My First Writer In Residence

Wednesday was my last official session with a bunch of Grade 4 children at a primary school connected with the Ardoch Youth Foundation. Earlier this year I was invited to do a Writer In Residence. I would spend five weeks with the kids and their classroom teacher, then produce a book of their work. I went to observe someone else’s class to give me some idea of what was required. She was doing the actual writing and the kids were helping to develop the story and doing the illustrations.

“Oh, I can do that!” I thought. It was a relief, because I had been allotted a special school to work in. I prepared some stuff - and then the special school changed its mind and I went instead to a regular school. And the teacher had chosen students she thought might enjoy it the most. So, I switched back to having the kids do the writing. I was sent a couple of previous books to show me what was expected. One was by a friend of mine. I emailed her to ask how long she had had, because her stories were chosen by the kids from a number of pieces they had written during the time she was there. She had had a term. I had five one-hour sessions - obviously not something I could do.

I was lucky enough to have assistance from a fellow Ardoch volunteer who is a qualified primary teacher and art teacher. She had a look at some of my ideas and suggested what might work best with primary kids - my experience is with secondary students.

The first week, we introduced ourselves and what was going to happen, and got the kids to write using writing prompts they had suggested, to give us some idea of how they were writing. I made it clear that this was not an English class - the idea was for them to have fun.

The next week, they continued with their stories, after making it clear that they just wanted to write! So, they wrote and we went around the classroom looking at the stories and suggesting edits. They did self portraits /head shots to go in the book. I took home photocopies of the stories to start typing up.

Next week I printed out the stories, finished and unfinished alike, with gentle editing suggestions. Those who were finished were asked to check their work and edit, asking a friend to swap. I then asked those who didn’t think they would finish to stick with me while the others did their editing. A few did, and I offered th m instead the option of writing an acrostic poem, the easiest form of poetry, or using a template to do an “about me.” In the end, only one student did that, and I put together his answered questions in a paragraph. It worked well. Most of the acrostic poems were one-word lines, but one young lady wrote a very fine acrostic piece and a haiku on the same theme!

So, in Week 4, I read her poems aloud to the class and they understood  what I wanted! And several kids who had done one-word poems went back and did it properly. Having finished their pieces, poetry and stories alike(and one article!) the kids started on their illustrations.

They also voted on a title for the book. There were some in their ideas box and others added to the list on the board. Interestingly, the chosen title was one I would have suggested if they hadn’tcome up with something. I wanted them to own it.

I had already started playing with my new toy, a scanner I bought for this project and it was working smoothly. It’s an updated version of the one I used to have, that died on me. And today I sat at my computer, scanner attached, and got stuck into the kids’ art and typed up the last bits tya were handed in. I’m not even finished that; there have been kids turning up suddenly, one of them only this week, after having done one unfinished piece. We gave her the option of an acrostic, which she did, but I haven’t typed it yet.

There was some drama, with a couple of kids doing very little, but turning up anyway. Under threat of not being in the book, they produced. Some of them finished their stories in class, or simply rewrote stuff they had done for class. Hopefully, being published will inspire them to write some more.

Three kids produced the cover art between them, and it is very good indeed.

It really has been a fascinating experience, a learning opportunity for me as well as the kids. There were times when it felt like just another classroom.

But after I said farewell, a young man wrote something on the board. Here it is.

Just Finished Reading...Two books by “Robert Galbraith”

As you’ll know if you haven’t been hiding under a rock, Robert Galbraith is the pen name of J.K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. It took me quite a while to get around to reading them. But there are now four books in the Cormoran Strike series and while I have no interest in The Casual Vacancy, I do like whodunnits. Preferably cosies, with the occasional police procedural, but I’ll try something different. I was prepared to trust J.K Rowling; when you think about it, each of the Potter novels is a mystery, if not a murder mystery. Harry, Ron and Hermione have to solve a mystery in each book in order to save the day.

And this is a series about a private eye, very old-style, though set in the here and now. Cormoran Strike is an Afghanistan veteran who investigated for the army while he was there, but was invalided out after having a leg blown off. At the start of The Cuckoo’s Calling, the first novel, he has just left his wealthy girlfriend, for good reason, and had to move into his office. He has only two clients and keeps getting death threats from one who didn’t like the results of his investigation.  Then he is commissioned by the brother of an old - late - schoolmate, who says his adoptive sister, a beautiful model, was murdered, not a suicide as the police concluded. So, the “mean streets” detective enters the world of fashion modelling for this novel.

The second book, The Silkworm, takes Cormoran into the world of publishing. A novelist has been murdered horribly  in a manner taken from the last scene of a truly dreadful unpublished manuscript, and again Cormoran Strike is asked to investigate. I have to say, reading this, I’m very glad I write for children, not adults! We’re told that the author is not very good, in fact very bad, but somehow he has been published by trade publishers. Even his published work is bad, and the unpublished one is far worse.

So, what did I think? I liked Cormoran, who is a decent man and very good at his job. I liked his assistant, Robin, who comes to work for him as a secretary, but has ambitions to be a detective herself, and is very good at Googling the information they need. And the stories were exciting- I read them both almost in single sittings.

I couldn’t help wondering if J.K Rowling is a smoker, though. In the first novel, pretty much everyone except Robin is a chain smoker. Cormoran goes to interview someone and they always light up one smoke after another. Not quite as much smoking in The Silkworm, but Cormoran puffs away n nearly every scene. With his prosthetic leg, he is in a lot of pain, but somehow never seems to be short of breath!

