The book is Writing at Work (which is both literal and a pun), written by my friend Neil James. Neil is executive director of the Plain English Foundation, and the book is a result of his many years' experience in teaching plain English writing to (mostly) government organisations.

Here's a pic of Neil signing his book at the launch. And you can see more photos of both launches at my flickr account.

Blood Ties was launched by speculative fiction writer and Pamela's friend Marianne de Pierres. Marianne described her original meeting with Pamela at a book festival some years ago, recounting an incident at a restaurant where Pamela revealed her uncanny insight into human nature (by correctly observing that the waiter fancied Marianne). Marianne made a nice link to Pamela's natural "sixth sense" about people to her ability to create characters "right down to the bone". She also read a passage from the book, which Pamela went on to say was a scene that she'd more or less bled onto the page (and so was particularly pleased that it was the bit Marianne chose to read).

Pamela's response was to describe the long (11 years) gestation of Blood Ties, starting with the event (the auctioning of her flat in the Eastern suburbs, back about the time she and I first met and became friends) that triggered the opening chapter and sentence of the novel—The desire to know the future gnaws at our bones. Pamela read part of the opening chapter of the novel before fielding questions from the audience.

Book launches are often pseudo-swanky affairs, with lots of faff and bubble—and god knows, I love 'em. But I really liked that this launch was also an open, public event, that gave the "average punter" the opportunity to hear about the business of writing and publishing from the inside. Questions from the audience ranged from what is your writing routine like (cups of tea? computer game distractions?) to what is the best advice you can give to secondary school students with a talent for writing (get them to read widely was Pamela's answer—reading is more important than writing at this age) to is there a difference in your self-editing when writing for children and for adults (nope) to how do you go about submitting work for publication?

In the audience were family, friends, fellow writers and at least four of Pamela's publishers/editors (Bernadette Foley from Hachette Livre, publisher of Blood Ties; Cathie Tasker from Koala Books, Sarah Foster from Walker Books, who is republishing Pamela's wonderful junior novel Victor's Quest and its forth-coming sequel Victor's Challenge; and Jonathan Shaw, previous editor of The School Magazine—Pamela's first publisher of fiction for children).

Also at the launch were some of Pamela's students from the Sydney Writers' Centre, where I also teach.

Some of us went back to Pamela and her husband Stephen's house after the launch (just around the corner and down the street from my humble flat), where I had the opportunity to properly meet and drink champers and chat with (the fabulous) Marianne de Pierres.

Turns out (hardly surprisingly) that Marianne and I both know and count as a friend (as we also admire her as, simply, fans), the inordinately gifted Margo Lanagan. Marianne and Margo are in a writer's workshop group together, and Mariane and I shared our mutal appreciation of Margo's remarkable talents. Marianne believes that Margo is one the greatest living writers (with no "genre" disclaimer, or any other disclaimer, come to mention it)—and we both agree that "Singing My Sister Down" is a story that will still be talked about in decades to come, and held up as an example of perfection in the short story form.

But bringing this back to the woman of the hour—today belongs to Pamela, after all—Marianne also told me that she believes that Pamela is as gifted and original a writer as Margo (if more "marketable"). She sees a similarity in their creative vision, and their facility for story-telling.

Indeed. And may Blood Ties find the smart, warm and dedicated readership it so deserves. Oh, and a film deal would be good! (Although Pamela thinks it's better suited to a television series—are you reading, Joss Whedon?)

Pamela (left) and Marianne in Pamela's home library at the after-launch party.

The Queensland premier Peter Beattie has announced his resignation, effective this Thursday, and apparently made his swan song (is that a pun?) tonight with the announcement of the 2007 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards.

So far I can't find details of the winners of the children's/YA categories, but here are the shortlisted titles (NOW UPDATED WITH WINNERS):

Children's Book - The Dymocks Literacy Foundation
Catherine Bateson for
Being Bee
(University of Queensland Press)

Pat Flynn for
The Tuckshop Kid
(University of Queensland Press)

Glenda Millard and Dr Gaye Chapman for
Kaito's Cloth
(Scholastic Australia)

Glenda Millard for    
Layla Queen of Hearts      WINNER
(ABC Books)

Young Adult Book Award
Judith Clarke for
One Whole and Perfect Day     WINNER
(Allen & Unwin)

Melina Marchetta for
On the Jellicoe Road
(Penguin Group Australia)

David Metzenthen for
Black Water
(Penguin Group Australia)

Shaun Tan for
The Arrival
(Hachette Livre Australia)

I'll post the winners when news comes to hand. And do keep scrolling down—this is my second blog entry tonight.

A few interesting things in the print and electronic media lately. This is a long post with a number of sub-entries, so keep scrolling!

First of all, this opinion piece—Little Australians need more then Harry Potter—in the Sydney Morning Herald escaped my attention for a couple of days. It's by Rosemary Johnston from the education faculty at UTS.

I'm not really sure what I think of the piece. First of all, there's certainly nothing wrong with it, and I don't quibble with anything Johnston has to say, and I agree wholeheartedly with the observation Though contemporary Australian children's literature is highly respected, I am not sure that Australians value its rich provenance, or the diverse ways it has contributed to ideas of nation and national identity. Johnston writes with clarity authority and the article is well informed, as you would expect from someone with Johnston's credentials.

