It's not every morning that you have breakfast at Parliament ...

And this morning's was a very special event, to mark the 20th anniversary of Duffy's Books in Homes. As well as being served a delicious breakfast, we got to watch videos about the Books in Homes programme and listen to some great speakers, including Ben Carson, a black American paediatric neurosurgeon who was raised in a solo parent household with very little money. He tells the story of how his mother made him and his brother read two books a week, and write her a report on them for her, instead of watching so much television, and he credits reading with helping him out of poverty and setting him on the path to becoming a doctor.

The person I was sitting beside told me about a movie made about his life, called Gifted hands. Something else to put on the list of movies to watch. And now I've just checked, and the movie is based on a book - another book to read!

 ! 

Christine Fernyhough and Alan Duff, who started the Books in Homes programme, also spoke, and pupils from Camberley School in Hastings - which saw the first ever Books in Schools visit - made a special trip down to Wellington to be present and sang three songs for us, including the Duffy song. I hope they enjoyed themselves, because they had to sit for a long time listening to grown-ups' speeches! But it was very nice to find this newspaper article about their visit.

Tequila Smith (left), Sativa Hooper, Sebastian Kohiti, Messines Roanaki, Kaiba Thompson of Camberley School, Hastings, are going to Wellington to celebrate Duffy Books in Homes' 20th anniversary. Photo/Warren Buckland

You can read about the history of the books in homes programme here. Twenty years of operation and ten million books distributed to children from low-income families are two great milestones to have achieved. 

NZ Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults

I have loved being shortlisted for this year's NZ Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults - a very special year to be shortlisted: the last of NZ Post's long and faithful sponsorship - and it was a fabulous evening on Monday night. It felt very special to be there in the company of amazing writers and illustrators like Joy Cowley, Elizabeth Knox, Fleur Beale, Fifi Colston, Melinda Szymanik, Donovan Bixley and many others - of course not forgetting Vasanti Unka, the winner of the picture book section and overall winner of Margaret Mahy Book of the Year, whose astonishment and delight was a joy to behold. If you don't know Vasanti's work, or haven't yet seen The Boring Book, you can see some pictures from it on her blog here. I'm very proud that Vasanti once illustrated one of my plays for the School Journal.

I felt even luckier to be there, given the judges' comments about the very high standard of non fiction entries this year, and I loved what Joy Cowley said on accepting the Junior Fiction award for her novel Dunger. In her usual warm and generous manner, Joy said that all the books that had made the shortlist were winners - and that was how I felt!

I had spent Monday morning at Devonport Primary School talking to three different groups of students who were all wonderful listeners and came up with some great questions, some of which had me stumped for an answer. Then I came home to this equal wonderful feedback - getting thank you's like this is one of the best things about being a writer:

• I am here at Devonport school.And why am I at Devonport school you ask? well Philippa werry is coming! I know what your thinking,`I can't believe she's coming! “Here she comes!” “act cool” “we’re on the air”

• thank you for coming to our school.I loved the information about your book,s. my favorite book was the one about the the zoo and the chimps tea party.i hope you come again . 

•  Thank you so much for coming and showing all your books and telling us other stuff. I really appreciate it. P.S. Come back SOON!!

•  Thank you for coming to Devonport primary school. I really like your non fiction story's they really fascinate me.
•  Thank you so much for coming to our school/Devonport primary school. I Wonder if you could maybe write a new book. And send it to our class you are sooo awesome.
•  Thank you so much for coming to Devonport primary school.It was awesome having you here. I'm definitely going to read one of your books
•  Hi. I Really appreciate you coming to our school. I come from Devonport school. I love your books.
• thank you for coming to devonport primary school. I really appreciated it. I have been wirting a few stories that I was hoping to show you. Here is one called the final ninja
•  thank you for comeing to Devonport i liked the Harbour bridge story please come back again

And my favourite:

•  Hi.thank you for coming to Devonport primary school. When we came to see you in room 3 you talked like an angel.

So I am very happy to be home, and I may not have won an award, but I have a halo! What more could you ask??

Pupils and teachers at Devonport Primary School head for the shelters during an air raid drill, 1941-42. Alexander Turnbull Library, Reference: War Effort Collection, PA-Coll-0783-2-0057
(This is one of the images I chose for the back of my Lighthouse family book.) 