Still, it’s a good adult series, written by a terrific children’s writer. I probably wouldn’t have read them if I hadn’t been curious and if Robert Galbraith had been the author’s real name, as I prefer my cosies, but I’m glad I did. 

Pratchett’s Women: Unauthorised Essays On The Female Characters Of The Discworld by Tansy Rayner Roberts

No need to tell you what this is about - it’s all in the title. I bought the original ebook, which, alas, disappeared from my iPad when I bought a new one, as can happen, and was no longer up on iBooks for me to download again, but the good news is that the author updated her book and offered it free for a day on Amazon. I thought the least I could do, since I’d accepted the freebie, was review it.

These essays were originally posted on her web site. She reread - again! - and rewrote the essays.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Discworld, it’s a series of novels set on a world that actually is flat, borne on the backs of four giant elephants which stand on the back of Great A’Tuin, a massive turtle swimming through space, as in some Asian mythologies. The novels begin by poking fun at heroic fantasy and then taking on themes based on our own world. There are digs at racism, religion, opera, newspapers, jingoism, modern vampire fiction, fairy tales and much more. One series features three witches in a tiny mountain kingdom, inspired by the ones from Shakespeare, only much funnier.

The book covers many of Terry Pratchett’s novels, and the female characters in them, from the early books up to Snuff, the last of the City Watch novels - or, really, a Sam Vimes novel, because it’s about how Sam’s wife, Sybil, drags him, kicking and screaming, off on a holiday, away from his job in Ankh Morpork.

Tansy Rayner Roberts first discovered the Discworld novels in her teens and admits that she felt very differently about them then. Some books she hated as a teenager she adores now and characters her teenage self loved, such as Ginger from Moving Pictures, are of less interest now. She feels that Terry Pratchett’s female characters improved vastly as the series went on, as did the series itself.

She covers the witches, Susan Sto Helit, Death’s granddaughter, the female villains, Lady Sybil, the wife of policeman Sam Vimes, Eskarina from Equal Rites, Polly from Monstrous Regiment, werewolf Angua, Sacharissa Cripslock from The Truth, who may be her favourite Prachett heroine - actually, about the only heroine who doesn’t really get a chapter or part of a chapter is Tiffany Aching, although there is a brief mention of that part of the series, but in the context of other characters. That was a bit disappointing, but I suspect there will be another update at some stage and Tiffany will get her chapter.

It was fun to compare Tansy Rayner Roberts’ opinions with my own - and I have to say that, although I have read and reread these books, I didn’t discover them till I was well and truly into adulthood, so she had one up on me there.

Even if you’ve read the earlier edition of this book, it’s worth getting this one, and there is at least one new essay that wasn’t in the earlier book.

You can get it here on Amazon, and if you prefer a print copy, that, too, is available.

The YABBA Awards Ceremony 2018!

So, what are the YABBAs? The acronym stands for Young Australians’ Best Book Awards. Each state has its own version - this one is Victoria’s, though the nominees don’t have to be from Victoria. Children up to Year 9 can nominate and vote for their favourite books of the last ten years. There is a shortlist and then the winners are announced at a ceremony at this time of year. You don’t have to be on the shortlist to attend as a writer, though. You turn up, get fussed over, enjoy the ceremony, then sit at a signing table. 

Each year a different school hosts it. I did once ask if my school could be considered. “Sure!” I was told. “Do you have room for 300 kids?” Alas, I didn’t. My library was quite big, but 200 was the most we could cram into the space, not counting signing tables and the bookseller stall, and only if they all sat on the floor. We had no school hall either, so that was that. 

In fact, most of the host schools over the years have been private ones. Not only that, but they were hard to reach by public transport, although I did once take a group of older book club kids from my school because we could meet in the city and catch the tram. 

This year’s host was a state P-12 school in Mernda, an outer suburb of  Melbourne - in fact, a very outer suburb! The train journey took an hour from the city. But it was impressive, a school that has only been around for two years and looks as new as it is. The oldest kids are in Year 8, next year will go up to Year 9, etc. They had chosen polite, pleasant bookloving kids to show the guests to the places they needed to be. 

We were taken to the large, pleasant library, where coffee and cake were served before the ceremony began. I was pleasantly surprised to see some of my author friends there and others whom I admire. I had a lovely chat with Felice Arena, whom I’ve met once before and communicated with by email when he kindly answered some questions from my students on this blog. Felice is best known to the kids as the author of the Specky McGee series of novels about a young football player. Recently, he has started writing children’s historical fiction novels, one of which was on this year’s shortlist. Specky McGee couldn’t go on forever, after all, and the historical fiction is a delight. And he is loving the writing and research he is doing for those books. Interesting, I’ve only recently discovered that he was once an actor! Now he delights children with his fiction instead. 

I also had a talk with the librarian, Joy, who had come there from the western suburbs, where I have spent most of my working life. She is lucky enough to have a supportive principal, and got to choose how to set her library up. Once a librarian always a librarian, and I asked her to show me her catalogue. There wasn’t a catalogue computer in the library for the kids to look up stuff, because they have a Bring Your Own Device program, so the kids can use their own computers or tablet devices to look up books. I can only assume they’re from families which have a bit more money than the families of my students, many of whom couldn’t afford their own devices. 

