ZOMBIE BLONDES By Brian James. New York: Macmillan, 2009.ISBN: 9780312573751

As the cover says: “They’re beautiful. They’re popular. They’re dead.”

What else is to be said about the monsters in this novel?

At the moment, Byronic vampires are the most popular beings in books for teenage girls. But zombie cheerleaders also have their fascination. What would you do to be popular, even when the most popular girls in town all look like anorexic Barbie dolls and are bullies?

You’d try to join them, of course, if you’re a teenage girl, especially one like Hannah Sanders, whose father is always on the run from creditors and moving to one hick town after another.

And because horror fiction has certain conventions, you’d ignore the warnings of a boy who has seen it all happen before. Zombies? Oh, come on now! And there are, let’s face it, only two possible endings for a book like this; as you read, see if you can work out which one it is -
a. she escapes town, after the new boyfriend has died to save her or, b. she doesn’t escape - her fate is sealed.

I would have liked to know who Lukas, the boy who issues the warnings, was. He didn’t seem to have any family - perhaps they’d already been eaten by the zombies? But he never mentioned it, only that one of the zombie cheerleaders was once a friend. So where were his parents?

For that matter, how did the zombie business begin? We never find out.

Never mind. This book is not intended for old cynics like me who have been reading horror fiction since Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives and Tom Tryon’s Harvest Home. It’s intended for the kind of teen girls who might well be wondering if they, too, would want to join a bunch of bullying zombies just to be popular. And this audience should enjoy it. It’s easy reading and not too long.

A nice scare for reluctant readers.

OF GENIUS AND UNPLEASANTNESS

As I write this, I am listening to the last glorious strains of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which, not surprisingly, has come nearly top of ABC FM’s Top 100 Symphony Countdown (personally, I think it should have come first, though I do like Dvorak’s New World Symphony, which is Number 1).

Tears fill my eyes for the sheer beauty of it, both the music and the words of Goethe.

And I can't help musing on the number of geniuses who weren’t particularly nice people. I think Beethoven’s soul was in his music; perhaps deep down, he was a man who loved humanity and had optimism for it, but I really wouldn’t have wanted him as a next door neighbour. He’d be yelling at you to get your damned cat out of his back yard or he’d turn it into catskin earflaps. He certainly wouldn’t keep an eye on the house while you were on holiday, or pick up your kids from kindergarten.

And you wouldn’t want to be his nephew. At one point, Uncle Ludwig's unpleasantness drove him to attempt suicide.

Nevertheless, he had friends and there were plenty of women in his life, if none who actually married him.

Anyway, when you listen to his music, you don’t care. The courage of the man! And his most glorious music written after he became deaf!

The Pastoral Symphony (number 4 on the Countdown list) is another one I enjoy. I remember hearing it at a concert once, and suddenly realising that you could hear each individual instrument while they all worked together to make a gorgeous harmony and tell you a story.

Then there’s that asshole Wagner. Let me make it clear: I don’t own any CDs of his music and I find those of his operas I have heard pretty dull, in between the orchestral pieces. He was arrogant and up himself, an adulterer, and as a Jew I have no reason to love him. And then there’s The Valkyrie, in which you’re supposed to sympathise with two characters who commit incest, just because they’re somehow superior beings! Urk!

But think of those whose style he influenced. How about Howard Shore of Lord of the Rings fame? And then John Williams, with his symphonic film scores and his leitmotifs that let you know exactly what the writer is saying about his characters and events? John Williams tells entire stories in his music and he admits to being influenced by Wagner. And he isn’t the only one by any means. But when I listen to his scores for Star Wars and theHarry Potter movies, I think Wagner. Damn. I hate to think of that debt, but I acknowledge it. I love John Williams and he is definitely influenced by Wagner.

And that’s only the music; when we think Nordic myth, we think of him, however much of it has no connection with him.

Wagner was not a nice man, but he was a genius.

Thomas Malory wrote the brilliant Morte D’Arthure while he was in jail. Okay, he adapted existing stories by other writers, but that was common in those days, and he convinced us that all those stories were one novel. It was his version of the story of Arthur that influenced T.H. White’s Once and Future King, which became the musical Camelot. It’s Malory’s Arthur we think of when we think of the Arthurian legend, not the earlier warrior king or even the Celtic version in the tales of the Mabinogion. And I know what I’m talking about; the theme of my university Honours Thesis was “Arthur - From Epic Hero To Master of Ceremonies In Mediaeval English Literature”. I spent a year with Sir Thomas. His book moved me more deeply than I can say.

We know he was in prison, though we know a lot less about him than you might think. And if he is the Thomas Malory who was jailed some time in the reign of Edward IV, it wasn’t just for being on the wrong side in the Wars of the Roses, it was probably for burglary, sheep-stealing and rape.

His book was printed in the early days of printing in England. There is actually a children's novel, The Load of Unicorn by Cynthia Harnett, which is about a young man trying to track down the manuscript at a time when the scribes were terrified of losing their jobs to the printing press. In the course of his quest, he finds out quite a lot about the late Sir Thomas..

Not a nice man, no, but a genius.

So, what is it with these geniuses who don’t get on with people?

It’s not that you can’t be a genius and nice, but that the ones who move us the most quite often aren’t, or weren’t.

Perhaps their souls were in their creative output and they had no room for anything else. In any case, we shouldn’t judge them by their unpleasantness, because if they really did put their souls into their creativity, then their souls were just fine.