The statue of the "untidy soldier", also in Devonport - a photo of this memorial appears in my Anzac Day book.  

Going to Gallipoli

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be posting on a separate blog about Going to Gallipoli.

I'll be at Anzac Cove on Anzac Day with the Gallipoli Volunteer Program. This picture shows some of last year's group - but we'll be wearing the same gear!

Gavin Bishop: The mouth of the whale (the power of pictures)

Janet Frame Memorial Lecture 2014

Gavin Bishop

The mouth of the whale (the power of pictures)

Gavin Bishop is the 2013-2014 President of Honour of the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA). On Monday 10 March, he delivered the annual Janet Frame Memorial Lecture, a literary “state of the nation” address. 

This year, for the first time, the Janet Frame Memorial Lecture was included as part of the Writers Week programme, which also featured some wonderful talks and workshops with children’s and young adult writers, illustrators and designers such as Jack Lasenby, Ulf Stark, Leo Timmers, Elizabeth Knox and Aleksandra and Daniel Mizielinsky. 

Gavin’s talk was entertaining, evocative and provocative, right from the beginning when he commented that his appointment as NZSA President of Honour was  “daringly different” because writers for children aren’t always taken as seriously as others in the literary world. He spoke in praise of picture books, but was clear about the challenges faced by those who write and illustrate them.

Many people think they know what a picture book is, but opinions vary widely. To Gavin, a picture book is like a little movie with a storyboard structure that moves through time (as a movie does) and uses text as a movie uses dialogue. He traces his lifelong love of movies back to the time when his parents took him, aged four, to see Pinocchio at the Picture Palace in Invercargill. One image from that movie - the gigantic open mouth of the whale - lodged in his mind and he has never forgotten it. The whale’s open mouth became a touchstone in his life, a reminder of the power of a picture to stay with children forever.

Gavin holds firm views about picture books, in terms of both content and publication. His own pictures have to “work hard”; they should provide “fresh new ways of seeing the ordinary” and the finished book should be “a delight to the senses.” He believes that the best picture books are produced by one person, and decries poor production values that leave many books looking like “shadows of their potential selves”. Even if children are amused by bodily functions and catchy tunes, he queries the need to preserve such topics in print.

Picture book illustrators face particular challenges. Their work is often viewed as being of lesser importance. Illustrators are commonly given second billing and are not mentioned at all in the weekly best seller lists. The royalty split between author and illustrator is usually 50:50, which Gavin feels doesn’t reflect the hard work put in by the illustrator. Up until 2004, books of fewer than 48 pages (ie most picture books) didn’t meet the criteria for the Public Lending Right. Picture book writers are seldom successful in obtaining Creative NZ funding, applying for residencies or winning major literary awards.

But there are signs of a more hopeful future. Today’s picture book illustrators are producing some amazing work, and there is more support available in the form of tuition and awards, including the LIANZA Russell Clark Illustration Award, the Mallinson Rendel Illustration Award and the Storylines Joy Cowley Award and Gavin Bishop Award. Gavin’s ending was hopeful and optimistic: “I can see the sky above picture book land full of fireworks and sky rockets… The Mouth of the Whale forever open to astonishment and delight.”

Question time afterwards gave the audience some sense of Gavin’s generosity in mentoring and sharing his experience, as he offered advice and explained some of his working methods.

There was more discussion about the idea of a Children’s Laureate, who could who not only raise the profile of children’s writing and illustrating but also focus on literacy issues and the importance of reading. Gavin said that there was a lot of support for the idea here and all that was needed was money. The Australian Children’s Laureate scheme only began a few years ago but already much has been achieved there, and other countries such as England and Ireland also have a high-profile Children’s Laureate.  

You can see Gavin Bishop’s wonderful website here, or listen to several interviews with him on Radio New Zealand, including You Call This Art? - Part 6.

Writers Week on Tuesday: questions of history

The real make-believe world

The original panel for this session had to be changed when Rachel Kushner became unavailable for the Festival, but the choice of Jamaican-born Kei Miller was a smart one. His writing fitted the topic perfectly and made a good match with that of Jaspreet Singh.