The library was beautiful, very comfortable, and had lots of rooms off the main library, and a giant chess set, although not many books for such a large space, to be honest. They may be building up the collection, of course, probably are, though I’m not sure where the new books will go, especially when they finally have students up to Year 12. Still - nice to see a brand new school that is so enthusiastic about having a library! I wish Joy much happiness there. 

I also saw Carole Wilkinson, the author of the wonderful Dragonkeeper series, mother of YA author Lili Wilkinson, whose rom com novels I have reviewed on this blog, and she very kindly offered me a lift to her local railway station. 

Carole Wilkinson and me! 

Meredith Costain, whom I interviewed on this blog about a few months ago, was there. Meredith is the partner of my lovely publisher Paul Collins, and has edited my stuff before, so I know her well, and was on this year’s shortlist, but there was another much more exciting reason why she was there, as I discovered when we were escorted into the hall for the ceremony. 

Goodness, it was a spectacular event! It was held in what I assume was the gym, but a huge one. I’ve never seen one that size before. When we walked in, the kids were thrilled to see their favourite authors, and showed it, but they were happy to see the rest of us as well. I found myself offered several hands to high-five, which I did. 

There was a bunch of totally adorable primary kids singing their hearts out. We applauded, of course, and I also cheered, whereupon one cheeky little miss in the choir took a bow, bless her! A group of four older girls danced. 

The MC was David Linke, head of the YABBA committee, and he was very entertaining in his own right. There was a bit of comedy with two of the artists supposedly bringing in bags of votes to be counted(the voting was on line, of course) and dropping them, with bits of paper flying. 

Next there was a “Mr Squiggle” event, which they do every year, like the show that was on TV here for many years. What happened was that an artist from among the guests was invited up to meet the challenge of turning a child’s scribble into a drawing. One of them actually altered his drawing as he went to respond to the children’s guesses as to what it was. It ended up as a cartoon cockatoo. 

Then there was the event that had brought Meredith to the YABBAs. Until a few years ago, the head of YABBA was an amazing man called Graham Davey, whose day job was as a storyteller. He died very suddenly and now there is an award in his name presented each year to someone who has made a great contribution to Australian children’s literature. This year it was Meredith, who is a quiet achiever who never brags or does the “look at me!” thing. She told me afterwards she had only got the good news on Saturday - and the event was on Tuesday! Of course, we all clapped and cheered. 

Then it was time for the awards. That didn’t go for long. I’ll let you check the YABBA web site for the winners, just google it. 

After morning tea, we went to the signing tables. I’d done two things: brought book marks and mini-posters to sign and brought a few copies of Crime Time from my stash, which I asked the booksellers to put on their table. The kids did have autograph cards, so the queues were long. Eve; if they hadn’t heard of you, they were happy to get your autograph, and one even asked to have her photo taken with me! And that was fine, but I also wanted to promote my books, so I handed out the bookmarks and mini posters. The mini posters are great because kids stick them to their school books and that means more promotion, as their friends will ask about the book. Two kids went and bought Crime Time and came back to their books signed. In the end, I really only got back what I’d paid for those books, because the booksellers wanted 50%,  so I had to charge the full price, something I don’t usually do. But that book is there for kids to read, not to sit in my cupboard. I’m glad two more kids will be curling up with it! 

This time, poor Andy Griffiths finally got to have lunch. Last time I went, he was stuck at the signing table while the rest of us were being fed. This time, there was finally an announcement that while those in the current queue could stay, there would be no more signatures. Ironically, I think 

I was signing longer than he was this time! But not after the deadline. 

My friend George Ivanoff also left his signing table early, to do some activities which 

I kept hearing about from the other side of the hall, not sure what they were, as I was still facing long queues of children. 

Afterwards, we were fed and thanked with a little plastic tag which I promised to add to my key chain. Carole drove me to Clifton Hill station and we had a great chat along the way. She had written a new time slip novel, Inheritance(see my review) and gave me a copy from the back seat. So, guess what I was doing al, the way home on the train? 

A great day - and thanks to everyone who helped to make it that way! 

Inheritance by Carole Wilkinson. Melbourne, Black Dog, 2018

Fourteen year old Nic is left with her grandfather on the family property, Yaratgil, in Victoria’s Western district, while her musician father works on a cruise ship. Her mother has been gone since the day she was born. Yaratgil has been around since her mother’s ancestors, the Mitchells, arrived from Scotland in the 1830s and built it. Living with her grandfather is not easy and she has not found it easy, either, to make friends at her new school, as the Mitchell ancestors were not popular and anyone of that family is likely to be snubbed, even after a hundred years. She does become friends with a small group of kids who are pretty much outcasts themselves, including a boy called Thor, an indigenous boy whose hippie (white) mother sells New Age stuff in the small town. 

Then she finds something that enables her to time travel in the local  area - and she discovers, to her horror, that some of her ancestors did some dreadful things ...

The time-slip story works well. Moving around from one historical period to another, with different viewpoints, the mystery Nic has to solve eventually slots together like the stones she uses to time travel. She finds there are some things she can’t fix and others she can. Her new schoolfriend Thor has his own issues and the two of them work together to help each other. 

I liked the huge role historical research plays in this novel, and the mention of Victoria’s State Library, Public Records Office and the National Library’s Trove archive, which holds so many digital newspapers, and which I’ve used so often myself. It’s a novel set very much in the present day, with modern methods of looking stuff up. At one point, Thor is distressed that some important cuttings are missing, but Nic smiles and offers to introduce him to Trove. Missing physical information is no longer an issue in an adventure story. 