That’s my theory, anyway.

Vale Mary Travers

When I was growing up in the 1960s, my friend Denise got a guitar and a songbook. We spent sunny Saturday afternoons at her home singing from it. Sometimes we sang from it at my place. There was a time when the noisy rock band playing loudly in the next flat drove us nuts. We'd had enough and decided that we'd show them who really knew how to be loud! Leaning out of the window, we sang Peter, Paul and Mary songs at the top of our teenage voices. The rehearsal ended soon after, when calling "Shut up!" didn't deter us and with great glee we watched the musicians stomp off, shaking fists at us.

I had a record I played over and over, Peter, Paul and Mary's In The Wind, then bought others when I could. I have always loved folk music, but it would be years before I discovered the likes of Pentangle and Steeleye Span and others. For me, anyway, Bob Dylan at the time was known through Peter, Paul and Mary. Whoever I discovered later, it was they who made me love the genre. Denise and I sang "Go Tell It On The Mountain" for our Grade 6 end-of-year concert, even before she got her guitar.

Later, when I was on a trip to Israel, a few of us hitched a ride up a mountain to a kibbutz and were discussing our favourite singers when the people giving us a lift joined in the discussion - they, too, were fans.

Then, years after the group split, they did a reunion tour to Australia. Of course, I went to hear them at the Concert Hall, worried I might be disappointed. I wasn't. It was as if time had stood still.

It hadn't, of course. After intermission, each of the singers had a solo spot, speaking as well as singing. Mary Travers reported gleefully how she had embarrassed her somewhat stuffy son-in-law when she was arrested on a protest march. I loved the fact that she had grown old disgracefully, as I hope to do one day...

She had the voice of an angel, one which moved me, whatever she sang. Since then, there have been others - Maddy Prior, Joan Baez, Jacqui McShee, Eliza Carthy - many others! But for me, she was the first. Reading about her passing saddened me deeply.

Rest peacefully, Mary.

VULTURE’S GATE By Kirsty Murray. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2009

Some time in the future, much of Australia is Mad Max territory. The outback is filled with folk killing each other, wiping out settlements and running freak shows. Sydney, now known as Vulture’s Gate, is in ruins with gangs fighting each other and the authorities, from the anti-elder Festers to the nut-case Sons of Gaia who want to wipe out everybody.

Oh, and there are very few women or girls left after a mutated form of bird flu not only killed most females but made it very difficult for the few survivors to produce anything but boys. There is still some technology in service of the Colony government, producing “drones” and “chosen” boys who get to live comfortably with two male parents.

Callum, who has been living with his two fathers in the outback, is kidnapped and sold to a circus, from which he escapes on a motorbike and meets Bo, a girl living on her own since the death of her engineer grandfather, with only the company of a pack of “roboraptors” which hunt for her. Together, they ride off in search of his missing fathers, accompanied by roboraptor Mr Pinkwhistle, which is as much a computer as a robotic dinosaur.

But there are things Callum’s Colony employee fathers never told him. Like what happens to drones who aren’t useful any more - and what happens to any girls unlucky enough to be taken...

It’s an enjoyable adventure kids should like, though I’m not sure at which age group it’s aimed . It reads like YA fiction, but the characters are all very young; Bo is older than Callum, but neither of them has reached puberty. And we’re never told exactly how Australia has been left in ruins - surely not just the bird flu? It is implied, anyway, that there may be women in other countries. And there is still enough technology to keep the race going, however nasty its use.

But it’s possible to suspend disbelief for the length of the novel, which is a nice road story. The chapters are short enough to make it work for reluctant readers and the characters are good. Who would have thought a robotic dinosaur would be as cute as R2D2?

Jacinta and the Girlfriend Fiction Book

I have always believed that anyone who says they hate reading just hasn't found the right book yet. Recently, I've been introducing such people at my school to their ideal book. Of course, it's only the start because when they finish that one, they will have to be offered "something like that one, Miss."

Just this morning, I had 8A for a double period. It was the last day of term and apart from a group research activity, with lollies and chocolates as prizes for the first group to finish correctly, I wanted them to choose something for the term break. Recently, we've told parents that some students are behind in their work and will have to do something over the break. I'm a simple soul, and a librarian first and foremost: I told mine that they could read and review something (I'm going to get them to blog it when they come back). One girl shrieked that she has more important things to do on the holidays and couldn't spare time to read (she's a good reader, but prefers sport). "Yes, you will!" said her mother and sister firmly. As it happens, she is reading something she likes anyway.

And then there's Jacinta, who loudly insisted she doesn't read, thank you very much, she hates books and would absolutely not be doing this! But one of the books I was showing the class was Lili Wilkinson's The Not Quite Perfect Boyfriend, very funny and just right for reluctant readers. Her curiosity got the better of her and she asked for it.

A minute later, she was laughing. She was reading aloud - I didn't make her do the research activity while she was on a roll. "Miss, I've read eight pages already!"

"Well done, Jacinta," I responded. "Enjoy!"

Now if only the other Girlfriend books come back from loan, including the two I have reviewed for this page but not yet put up due to the review embargo... Wait till she reads about the girl who unintentionally sets off an explosion at the school fete and whose teacher is arrested for terrorism by mistake... and the one about the romance between the music nerd and the tennis nerd ...