It just kind of seems apropos of not very much to me. In canvassing a history of Australian children's lit and its place in "contributing to ideas of nation and national identity", the article reads to me a bit as if it could have been published twenty years ago, when contemporary Australian children's writers were finding new voices and contexts free of "stereotypes of Australianness", as a way of looking back and looking forward. But now it's just looking back. Johnston certainly isn't waxing nostalgic—she is firm about the quality and international standing of contemporary Australian children's literature, but she doesn't much go into specifics (and then she only cites books from the 70s and 80s).

I'm aware that Johnston is writing for a non-specialist audience, but I would hazard a guess that the average Herald reader doesn't need to be reminded of the glory days of the nascent Australian kids' books industry—and the comments posted on the related blog seem to bear this out. I'm thinking about Johnston's closing remarks: without a sense of the past, both good and not so good, we are oddly bereft. Are we—by which I mean the general community—really without a sense of the past as far as our literature for young readers is concerned?

This is what I mean by "apropos of nothing". The piece doesn't read like Johnston has an axe to grind. On the contrary, it's almost dispassionate. It's certainly not, as far as I am aware, a response to a current climate of thinking, or a particular "issue" that has popped up in schools or the media (of the "what's this rubbish they're publishing for our kids" ilk, which fortunately I haven't come across in any significant forum since, maybe when John Marsden published Dear Miffy). (And be warned, John's website is annoyingly slow to load and navigate.)

So, I am not complaining. I have entertained the idea that the article was commissioned in response to our* rather loud complaining on the SMH's Undercover blog and here on Misrule recently about the SMH's lack of coverage of the CBCA awards. If so, good. Great! in fact. I just wish it had had a bit more meat, a few more of challenging ideas about contemporary writing and publishing for young readers. I think you could do that for the general readers of the opinions page.

Perhaps now we can hope that Spectrum—the weekend arts section of the Herald—might make space for some broader-ranging and, dare I say without in any way meaning to insult Rosemary Johnston, contemporarily relevant discourse about the wide world of books for children and young adults. Spectrum has, as I have said before, improved its coverage of children's lit in its review pages enormously over the past couple of years, most recently with Angie Schiavone's review of three YA books (alas, not online that I can find).

If this were to happen, what kind of topics would people like to see covered? Post your thoughts here—you never know who is reading!

Back on the Undercover blog, the Australian new magazine for children under eight years, Little Ears, gets a nod. I haven't seen Little Ears yet, but it's edited by the redoubtable Di Bates, so it will be well worth checking out.

Subscribers to Di's Buzz Words online magazine will soon read an interview with—Me! I over-ran Di's word length by about 5000 words—she's edited it down to two and a half, and once the newsletter is out there, she's given me permission to publish the full catastrophe here, so keep posted (if you can bear the self-indulgence).

(Hey, Di—where's the link to Misrule on your website?!)

If you haven't already heard, Madeleine L'Engle died last week at the age of 88. There's been no shortage of media coverage of this most significant passing: check out obits and articles here, here and here. The blogosphere has also been busy: check out this, this and this. You can google the rest yourself.

Vale.

I subscribe to the US Publisher's Weekly free daily newsletter (and it's weekly children's book newsletter) and I recommend you do to. Apart from seeing what's going on in US publishing, PW hosts some fantastically interesting and entertaining blogs.

A couple that caught my eye this week:

This post, which will have just about every illustrator I know pea-green (if not carmine) with envy. Or maybe it's just me who wishes she had a delightful old country home with a two-story studio in the backyard. Anyway, Melissa Sweet is a gifted illustrator, and good luck to her!

I loved this one about publisher's rejection letters, linking to a NYTimes article.

Finally, this post links to an article about the state of book reviewing in US newspapers that I think Misrule readers will find pertinent and informative. I confess I haven't finished the full article—it's very long—so I might try and post again once I've absorbed the whole thing.

That's quite enough for one night. Off now to concentrate on the DVD of The Thief Lord, which has been on in the background as I have been blogging. (Vanessa Redgrave as a nun? Cool! Or—tee hee! And good to see Alexei Sayle is as nutty as ever...)

Oh, and I know I need to update my sidebar of "recent....". Will do soon.

Cheers.

normblog is owned by Norman Geras, husband of the wonderful writer Adèle Geras and apparently a pretty remarkable bloke in his own right.

Every week Norm invites a writer to contribute to his blog, a feature called "Writer's Choice". The current contributor, number 118, is our own Cassandra Golds. Previous Aussie contributors include Ursula Dubosarsky, and he's also profiled Sophie Masson.

Read Cassandra's beautiful tribute to Nicholas Stuart Gray and his novel Down in the Cellar. I may never put finger to keyboard to write about literature again! (Check the links at the bottom of Cassandra's contribution to previous Writer's Choice entries. And normblog won the best UK blog in the 2005 weblog awards—so you know it's good!)

But I have to ask—only three books in the shortlist? Is there a limit? I note that other categories in the Victorian awards have five shortlisted titles. Can anyone enlighten me?

And an OT PS—I have been working on a "recent reading" update, which now needs to be added to yet again. Stay tuned. (I'm looking at you, Steven Herrick!)