I liked the characters, including Nic’s grandfather, the ancestral Mitchell women and Nic’s friend Thor. I would have liked to see more of the friends known at school as the Weirdos, who are mentioned and help out at the end, but don’t play much role in the story. 

The historical massacre of the local indigenous clan is a very dark, but powerful, part of the book. I’m not giving away much here, as it’s hinted at early on. 

Despite the serious issues dealt with, there were definite touches of humour, such as Nic’s grandfather’s small herd of cattle, all given girls’ names, but slaughtered anyway to make the sausages he sells at a weekend market and keeps in the freezer, so that at any one time, he and Nic might be eating their way through Denise or Maggie. 

I read this very quickly, overnight. It’s not a difficult read. Interestingly, while the characters are fourteen, there isn’t any hint of romance between Nic and Thor. They are mature in their behaviour,  but still just good friends. 

Read this if you enjoyed Kate Constable’s Crow Country or Jackie French’s Daughter Of The Regiment. If you haven’t read these, but like time slip fiction, I recommend all three. 

Available from Booktopia  Book Depository and Amazon(currently only in Kindle, but keep an eye out.)  ht

Knight Life by Peter David - A Re-Read

I’ve been discovered plenty of my old books, either on a clean-up at home or on the shelves in my old bedroom. A recent one is Knight Life by Peter David, which I must have brought from home and forgotten about, because it’s the 2002 edition and I left my parents’ home long before that.

Anyway, I found it and took it home and I’ve re-read it!

What do I mean by the 2002 edition? The original version, which I’ve also read, was written in the days of typewriters and was about 30,000 words shorter. The author explains, in his introduction to this edition, that at one stage he was working on a script for a film version that was never made and decided it was out of date and could do with improvement.

If you’re into comics, you will probably have read this author’s work. He has also done several Star Trek novels and scripted some Babylon 5 episodes, including that funny one where the space station gets a merchandise shop which upsets station commander John Sheridan when he realises it’s selling John Sheridan teddy bears(he tosses one out the airlock). But this novel was my first encounter with this author, and I picked it up among a pile of Arthurian themed novels I was reading at the time.

So, what’s it about? King Arthur returns, but not in the way we usually think of it. No galloping out from his sleep with his knights, no returning to save Britain in its darkest days. In fact, at one point, he comments that we could be on the verge of a golden age if we wanted it. And he’s not in Britain either, he’s in New York City, along with Merlin, who escaped from his own cave because he has been living backwards and is now a young boy, so small enough to slip through the cracks. Both of them have managed to keep up to date in their caves, so aren’t completely surprised by what they see.  Now Arthur has to decide what to do with his life. Leading is what he does best. It’s a bit early to be trying for President, so, with Merlin’s help(faking computer records), he decides to stand, as an independent, for Mayor of New York. But he and Merlin aren’t the only ones who have survived into the twenty-first century. There’s Percival the Grail Knight, who has aged, but is still around due to having drunk from the Grail, and makes a good treasurer for the campaign. There is a re-born Guinevere who is a very good personal assistant and press secretary. She has her own problems, though. And there are Morgan and Mordred...

Odd that everyone from Arthur’s time still around is not only living in the US but in the same part of it(the furthest from New York we get is New Jersey), but never mind. I found myself enjoying it all over again and I can’t help wishing that they had made that film after all, because I’d have liked to see Jason Carter, who played that lovely Ranger Marcus Cole in Babylon 5, as Arthur. The description of Arthur certainly sounded like him, but he’s rather too old for the role now.

This isn’t the only novel in which Arthur goes forward in time; Arthur, King, written by another American with screenplay experience, has Arthur chasing Mordred into World War II. While there he meets and falls in love with a British doctor called Jenny... That was much like the Time Machine movie, Time After Time. And he becomes a pilot, learning how to take off, but never getting the hang of landing. That would also have made a good movie, perhaps with Kenneth Branagh as Arthur.

Anyway, both are worth reading, though you may have to get Arthur, King from ABEBooks. Knight Life is easily available from Book Depository, along with Peter David’s other books. 

The Doctor And The YA Novelist!

Just a quick post. I’ve now seen Rosa, this week’s episode of Dr Who, and was impressed both with the episode in general and the co-author specifically.

As you probably know, it concerns the story of Rosa Parks, whose place in history is about to be sabotaged by a time travelling criminal, and the Doctor and her companions have to put history back. It’s occurred to me that this is why the TARDIS brought them there instead of Sheffield. Early in the episode, the Doctor yells at the TARDIS for bringing them to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, instead of Sheffield 2018. Now we know why, otherwise you’d have to really suspend disbelief that they just happened to be in the right place at the right time to fix it. I had a great chuckle at the Doctor’s mentioning she’d lent Elvis a mobile phone - it must be the kind the earlier incarnation handed Rose, and perhaps it happened during that Christmas special when the Doctor found himself engaged to Marilyn Monroe...

What I enjoyed was that the companions all get a task to do to make things run properly. They don’t just follow the Doctor or even follow her instructions - they get their own ideas. They don’t need her breathing down their necks. When things go wrong, they don’t freeze, they improvise. And they insist on participating even when the Doctor urges them to return to the safety of the TARDIS, because after all, Rosa Parks can’t just get away, can she?

There was a lot of humour in what was still a serious story, and it worked. I think this will be a good team.