Stand by.

15 LOVE By R.M. Corbet, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2009, (Girlfriend Fiction#15). ISBN 9781742370156. A LETTER FROM LUISA By Rowena Mohr. Sydney: Alle

The Girlfriend Fiction series must be doing well, since these two bring the total so far up to sixteen books. I have read them all and put them in my library.

They’re a mixed bunch. Mostly, they are by well-known Australian young adult writers who know how to write for young people, whether it’s a serious story about issues important to teenagers or a romance that is still a bit more than the standard teen romance that was so popular in the 1980s, but was not generally well-written. These stories are mainly well-written, though some are better than others, in my opinion. And the quality is not always about the experience of the writer concerned - some of the better books were by newer writers. Interestingly, I have found that our students tend to agree with me, judging by their comments on returning the books.

I’m pleased to say that both these new books in the series are among the better titles produced so far.

15 Love is a romantic comedy about the attraction between Will, who plays tennis and looks after his younger brother, now confined to a wheelchair, and Mia, who plays the viola in the school orchestra. An unlikely pairing, you might think, except that both of them are nerdy in their ways and have never actually dated anyone, unless you count Mia going to the movies with her friend, boy-crazy Vanessa, and Vanessa’s latest, who brings his friends along for Mia and her other friend, Renata.

Will has started to wonder if there’s more to life than tennis, while Mia’s father is cheating on her mother with a woman half his age.

It takes one beagle called Harriet, a smashed viola, an arm injury and Vanessa trying to steal Will to bring the two together, while both of them have their own personal troubles to deal with.

The chapters are short, making the book easier for reluctant readers, the characters are likeable, and the story is told from both viewpoints. In some ways, it’s like the fiction of Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, without the swearing.

There have been only three male writers so far in this series and two of them have written romances. Interesting, that.

A Letter From Luisa sees the welcome return of Rowena Mohr, author of the hilarious My Life And Other Catastrophes which opened the Girlfriend series. Once again, she has produced a very funny book, though with a serious undertone to the over-the-top story. Also, she has created one of only two heroines in the entire series who isn’t a WASP. The other non-WASP protagonist was the heroine of Step Up and Dance, who was Greek. Also, the male romantic interest in Big Sky was an indigenous Australian. One issue I have had with this series, so far, is that it doesn’t really reflect the broad variety of cultures we have in Australia.

However, that isn’t a problem in this one. Luisa, whose mother was Spanish, has only one friend at school, Japanese exchange student Meko. She has been keeping house for her rather vague father and her younger sister, Nina, since her mother died three years ago. Her father had been a musician and composer, but is now creating advertising jingles for a living. Luisa, herself a gifted composer and musician, has been avoiding the guitar so as not to make him feel bad.

Now the school’s Twilight Fete is coming up and gorgeous Jet Lucas, the school’s rock star, is going to perform. Luisa is determined to impress him, even though the school’s female bully considers him her own property and is making dire threats. Luisa is trying desperately to keep a low profile to avoid being bashed up, but Jet himself has suddenly become very friendly...

At the start of the book, we know already that there has been an explosion, her teacher has been mistaken for a terrorist and Luisa has been suspended. The lead-up yo these events is very, very funny. Luisa’s problems at home and school are believable; the author just has an over-the-top way of getting them sorted out.

The book should appeal equally to those girls who want a straight romance, those who want mainstream fiction and those who like a funny story.

GAMERS’ QUEST By George Ivanoff. Melbourne: Ford Street Publishing, 2009.

In recent years, computer games have gone way beyond the likes of Pacman, Space Invaders and such. These days you can take on an avatar and “live” in Second Life, for example. When I was much younger, you could play Dungeons and Dragons around a table, with other fans. It was very sociable and you collected gold, treasure, skills and weapons at the roll of a pair of dice, going up to higher levels as you went. Now, you can go on-line to do the same thing.

What would happen if the avatars wanted the same thing, only in our world?

Anyone who has read the original short story on which this is based, in the Ford Street anthology Trust Me! will know immediately what’s going on in this novel, so I’m not giving much away. Even if you haven’t read the original, you pick it up fairly speedily.

Teenage thieves Tark and Zyra live in a world in which magic is mixed with technology. You can be using a sword o’light to kill a dragon one moment and battling a cyborg the next. The reasons for this become clear fairly soon. The young thieves use their ill-gotten gains to give them time in Designers’ Paradise, where they can do exotic things such as go to school, then home to do homework and watch television. But they have gotten in trouble with a character known as the Fat Man, who will not give up the chase, even when they are making their way to Designers’ Paradise. And Designers’ Paradise, when they get there, is also in danger…

A good introduction to speculative fiction for younger readers, this one is non-stop action with a light touch. There is a lot of delightful over-the-top silliness – you wouldn’t for example, want to be a mage in this world, where you can end up a toad if your spell bounces back at you. The story is a cross between a computer game and Dungeons and Dragons, with a touch of Westworld. The cover art is by wonderful book illustrator Les Petersen, who did the covers for Simon Haynes’ Hal Spacejock novels and several for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. The images of Tark and Zyra look like computer game avatars, giving a strong hint of what the novel is about.

The author has set up a web site, http://www.gamersquestbook.com ,for readers who would like more stories about his characters.

