News! Views! Events! Blogs! and other stuff

My great friend and colleague Pamela Freeman's fantasy trilogy, The Castings Trilogy, was reviewed on Radio National's Book Show yesterday by somebody who apparently is a constitutional law expert. So THAT'S who you have to be to get a gig on The Book Show! (Actually, not having yet had the chance to listen to the review, but knowing the books, it may well be that the fact that George Williams is a constitutional law expert is probably extremely pertinent, dealing as they do with with power and colonialism and dispossession of peoples, so I'll stop being sarky now. It's just not the usual credentials one expects to see for a reviewer of fantasy fiction. And maybe that's the point, after all.)

This coming Friday, young whippersnapper William Kostakis, author of Loathing Lola, will be at Gertrude and Alice Café and Bookstore in Bondi. Join William (who was the Herald Young Writer if the Year in 200 and is still only 20 years old) for afternoon tea and a chat about his book. From 4.15 and Loathing Lola will be available for sale and signing. Bookings essential, tics $8, call 9130 5155 Details also on Facebook and you can follow William on Twitter.

Readers of a more academic bent might be interested, as I was, to learn about a new online journal. Write4Kids is the International Journal for the Practice and Theories of Writing for Children and Children's Literature. One of the editors is Andrew Melrose, whose writing guide Write for Children I draw on quite a bit in the course I teach on writing children's books. I'll look forward to checking out the journal.

Blogs! I follow a LOT of blogs, most of them book blogs. And from my NYC friend Monica Edinger's blog Educating Alice, I discovered that Misrule is on a list of 100 Best Book Blogs for Kids, Tweens and Teens. Cool! (I'm number 44 if you're looking.) I don't really know what the Online School blog is all about, but it's nice of them to recognise an Aussie blog.

Speaking of Monica, she and another favourite blogger of mine, Elizabeth Burns (A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cosy—yes, Liz is a Buffy fan too!) have been featured in an article on book bloggers in the School Library Journal. There's a gorgeous pic pf Monica, Liz, Cheryl Klein (Brooklyn Arden) and Jennifer Hubert Swan (Reading Rants) and the author of the article and SLJ blogger Betsy Bird (Fuse #8). Betsy's article canvasses the rise of the book blog and some of the issues that press on all of us who write about books in this media, and elsewhere. (Or they should!) Make sure you check out the top ten book blogs listed on the article, although do note they are all US-based. (Check out Monica, Liz, Jennifer, Cheryl and Betsy on... Twitter!)

I think I'm right in saying that dedicated Australian children's and YA book blogs are still reasonably few and far between. This was meant to just be a quick and dirty post, and it's already taken me close to two hours, so I'm going to wrap it up now, but I think I should come back soon and mention some of the Aussie blogs I read. Before I go, I will mention that Misrule is also busy going up and down on a list of the top 50 Aussie blogs for writers at Jonathan Crossfield's Copyright blog. (As of tonight it's 29, down 8 points, rats!) I'm going to try and add the badge of honour Jonathan has created for his Top 50, we'll see how clever I am... Jonathan's also on Twitter. Everyone's on Twitter!