Now, why did I mention the co-author of this script? Well, it was none other than British writer  Malorie Blackman, author of many wonderful YA novels, including some that were dramatised for TV. we had some of  her books in my library and the kids did enjoy them. She was the British Children’s Laureate in 2013. I met her in the lift at Reading Matters one year, but was too tongue-tied to speak.

And now she’s writing Dr Who! I am so very excited!

A Ghost In My Suitcase - The play!

So, yesterday I went to see A Ghost In My Suitcase the play, based on the novel by the wonderful Melbourne writer, Gabrielle Wang. It was performed by the Barking Gecko theatre company, a troupe from Western Australia. Here is a link to an interview she did with some of my students about this book.

I’ve read all her novels apart from the Our Australian Girl ones, but this one was very special. It’a about a girl, Celeste, who goes to China to stay with her grandmother and scatter her mother’s ashes. She discovers that her grandmother, Por Por, is a ghost hunter - a gift she shares. Por Por has an apprentice, Ting Ting(who now has her own novel), who at first resents Celeste, till they have to work together. By the way, Por Por also appears, still ghost busting, in The  Pearl Of Tiger Bay, an novel set in Australia!

The play was performed at the Melbourne Arts Centre. I bought one of the best tickets since they were only a few dollars more than the cheaper ones, so had a great view! There was a small cast - Por Por, Ting Ting and Celeste, with another three actors playing the rest of the roles, which they did impressively, and a very simple set made up of big boxes with projections for the places they went. There must have been some puppeteers involved in such things as flying sheets, and I saw the shadow of one, but they worked smoothly and well.

The twelve year old girls, Celeste and Ting Ting, were played by adults, but it didn’t seem to matter. I loved Por Por, the wise grandmother, and the actress who played the role.

A lovely play! I hope it’s turned into a movie eventually, but I have to say, it won’t have the magic of the stage show. 

Look What I Found on My Shelves - Ephraim Kishon!

On the shelves of my old bedroom, I found another treasure - one of my collection of books by Ephraim Kishon. Ephraim Kishon was a Hungarian immigrant who arrived in the early days of the Israeli state and made the Hebrew language his own, to the extent that he added words to the language. He even turned the name of a street in Tel Aviv into a verb. Dizengoff Street is one of Tel Aviv’s major streets, where people wander around, shopping, going to restaurants, going to the theatre and the movies. His verb, “to Dizengoff” means “to wander around Dizengoff Street.” People use it. 

His humorous stories appeared for many years in the Jerusalem Post. Some of them were filmed. One was The Big Dig, based on a short story of the same name. A lunatic escapes from a mental hospital and steals a drill, with which he starts drilling on Allenby Road, another major Tel Aviv Street. Nobody knows who he is, but everyone assumes it’s legitimate roadwork and that someone else ordered it, so he is not only allowed to get on with it, but his way is cleared and traffic diverted. In the end, he hits the sea, which gushes into the trench, forming the new Allenby Canal. (And, in the short story, Tel Aviv is declared “the Venice of the Middle East”). It was a hilarious film too. 

A favourite of mine was one in which the author discovers there is only one box of chocolates in the entire country, and it’s well past the use-by date! You know how you get chocolates for a gift and don’t open the box, but end up giving it away? Well, what if everybody else did the same?

I don’t know if you’ll find any of his collections outside ABEbooks these days, but it’s worth looking them up there. 

Meanwhile, I’ll happily settle into this one! 

Just Unearthed... The Witch’s Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff!

Lurking on the shelves in my old bedroom at my mother’s place was this book which I can’t remember even buying let alone reading! A “new” Rosemary Sutcliff book is always welcome, though.

It’s set in the 12th century, some years before the war between King Stephen and Empress Maud, that war which Ellis Peters writes about in her Brother Cadfael series. King Henry I is still on the throne. A young boy, Lovel, a villain, is driven from his village soon after his grandmother’s death, because he has a hunchback and the superstitious villagers hate him. His grandmother was the village wise woman, but while they accepted a witch among them when she was useful, her disabled grandson is another matter.

Lovely finds his way to a monastery, where he is looked after and makes himself useful, discovering, eventually, that he is indeed the “mender” his grandmother told him he was. He learns to read, helps in the herbalist’s garden and the infirmary and eventually decides to take his vows.

But someone inspiring comes into his life: Rahere, first the King’s jongleur, then the founder of the hospital of St Bartholomew in Smithfield. Rahere was a real historical figure. He has his own novel, St Bartholomew’s Man by Mary Delorme, whose son sent me a copy in PDF a while back. In this novel, Rahere says to Lovel that he simply felt that there had to be something better than making the king laugh after supper.

Lovel goes to join him in his project just before taking his final vows, and helps another young boy to fulfil his own dream.

I read it pretty much in a single sitting. It’s a slender volume, only about twenty thousand words, if that, aimed at children, an easy read.

 It’s easily available from the publisher, Penguin, or in ebook. 

The Idylls Of The Queen by Phyllis Ann Karr: a Retroreview

I unearthed this on the bookshelves in my old room at my mother's place. I read it when it first came out and loved it. I had actually been looking for it only recently, as I had a craving to re-read it, but couldn't find it at home.

This story is inspired by an incident in Thomas Malory's Middle English romance Le Morte D'Arthure, a book I read when I was at university. In the original, it goes for about two or three pages. Phyllis Ann Karr has turned it into a novel-length whodunnit.