What I'm re-reading #1: Brother Cadfael

I do an awful lot of reading and reviewing of new books, both for this blog and January Magazine. For all of that, I have some comfort re-reading - Kerry Greenwood, Terry Pratchett, Tolkien. I have decided that every now and then I am going to post something to this site about what I'm re-reading at the time.

Right now, I'm making my way back through the Brother Cadfael novels of Ellis Peters, AKA Edith Pargeter.

I had known her as Edith Pargeter long before I started reading her history mysteries. She wrote mediaeval historical novels, usually centred around the Welsh border country. There was the Heaven Tree trilogy, the Brothers of Gwynedd, her Hotspur novel, A Bloody Field By Shrewsbury. She was also writing crime fiction as Ellis Peters. What more natural than that she should put the two skills together?

I remember discovering Brother Cadfael, her Welsh monk living in Shrewsbury during the fight between Stephen and Maud for the English throne. Cadfael had gone off to the First Crusade as a man-at-arms and, on his return, had decided to retire into a monastery, where he became the monastery's herbalist. He is very shrewd and observant and has skills the average forensic investigator would value. He had a son from his adventures in the East, who turned up in one of the early novels, The Virgin In The Ice, and then again in the final book in the twenty-novel series. His best friend was the local law enforcer, Hugh Beringar, who started off as a potential villain, but by the end of the first book had become Cadfael's friend, in a classic combination of the amateur sleuth and his buddy the cop. Hugh was assistant Sheriff of Shropshire, then became Sheriff after his boss's death. And, of course, you wouldn't want to be living in Shrewsbury around then, any more than you'd like to live in the county of Midsomer now! Not with all those murders.

I became hooked on the series - while each story had its own mystery to solve, there was the history, the characters and the fact that you cared about them. I gave my mother one of the books to read and at the time, she wasn't interested. Then, on a trip to England in 1988, I took her to Shrewsbury, where I found the description had been so accurate, I actually recognised the streets and layout of the town.

Brother Cadfael had brought plenty of tourists to the quiet, pretty town of Shrewsbury - a place so small you could get around all the tourist sections in an afternoon! Mum and I visited the church of St Peter and St Paul, which had a leaky roof at the time and we were told by one of the parishioners that in winter the heating had to be turned off an hour into the service to save electricity. I have not been back, but I hope things have improved since then and am fully expecting at least one comment on this post to let me know!

When this gentleman saw Mum taking my photo on the steps, he said, "Dare I ask if you're a Brother Cadfael fan?" I smiled and said, "Need you ask?"

After that, he stood with us and pointed out several places mentioned in the novels. It was a delightful trip all round. When we got back, Mum finally decided to read the books to see what all the fuss was about and then bewailed the fact that she had been in Shrewsbury and had not been able to appreciate the Cadfael connection, though she had loved the beauty of the place.

Recently, she told me that she is too stressed at the moment, with family health troubles, to be able to concentrate on any of the new books I had been borrowing for her from the library. I suggested a re-read, which always makes me feel better. I gave her the Cadfael books, which she is presently re-reading with great delight, and now I have started doing it too. It has been so long, I have actually forgotten whodunnit, though not Brother Cadfael, Hugh, Abbot Radulfus, Prior Robert or any of the regulars. It is giving me a lot of pleasure, freeing me from work-related stress for a time, as I join this calm, mild-mannered monk in the mid-eleventh century...

Feedback on a book I reviewed

Some time ago, I reviewed Paul Jennings' new book, The Nest. At the time, while I thought it a perfectly good YA novel, I was not sure how the fans of one of Australia's funniest writers would feel about a book that wasn't funny. As a teacher-librarian, I have recently spoken to two young men about the book. I lent it out to a student who was told it was not going to be funny and said fair enough. But two days later, he returned it, syaing apologetically that in his heart he had expected it to be funny and simply couldn't finish it.

But yesterday I spoke with another student, who asked me if I had read the book, which he wanted to discuss. He had no problems with the fact that it wasn't funny and was enjoying it, he said, although he found the "short chapters" confusing. When I had explained that those short chapters were meant to be stories written by the hero, which told you something about his feelings, the student's face brightened: he got it! Now he will enjoy it more.

The jury is still out on this book, for me, at least, but it is interesting to have had two types of feedback. It would be a shame if Mr Jennings couldn't interest his fans in a new kind of writing.

WOUNDED (The Wereling Trilogy 1) By Stephen Cole. London: Bloomsbury,, 2009

I haven’t come across any of the books in this trilogy before. They were originally published in 2003, but this edition has only come out recently. The cover features a pair of sinister-looking eyes and a silhouette of a wolf, howling in a dark green landscape.

Kate and Tom are thrown together when her family kidnaps him from his camping family and turns him into a werewolf. In this world, werewolves can both be born and made. Kate’s family are born ones. Her mother is the worst of them, a killing junkie who is addicted to turning wolf and killing humans. Kate is not a werewolf yet, She won’t become one until she has been mated with a male werewolf. Werewolf women are usually raped to turn them. Or, as Kate puts it, the girl is locked into a room with a crazed male werewolf and if her parents feel romantic, they might even put a bed in the room.

Kate’s mother, Marcie, has plans for Tom. There’s a prophecy to do with a human-turned-were which will usher in an age of werewolf dominance. After Kate rescues Tom from her brother, the two of them go on the run, hoping to find a Native American shaman, last heard of in New Orleans, who can cure him. But Marcie is powerful in the werewolf community. They find they can’t trust anybody...