Queen Guenevere has arranged a small dinner for a couple of dozen of her husband's Round Table knights. All is going well until a young knight, Sir Patrise, drops dead after eating a poisoned apple. The fruit bowl was brought out for the benefit of Sir Gawaine, who loves fruit, so it is suspected by most that Gawaine was the intended victim. However, Mador De La Porte, Patrise's cousin, insists that the Queen is responsible and demands her death. Nobody who was at the dinner can accept his challenge to trial by combat. Her husband can't fight for her, though he offers to, because he has to be the judge. Her lover Lancelot is missing.

It's up to Sir Kay the Seneschal, who is in love with her and, in any case, is quite sure of her innocence, to act as the detective. While several knights, including Kay, go hunting for Lancelot, Kay and the king's son Mordred travel around interviewing everyone who might be a suspect in the matter, from the King's sister Morgana on. As they do so, a whole lot of unsolved past mysteries unwind, including who actually killed the mother of the Orkney brothers Gawaine, Gareth, Gaheris, Agravaine and Mordred.

Basically, it's a journey through Malory. You can get away with not having read the Morte, but if you have, it means more.

It's interesting to see the author's interpretation of the various characters. Mordred is a sad character, a lot more sympathetic than in the traditional versions. Gawaine is more like the lovable hero of Gawain and The Green Knight than Malory's unpleasant Gawain, and is still wearing that stupid green sash to remind him of his fallibility. She does not like some characters you're supposed to like, such as Gareth aka Beaumains, irritating to Kay, who considers him dishonest.  Lancelot is truly awful. You do see them all through Kay's eyes, in fact. Malory's Kay is the boor everyone loves to hate. In this novel, he is the one with the brains. And she doesn't rewrite the characters - she just shows them from another angle so you can see her point.

Ms Karr doesn't bother with history. It's Malory, okay? It happens in a Britain that never was, in the fifth century, with invading Saxons, but also the fifteenth century in which Malory's book was written - and set.

There's magic in it. Nimue, Lady of the Lake, is able to speed up the group's travel time. She actually lives under a lake. Morgan can see images in a bowl of water, though with limitations. The views Kay and his friends see only give a certain amount of information they can interpret.

You do have to like both historical fantasy and crime fiction to be able to appreciate this, but I personally loved what Phyllis Ann Karr did with it. On the other hand, if you have read Malory you'll know whodunnit. Fortunately, I'd forgotten.

I assumed that this book was probably long out of print, but you can get it from Amazon and Book Depository, though with a new cover.

Highly recommended!

Just Been To See... The Woman Who Fell To Earth

Okay. I’ve been a Dr Who fan since my childhood. I missed quite a bit of the Baker era when it was on, because my parents insisted on watching the news on commercial stations and those clashed. But I’ve caught up over the years, especially since DVDs became available. I’ve also been able to pick up  the earlier ones, from William Hartnell onwards. They’re doing amazing stuff these days, putting together the bits left and animating the rest. Fortunately a lot of the original cast are still around, so can be asked to do the voices. 

When I discovered that the first episode of the Jodie Whittaker era was being presented on the  big screen at my local cinema, I bought a ticket and went. And I must say, it was the right decision. It felt like a movie, if a short one. When you’ve grown up in the era of the original Who, you’re used to low budget, to wobbly sets and aliens who look as if they have zippers up their backs, even if they haven’t. And you’re okay with it, because on the whole, the writing makes up for the tiny budget. These days, there is a lot more money and there is still plenty of good writing. Not always - I think, for example, that keeping on bringing back the Weeping Angels was a mistake. None of those episodes was anywhere near as good as the first, “Blink”. But plenty all the same. 

So, what was it like, apart from good to look at? 

Firstly, if you haven’t seen it, I will try to avoid too many spoilers, but I have to say, this still felt like the Doctor to me. She has the right cheekiness which shows up in the presence of the villain. There were touches of other versions of the Doctor that I recognised, but she will be her own person when the series gets going. Remember, it is the regeneration episode. Speaking of which, this is the first time I’ve heard the Doctor actually describe what regeneration feels like. No, I won’t tell you, because spoilers, but I loved it. And she still doesn’t approve of violence. I could almost hear Doctor 9 in one scene where she admonishes a character for doing it. (It did help that she had a northern accent like his.) 

Secondly, the new Companions will be fascinating. There are two young things who went to school together and an older man who is going to be interesting in his own right. It will be good to see them show what they can do. 

Thirdly, the storyline. A bit silly, but probably no sillier than, say, Rose, the episode that introduced the companion of that name, certainly no sillier than The Christmas Invasion! 

There’s not a lot more I can say without spoilers, but it was a nice evening and fun to spend it with fellow fans who applauded or cheered at the right moments! 

Over on Twitter right now, people are trying to persuade Neil Gaiman to write an episode after he said he liked it and that Jodie Whittaker felt like the Doctor to him. I imagine this season is all written, but you never know what might happen next. 

So, what did you think, if you’ve seen it? 

Book Blogger Hop: Urban Fantasy Or Horror?

This week’s Book Blogger Hop asks about your Halloween reading - do you prefer urban fantasy or horror? And why?

Urban fantasy, of course, any time of year. I won’t be going into too much detail here, firstly because it’s not Halloween, and I want to keep a proper post for then, secondly because I have two Halloween posts, or rather, one Halloween post and one simply written that day to celebrate a family birthday of my bookliving great-niece Dezzy. Expect more.

Did you know, by the way, that the Aztecs had their own celebration of their beloved dead around that time of year? It went for two weeks and when the Spanish came, and Aztecs converted, they talked them into cutting it back to two days. 