It will be interesting to see how this one goes with the girls who come to my library. Right now, the fashion is for darkly brooding, Byronic vampires. Whether a not-especially-Byronic werewolf will be of interest, I don’t know, but I suspect that, like the recent spate of vampire novels, this book will appeal more to girls than boys. It’s a good enough road story and ends with the quest unfinished, so the reader needs to wait for the next volume. It’s not very long and I think it might work best in an omnibus edition.

NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST By Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. Movie tie-in edition, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2009

I was at Reading Matters conference when this book was launched in Australia in 2007. David Levithan was one of the guest speakers and spoke about how he and Rachel Cohn had written it as a sort of screwball comedy. I have the original Australian cover, but this one, with the young movie actors, should attract plenty of teen readers.

It is certainly very funny, full of music and teen angst and over-the-top happenings. I haven't seen the movie, but I suspect it will make an enjoyable one, hopefully with plenty of music in it.

The entire novel takes place over a single night. Nick, who is playing at a dance, sees the girlfriend who dumped him enter with her new man. Desperate not to seem concerned, he asks Norah, the nearest girl, “I know this is going to sound strange, but would you mind being my girlfriend for the next five minutes?”

Her response is to kiss him, making sure the ex can see her doing it, and this is the beginning of an all-night music gig crawl, sponsored by his friends in the band, who feel he needs the morale boost and trust her to be kind and helpful. Romance is in the air.

There’s a lot more to it than this, of course. Norah actually knows Nick’s ex and doesn’t particularly like her. She has her own troubles. The chapters alternate between the boy and girl and all the ends are drawn together at the end.

Easy reading and an enjoyable piece of fluff.

ROBOT RIOT (Schooling Around) By Andy Griffiths. Sydney, Pan Macmillan,2009

This is the fourth of the “Schooling Around” series featuring the students of Grade 5B at Northwest Southeast Central School, but like the others, it pretty much stands alone.

The stories are all over-the-top humorous and the characters mostly have names that suit their personalities - Gretel Armstrong, for example, is strong, Jenny Friendly is the nice one, Grant Gadget is the son of an inventor and invents plenty himself.

The stories are seen from the viewpoint of Henry McThrottle. In this latest adventure, Henry is convinced that logical, unemotional new girl Roberta Flywheel is a robot from the future, planning to wipe out the population of Earth, starting with the students of 5B...

As always, it’s delightfully silly and still makes good points about friendship. And wouldn’t we all like to have been in Mr Brainfright’s class, with a teacher who loves bananas enough to dress up as one and teaches that the world would be a better place if we would all just look at it through coloured cellophane once a day?

Andy Griffiths is one of the most popular children’s writers in Australia, for good reason. He knows kids love to laugh and they love over-the-top laughs.

This series is going well at my school right now. I’d better get this book processed; there is a waiting list for it...

Andy Griffiths Meets 8A

I'd been planning this excursion for ages. There was a choice between Andy Griffiths - the author of various books about bums and kids doing bizarre, over-the-top stuff - and Morris Gleitzman, both of whom have fans in my homeroom class. We could only manage one of them. Kayla would have liked to hear Morris Gleitzman talk about his serious novels, Once and Then, both of which she loves, but the vote went to Andy Griffiths, who was doing a panel with Danny Katz, the comic journalist who has also written a number of children's books. I sort of know Danny, whom I keep meeting at Allen and Unwin parties, and his wife, Mitch Vane, illustrated my spies book. I met her at a book signing for the Ford Street publication Trust Me!, when we sat next to each other. Mitch's art was not just decoration - it commented on the text, formed a part of it and was very, very funny.

Anyway, I set about booking the tickets. Once the excursion was approved, I did a lot of running around, collecting money and permission forms. Students in the class left. Students came back after months. Some students who had been absent a lot started to turn up for classes and had to be factored in to the numbers.

There wasn't much time to book, either. The holidays were upon us. I had to book on my card. We nearly missed out - Andy Griffiths is very, very popular. The gentleman at the Melbourne Writers' Festival booking office told me that session was booked out and I had to think of another one. But soon after, he rang back to tell me of a cancellation and the plan was back on.

Coming back, I had to finish collecting. The campus mini-bus might not be big enough for the full class, which was now slightly larger. We booked the one belonging to the nearby Australian Technical College. Bill, the teacher who had a mini-bus licence, was going to drive us.

Two weeks before the Event, Bill was told he had to go on a school camp and was replaced by Sharon, the sports teacher. Sharon had been going to the regional athletics on that day, but all the other mini-bus drivers were on camp.

On the day, two students I had thought were going to the athletics came to say the sports had been cancelled, but two more were absent, so the numbers were just right for the campus mini-bus after all.

Somehow, we managed to cram into the bus and reach Federation Square after being caught in traffic, behind a huge truck, with all the red lights against us, and back-seat-driver students telling Sharon where she should have gone instead. We had to hurry through the gardens to get from our parking spot, and we were a few minutes late, but so were other schools and the session started late, giving us time to get in and settle into the back row.

The BMW Edge is a very beautiful theatre with a view of the Yarra River through the window behind the stage.

The speakers sat there, throwing jokes back and forth. We learned a lot about how they had started out in writing and their feelings about what is funny. Andy admitted that his character Lisa was based on a real girl he'd had a crush on in fourth grade. A few years ago she had contacted him to ask if that was her in the book. They met after that, and he was relieved that both of them were happily married and the romance wasn't going to flare up again.

He never did explain - why the bum stories? - but no one asked.

Afterwards, two of the students, Michael and Stephanie, had books to get signed. I took them towards the signing tables while Sharon led the rest of the class to hear poetry read. (The poetry was pretty awful, I thought, but the students didn't complain).

The queue was a mile long, but Michael and his friend Mehmed simply pushed in while I had my back turned and no one complained, so I stood near them with Stephanie and her book and the books were soon signed. I also got to meet Sue Bobbermein, the publicity lady who sends me review copies, and put a face to a name.

We had lunch at Hungry Jack's in Swanston Street. Many of the students had huge appetites; I've never seen anything like it! Mehmed and Jessica were fasting for Ramadan, but everyone else enjoyed burgers, wraps, chips, ice cream and more ice cream and then, just for a change, ice cream...

The afternoon had turned chilly, with winds coming up and a storm on the way, but we got back to the bus and finally returned to school, not quite as slowly as on the way.

I dismissed the students and returned to the library. The trip was worth the bother, but I heaved a sigh of relief it was all over.

PINK By Lili Wilkinson. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2009

Ava is the child of two university lecturers who were absolutely thrilled when she “came out” and started a relationship with intellectual, chain-smoking Chloe, a girl at her state secondary school.

But Ava has a Deep Dark Secret. She has a pink cashmere jumper hidden in her bedroom cupboard. Much as she loves Chloe, she wants to wear girly clothes – pink if possible – and, dear me, go out with boys, just to see if perhaps it’s her thing. So she has secretly sat for a scholarship to a co-educational private school. When she is accepted, she has to lie, to avoid hurting Chloe’s feelings.

At the Billy Hughes School For Academic Excellence, she soon makes friends with two different groups – the Pastels, who speak several languages, are brilliant in their studies and get the lead roles in the school musical, and the Screws, who are more or less the school outcasts, spending all their time together, doing the set-building, props and lighting.

In the Screws are Jen, the science fiction nerd, Jacob, who is fat, gay boy Jules who hates the other school gays, Kobe the Asian who hates being Asian and Sam, who only feels at home in the undercroft of the school auditorium. Sam has contempt for the actors, in particular the Pastels.

Alexis, the head Pastel, is determined to help Ava get a boyfriend, the dazzling, athletic Ethan, who volunteers with children and is involved with Medecins Sans Frontieres.

But Alexis also has a Deep Dark Secret. And Chloe is starting to worry about what Ava is getting up to.

How can Ava sort out the problems she has caused by her well-meaning actions? What is her actual sexuality – does she even know?

This novel was written as a response to US gay YA novelist David Levithan’s plea for more teen novels with a mixture of sexualities in them. Ms Wilkinson’s argument, with which I agree, is that kids don’t necessarily know what they are and shouldn’t have to decide at sixteen.

There are some nice touches, such as several references to Jane Austen’s Emma, that story of a girl who makes a lot of mistakes while trying to match-make. With luck, young readers of this book might follow it up by reading the Austen novel. There are conversations between the characters which readers might also follow up – even a mention that the trivia mentioned is available on Wikipedia. There is some endearing silliness and a number of very funny scenes.

This book will be going into my school library and I will be interested to see the response I get from readers.

Vale David McDonnell - another fan gone!

For those readers who remember this fan, I'd just like to pass on the information that David died July 21 2009.

I first met David when he was Jan, a lady who hated to be considered female,even then, before she became he, but please forgive me - that's how I always thought of her. So I'm going to remember Jan, although I respect Jan's right to be David.

I first met Jan, as she then was, at my very first Austrek meeting. She didn't know me from a bar of soap, but immediately lent me some fanzines. I remember I somehow got a stain on one of them, so I sent away to the US for a replacement. Jan didn't mind, but I kept the stained one and gave her the replacement ... which she promptly lent to someone else and never got back! :-)

Because Austrek was my first experience of fandom, you might say that she was one of my first friends in fandom. I remember becoming a part of the group, long evenings playing Dungeons and Dragons, literary conventions as well as Trek ones.

I remember the Trek convention in Sydney back in the late 1970s - 1979, I think - where we all travelled there by train, overnight, and crammed into a hotel room in our sleeping bags ... yes, illegal, but that's how fans did it in those days. No wonder hotels didn't like SF cons.

It may have been Jan who managed to arrange for the con GoH, George Takei, to come to our room party. Jan had written some risque filk songs - my favourite to Advance Australia Fair, which began "Trekkers of the world rejoice, Spock's in pon farr again, The only question that remains is who and where and when..." . Another one went to the tune of "Donald Where's Your Troosers?" ("Scotty where's your troosers?"). But the cheekiest one went to the tune of "The Quartermaster's store". I wish I'd had a camera to record Jan's red face when we got to the Sulu verse of the song and she refused to sing it for George!


I only saw David occasionally after Jan became David - mostly at conventions - but remember this fan with great affection.

THE REFORMED VAMPIRE SUPPORT GROUP By Catherine Jinks. Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2009

Catherine Jinks has to be one of the most versatile writers I know of. Historical fiction, SF, fantasy, thriller, ghost stories, children’s, YA, adult - there are very genres she hasn’t set her pen to at one time or another.