And in Malaysia they do it in August? And bobbing for apples was Roman? They brought the apple tree to Britain, along with the custom. 

Now, urban fantasy vs horror. I’m not a great horror fan. There are horror writers I respect greatly, such as Stephen King and Dan Simmons. I don’t read much of their fiction, though. I read Simmons’ Hyperion, a wonderfully atmospheric novel which has been called horror despite being set on another world in the 29th century. I’ve also read his science fiction. But Carrion Comfort, which featured mind vampires, was so very good that I decided horror fiction was not for me. If I care about the characters, I really prefer them not to be killed off unless there’s a very good reason other than “that’s what you do in horror fiction.”

 I’ve read only a small amount of Stephen King’s work - short fiction and a couple of novels - but I actually prefer his non fiction. He does some wonderful introductions and I loved his history of horror fiction, Danse Macabre. 

Of course I love some of the classic horror fiction I’ve read, such as Dracula - and did you know children’s writer Edith Nesbit wrote horror fiction for adults, as did Rudyard Kipling? More of this on Halloween. 

But urban fantasy is much more for me. I discovered it through Charles De Lint. His Newford stories have European fairies sharing the streets with Native American creatures. In Moonheart, which is set in Canada, where he lives, we learn that the Native American spirits were given the boot by European fairies who came with the European humans, and have withdrawn into an Otherworld. Also, the bard Taliesin sailed to North America and is still around. The heroine is a chain smoker, which works out well when she meets a Native American spirit and offers her a cigarette! It’s considered a sharing of sacred smoke. That book also had its heroine listening to folk bands I hadn’t heard of at the time. 

In Jack The Giant Killer (Jack is a girl), the fairies and other spirits are all over the city of Ottawa. There are giants living in a skating rink and the Seelie Court is under Parliament House. How could I not be delighted and enchanted at the notion of sharing a city with creatures of the Otherworld? 

Newford is the most amazing, though. It’s a city somewhere in North America which has both fairies and Native American beings - the local park is also a forest of the fairies. You sort of step sideways from one into the other. And it’s a city of the arts. There’s folk music of all kinds being played regularly in its cafes. There are artists - painters, musicians, writers. I’d move there tomorrow if it was real! And the Newford stories did get me into bead looming, using Native American designs. 

Barbara Hambly wrote a trilogy of portal fantasies, the Antryg Windrose Chronicles, featuring a wizard inspired by the Doctor(Tom Baker incarnation). By the end of the trilogy, he was stuck in our world with his human lover, a computer programmer called Joanna. So the author has written and self published some shorter pieces about their adventures in this world, and those are certainly urban fantasy. 

When I was working on my YA novel Wolfborn, which was not urban fantasy, I did a lot of research about Celtic folklore - and discovered the urban fantasy of Melissa Marr, the Wicked Lovely series. These Faerie folk are punks. They aren’t always nice, and that includes the good guys! Actually, they’re mostly not nice, even the good guys. They’re scary. (Scary is what folklore fairies are, by the way. Traditional fairies would eat Tinkerbell for breakfast) And they have a tradition of wearing tattoos. That last part was made up by the author because she likes tattoos, but the rest of it was well researched, and the bibliography she provided at the end of her books included the books I’d been reading for my Wolfborn research. It helps that Melissa Marr is a PhD. 

I suppose you could think of Melissa Marr’s work as horror, but I’d call it urban fantasy on steroids. And there’s enough romance that teenage girls love it. Those at my school did, certainly. 

There’s more, which I’ll leave for a later post. But yes, urban fantasy, please! 

The Inky Awards 2018!

If you love children's and YA books and you think the kids should have a say in awards, there are the YABBAs, of course, in Victoria, and other awards in other states, but the State Library's Centre for Youth Literature has the Inkys.

The main difference is that any child or teen under a certain age whose school subscribes to the YABBAs can nominate(and the subscription is so cheap that even my school, with a tiny library budget, joined). The Inkys has a committee of teenagers to read a long list and decide on a short list. Then any child can vote, on the web site Insideadog.  This site has just been updated and is free to join for all young booklovers.

The CYL chooses a new committee every year. They must have quite a few applications, because some of my top students have applied and, so far, no luck. Still, somebody has to get the job, so if you have students who might enjoy this, get going to the web site!

So, what are this year's winners? There is the Golden Inky for Australian books and the Slver Inky for overseas books.

This year's Silver Inky is being presented to The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. I have read this and found it well worth all the hype it has received. And there's a film coming soon! You shouldn't have any trouble buying a copy in your local bookshop or on line, or in ebook.

The Golden Inky went to Paper Cranes Don't Fly by Peter Vu.  I haven't read this yet (The first print was sold out recently, but I've been promised a copy for reviewing) but I'm particularly pleased about this one, because it was published by Ford Street, my absolute favourite publisher of all time. It's a small press, so unfortunately you may need to buy it from the publisher if you live outside of Australia. It has been compared to John Green's The Fault In Our Stars, only written by a very young man. I am told he was in his teens when he wrote this debut novel. A future Will Kostakis, perhaps?

If you live in Australia, you should be able to buy a copy in any good bookshop once it comes back into print.

Congratulations to both authors and their publishers, who must be very proud of them!

Just Finished Reading... Spotted Dog by Kerry Greenwood. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2018

It has been seven years since the last Corinna Chapman novel, but in the world of Corinna, it’s still summer of the year the original story began, soon after the events of Cooking The Books, in which Corinna was working as part of the catering team for the cast of a soap opera pilot, and solving some mysteries that felt like they came from a soapie.