In The Reformed Vampire Support Group, she visits the vampire story, although I suspect this is not the kind of novel that would be relished by all the girls at my school who are devouring the Twilight series. If anything, this sends up the vampire tale.

Catherine Jinks asks her readers to think -really think - about what being a vampire might involve, especially in modern Sydney. You can’t eat anything you used to enjoy. You’re unlikely to be able to drive, unless you got your licence before you were turned. If you were elderly, like Bridget, a former nun who was turned at the age of eighty, you ‘ll have arthritis and other aches and pains involved with being elderly forever. You still have to make a living, but you can’t do a normal job. Not if you turned in 1908, anyway. Nina, the narrator, who died in the 1970s, writes adventure novels with a feisty vampire heroine. But Nina was turned at fifteen, which means she will be a teenager forever, with all the problems this involves.

These vampires don’t live in crypts, though they do have weekly group therapy sessions at the local Catholic church. This means they have to find homes with blackout facilities. And they have nothing to do all night but watch dull TV shows.


Fortunately one of them has discovered a way to avoid fanging humans, which they really don’t want to do, as biting humans always turns them and the last thing they need is a planetful of vampires.

But someone has killed a vampire. They have to find out who it is and persuade them not to do it again. Trouble is, there’s more to it than vampire killers...

This novel has a lot of fun with the vampire genre, especially right now when everyone and his dog is publishing it. All I can say is that the authors of the Deadly Serious vampire tales deserve everything they get in this deliciously funny novel.

Catherine Jinks triumphs again!

SOMETHING MORE By Mo Johnson. Series: Girlfriend Fiction 11. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2009

Girlfriend Fiction series is quite a mixture, from the hilarious (My Life and Other Catastrophes, The (Not Quite) Perfect Boyfriend) to the thoughtful (Cassie, which was about friendship and family and living with disability rather than boys) to the different, such as Being Mackenzie, which ends on a kiss but not with a new boyfriend. There was the girl caught up with Christian fundamentalism with a cute boy in Winter of Grace and the girl whose Greek background clashed in some ways with her other life (Step Up and Dance).

And then there are the simple romances, which girls often like best, because they reflect their own teen concerns - will the cute boy like me? Does he already have a girlfriend? Do I have a pimple breaking out just when he’s asked me on a date?

This is one of them and, like all the others in this series, it’s a lot better-written than the teen romances that came out in the 1980s when I first started working in school libraries. It has that -well, something more than they did.

True, there are the two attractive boys in the heroine’s life and you just KNOW she’s going to end up with the one she thinks she hates at the beginning. There’s the girl who’s a rival for the affections of the gorgeous one, who’s being horrible to the heroine. It’s formula, but that’s fine. Teenagers like formula. They’d be annoyed if the girl did end up with the first boy she liked in the book.

But unlike the abovementioned 1980s teen romances, the gorgeous boy is actually a nice person. He may not be right for the heroine, but he’s decent enough. The rival is not as bad as she seems. She has her own problems, some of them connected to what’s happening to the heroine’s sister. And unlike the witch-queens of the 80s, she’s actually good at her schoolwork.

Briefly, Isla McBay and her family have migrated to Australia. She has made friends, but misses Scotland, her wise grandmother whose pithy sayings head each chapter, her best friend and the boyfriend who might even now be finding a new girlfriend. She has not yet had the courage to contact him, but thinks she’s making a clean break.

Her sister, with whom she has never gotten along, might be pregnant and suddenly Isla’s worries about boyfriends and pimples don’t seem so important. But it might affect her own relationships...

This novel is never going to set the world of young adult fiction alight, but it’s not meant to. It’s just a nice, gentle story in which the heroine learns something and finds some courage while scoring her new boyfriend. It works.

I had to lend it out to a student following the Girlfriend series without processing it. That must say something about the quality of the series.

THE GIMLET EYE By James Roy. Quentaris: Quest of the Lost City #3. Melbourne, Ford Street Publishing, 2009.

In this third instalment of the spin-off of the popular Quentaris shared-world series, a character from the original series is actually killed off, something that doesn’t usually happen in shared universes. As it happens in the prologue, it’s no secret.

The Archon, ruler of Quentaris, is dying. His horrible nephew Florian is persuaded to finish him off rather than wait for his inevitable death. Florian’s “friend” Janus (as in the two-faced god?) reminds him of the prophecy that declares that anyone who kills the previous ruler will rule properly himself. Janus, of course, has his own agenda.

Meanwhile, the adult magicians have been banished to a very nasty part of the city (well, they can’t be exiled elsewhere, short of being thrown overboard, since Quentaris has been travelling from one vortex to another). The younger ones, such as Tab Vidler, former Dung Brigader and recently an apprentice magician, and her friend Amelia, have been spared the dungeons, but left to their own devices. Tab is back to shovelling dung, though on a farm rather than the streets, while Amelia is working at a pub. Torby, the boy rescued in the first novel, The Spell of Undoing, is lying in hospital in a catatonic state. Nobody knows how this happened, except, of course, the reader.

That conceited ac-tor, Fontagu Wizroth the Third, has been ordered to do a command performance of a play called The Gimlet Eye for the new Emperor’s birthday, and he’s thrilled. Tab, Amelia and their friend, the former pirate Verris, can’t persuade Fontagu that there’s something fishy going on…

In my opinion, this one is the best so far in the new series. We learn more about the characters and their feelings. The adventure is fast, but straightforward enough for the young readers for whom this is an introduction to fantasy. At the same time, there’s a murder in the first chapter; there’s no tiptoeing around the issue. What happens to the adult magicians is also scary.

But there’s still plenty of humour, maybe more than there's been since the end of the original series – and in the end, Fontagu is shown in a more positive light than before.

The only thing is, while you can probably get something out of this book without having read the others, you really do need to have read them to understand properly what’s going on. The series is no longer a lot of related but individual titles. There is still, however, a policy of using some of Australia’s top children’s writers to keep the quality up.

Recommended for children from mid-primary to early secondary school.

Schooling Around: Treasure Fever!, Pencil of Doom!, Mascot Madness! By Andy Griffiths. Sydney, Pan Macmillan, 2008, 2009.

Andy Griffiths is the author of a lot of over-the-top Australian children’s books. His stories are funny and bizarre without quite the grossout of some other popular children’s writers.

Then again, there are the Bum stories. The first, The Day My Bum Went Psycho, started as a short story in which a boy’s bum detaches itself and runs away, leaving him with a major problem keeping his trousers on. In that particular story, there are official bum-catchers, so it’s not all that unusual.

And kids love the absurdity of it all, the sheer silliness, and no surprise there.

The Schooling Around series so far has the usual silliness of Griffiths stories. It manages to slip in messages about self-belief, bullying and courage, without hitting the reader over the head with them. In fact, it’s likely children will absorb them without noticing.

Schooling Around is set in Grade 5B at Northwest Southeast Central School. The Principal, Mr Greenbeard, loves ships and sailing, so treats the school as a ship and speaks in maritime terms. Most characters have appropriate names - the sports teacher is Mr Grunt, the gardener is Mr Spade, the teacher next door, Mrs Cross is always cross.

The adventures of 5B are narrated by Henry McThrottle, who has several friends - Jenny Friendly(she is), Jack Japes, Grant Gadget, whose father is an inventor, horse-loving Gina and Penny Palomino, the brilliant Fiona McBrain, Newton Hooton, who’s scared of everything. Their teacher, who arrives in the first novel, is the loopy Mr Brainfright, whose enthusiasm in teaching everything from how to breathe to how to eat a banana leads him to keep falling out of the window, into Mr Spade’s flower beds.

Each adventure is more or less stand-alone, although it refers to previous stories. In Treasure Fever! the students go searching for a “pirate treasure” buried in the school grounds years ago by Mr Greenbeard, when he was a student.

In Pencil of Doom! Henry desperately tries to get rid of a magical pencil that grants wishes when you use it to draw what you want, but definitely not in the way you were expecting your wishes granted. This story gives a nod to “The Monkey’s Paw” and even has Mr Brainfright telling the story to his class, as if it had happened to one of his friends.

In the recently-released Mascot Madness! the school has to compete in athletics sports against Northwest West Academy, whose obnoxious students jeer and throw things at our heroes whenever their bus is going past. They have been defeating Northwest Southeast Central for the last forty-nine years. Can Henry and his friends win this time, with the help of their new mascot - Mr Brainfright in a banana costume? Especially when their likable teacher is becoming obsessed with bananas and has started to think he is a banana?

Silliness or not - and there is something very silly about a giant dancing banana - there is a message here about believing in yourself and being optimistic.

Recommended for children from mid-primary to early secondary school.

EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL By Simmone Howell. Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2008

Riley Rose is stuck at Spirit Ranch Holiday Camp, just when she was about to get close and personal with that hunk Ben. It’s filled with Christian teenagers and camp counsellors who blow bugles at you and make you sing around camp fires, when you’re not memorising Bible quotes or having presentations on the domestic life of the mallee fowl.

Of course, there’s the very hunkish Craig, but he’s not all he seems. Besides, he’s with Riley’s room-mate Fleur and Fleur is not about to share. Then there’s Dylan, who used to be Craig’s friend and equally good-looking, before an accident left him in a wheelchair. He’s back at camp, but no one seems sure what the accident actually was, and he’s not saying.

And Riley has her own issues, centred party, at least, around her mother’s death from cancer, her father’s new partner and her own overweight state.

There’s an entire genre of fiction about a wilderness camp and a troubled teenager who finds answers there, despite being originally reluctant to go. I have reviewed one, Solo by Alyssa Brugman, in the last year. This one isn’t quite as grim as Solo, although it’s also readable and broken into easily-digestible short chapters.

Riley has issues to sort out, but she also has things to teach the other campers, even those who mock her weight and call her a slut. That is perhaps less common in summer camp fiction. Before the novel is over, she is also feeling sympathy even for the worst of them, which helps her. And the beautiful Ben, when he appears, is a comical character rather than the hunk she remembers.

I do have a nitpick or two. Dylan’s accident turns out to have been far less dramatic than was implied at the start and has no real bearing on the story. It would be okay if the issue was about how he handles his confinement to a wheelchair, but he seems to have sorted out most of that before the story begins. I can sort of see why the author plays around with the possible reasons for the accident, but for me, it didn’t quite work.

Still, Riley is a likeable, sympathetic character and the novel makes some serious points in a humorous context. Teenage girls will enjoy it, whether or not they follow it up by seeking out Thomas More’s Utopia, which is quoted throughout the book.