In case you’re not familiar with this series, it’s by the author of the Phryne Fisher novels, but set in the CBD of modern Melbourne instead of the seaside suburb St Kilda in the 1920s. Unlike Phryne, Corinna Chapman is a large lady, rather like the author, and enjoys cooking, when she isn’t running her bakery downstairs from her flat in Insula, a Roman-themed apartment block in the middle of Melbourne. She isn’t really a sleuth in her own right, but having a private eye boyfriend means she is always solving mysteries with him.

This one involves a missing explosives sniffer dog and his former soldier handler, an Afghanistan veteran. There’s also someone breaking into Insula, hunting for a religious relic, a bunch of young actors rehearsing in the Mars apartment and a computer hacker doing nasty things to the computer belonging to the Pandamus family, owners of Cafe Delicious.

It’s a delightful read, and if you’ve been following the series, some things happen finally. Two likeable regular characters become an item. Timbo, Daniel and Corinna’s “chauffeur”, who was once a getaway driver before being rescued by Daniel, Corinna’s boyfriend, becomes their...getaway driver! Not only that, he finally eats with them. As usual, there are some red herrings along the way.

I found it very easy and comfortable to slip back into this universe after reading and re-reading the first six books in the series. To be honest, I am finding I prefer them to the Fisher novels, which were wonderful, but the later ones were not quite as enjoyable, for me at least, as the earlier novels. Most violence happens offstage. (In this one, the main violence involves an enraged naked Corinna dealing with a hapless burglar...) There are few dead bodies in this series, which truly deserves to be called a “cosy.”  The mysteries are about missing people and, in one case, who has been vandalising the high quality chocolates from a shop down the road.

As usual, the novel ends with a party at Insula, and there are recipes from the novel to try. They are, as always, simple and based on stuff Kerry Greenwood cooks in her own kitchen. I wouldn’t mind trying the title recipe and onion pan bread, but there are others...

Currently Rereading... Narnia!

I was sorting my shelves a while ago and found my one volume Chronicles Of Narnia. It’s in chronological order rather than order of publication, so that you can read the stories from The Magician’s Nephew to The Last Battle. I’ve decided to read it that way. I’m currently rereading Prince Caspian and thinking what it might be like to be a Pevensie child who remembers what it was like to be an adult - and then, by the way, have the Lion tell you that you’re too old now to return to Narnia.

The author does have some mercy on the kids, by suggesting that it’s only when they return to Narnia  that they remember properly and can do all that amazing stuff, such as when Edmund and Susan show their skills to Trumpkin the Dwarf, who has had trouble believing he is going to get any help from a bunch of children. But while they’re in Narnia, they can remember a whole life spent there, the battles they fought and won, the life at Cair Paravel. Heck, in The Horse And His Boy Susan was even considering getting married! Fortunately for her and the series, she didn’t. It might have been interesting, though, if she had married while in Narnia - would it have resulted in its own “problem of Susan”? (This is the discussion people are having about the author’s unfairness to Susan in The Last Battle. He was already being unfair to her in Prince Caspian, mind you. I don’t think. he liked her much)

But what would it be like to know what it is to be an adult and suddenly be a child again? A child going to school, with only one adult who respects and believes you, because he was there himself?

I probably should wait till I’ve reread the lot before going into detail in a separate post.

But that question bugs me.

What do you think?

Book Blogger Hop: One Book At A Time Or Multiple Books?

This weeek’s Book Blogger Hop asks if you’re reading one book at a time or more than one.

Anyone doing a book blog is likely to be reading many more than one. Firstly, if you have to review a book, you are likely to be reviewing more than one, if you want to stay up to date. Secondly, if you’re a passionate booklover, it’s just too hard to stick to one.

In my case, it’s definitely multiple books, especially since I got my iPad and iBooks. I just can’t defer gratification any more. A book that interests me can be downloaded immediately instead of having to wait till I get to the bookshop. Besides, it means carrying a whole library with me and happily wondering what I’ll read over lunch or dinner or on the train...

There’s a massive TBR pile of review books, which is why I’m not currently taking anything apart from regular publishers I deal with.

There is my cleanup, which I’ve been doing since earlier this year, when I became a free woman getting a very good superannuation pension. During my sorting and throwing out, donation and recycling, I’ve unearthed books I’d forgotten I had. Putting those already read on the shelves, I’ve discovered others I never got around to reading and started finally getting stuck into them. I finished Susan Cooper’s Green Boy yesterday, soon after John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice: The Lost Tales. Time now to get stuck into the first of the prequels, Tournament At Gorlan, which follows on immediately from a story in Lost Tales. I began yesterday. I’ve finally begun Joe Haldeman’s The Hemingway Hoax, which has been sitting on my shelves for years. The Chronicles Of Narnia is sitting in my smallest room. I’m halfway through The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, trying to decide if I might skip over The Horse And His Boy, my least favourite of the series.

Bedtime is for comfort reading. That means stuff I’ve already read, preferably many times. It soothes and it means I can close the book without wondering how it’s going to end. Harry Potter. Kerry Greenwood’s crime fiction. Terry Pratchett. And some non fiction, history for preference.

What am I saying here? If I did it one book at a time, I’d be reading for the rest of my life and still not be finished with what I have, let alone other books. So many books, way too little time...