  

Anne Kennedy introduced the two of them as authors of "award winning stories that are very much grounded in the real world" and posed a series of thought-provoking questions. Why write historical events into fiction, rather than non fiction? and What can fiction do that non fiction can't?  was an excellent place to start. Kei Miller described his view of history ("history never ends") and how fiction  seems "an important strand, a way to account for the past and to help unpick its multiplicities and complexity." Jaspreet Singh talked about the November 1984 genocide against the Sikhs in India and wondered "how do you write about burned books and burned bodies of burned people?" For him, it was important to tell the story in a way that allowed people who didn't know about it to engage with that time, and also allowed for mourning and healing.

Anne asked them both about the technique of using the lens of the present to look back at the past, whether their experience of living in a different country from the land of their birth (Canada for Jaspreet, Scotland for Kei) has affected their view of events, the place of humour in their work and how they carry out research. Kei Miller said, "A lot of my writing is the process of hiding that research - I want you to think I just speak like that, that the poem just rolls off the tongue when I get up."

It was great to hear them both give a short reading as well. The piece Kei Miller chose (about a house fire, that wasn't what it seemed) was especially powerful, but he was also funny and witty and very engaging to listen to - and he must have already won over a large number of listener at his earlier session, because some of this books had sold out at the Unity stand.

Silence: a Christian history

In the afternoon, more reflections on history from Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of History of the Church at the University of Oxford, talking about "the sheer utter strangeness of the past".

MacCulloch has presented three BBC television series and talked about his theory of "popularising" (or as he prefers to call it, "opening up") history, on the basis that academic historians are paid by taxes and ought to give something back. History is everyone's property. We all tell each other historical stories and the danger lies in the bad stories (like those told in Nazi Germany or Rwanda), so historians need to tell the right stories, "or as near as we will ever get."

He calls himself a "candid friend to Christianity" (in fact he is still a Church of England deacon) and describes Christianity as a very young and still developing religion, with change being forced by social change. His book Silence looks at " silence throughout Christianity", with both positive and negative connotations - the "good, holy" types of silence such as monasticism and meditation, but also the "bad" types such as sexual abuse cover-ups.

"People without stories are lost," he said. I'm sure I've heard similar words from other writers throughout the Festival. 

Ideas that go bang!

Lovely session this morning with Belgian picture book illustrator, Leo Timmers, another of the Writers Week speakers who are published by Gecko Press. His titles with them include Bang and Who's driving?  I've seen both of these books, but will have to read them again in light of some of his comments.

Leo talked about his way of gathering ideas (not using a notebook, but only in the quiet of his studio), why he prefers painting to illustrating on the computer, why he uses animal characters and what makes a good picture book - something he thinks that reviewers often miss. "When reviewers review books, I can often tell they haven't looked." A picture book should be "visual story telling", not an illustrated story. 

He further explained this by describing some of the spreads in Bang, which on the surface is a simple tale about a series of car accidents - but when you look closer, there is so much more going on, in the colours, and the stories behind the surface story (the hungry rabbits, the lovestruck cats, the chickens rescued from a terrible fate.)

One of the questions asked was about whether Leo sees some underlying theme to all his stories, and he thinks perhaps it's identity: wanting to fit in, to find out who you are.

If you haven't come across any of his books, you should hunt them out - find a child to read them to - and look below the surface story. The child may well spot what's going on before you do! 

Sunday at Writers Week

Sunday morning, an early start for the 9.15am Creating Readers session. This involved Kids' Lit Quiz creator Wayne Mills and early childhood specialist Celeste Harrington, talking about the results of a survey carried out amongst last year's Kids' Lit Quiz contestants. 

Quizmaster Wayne Mills at a New Zealand quiz

These children are in Years 6-8 and aged from 10-12, and are already keen and confident readers. Between March-June 2013, nearly 1600 of them from around New Zealand filled out a survey asking them to list the book they were currently reading and also their favourite authors and titles. Wayne and Celeste spent hours entering and analysing the data and have come up with some fascinating preliminary results. They hope to produce a paper on their findings, and perhaps carry out a repeat survey at some stage in the future.

Some of the findings that were immediately obvious were the predominance of series books (only 2 of the top 20 titles were not part of a series) and the effects of globalisation. Wayne commented that wherever he goes around the world, he can walk into a bookshop and find the same popular children's books on sale. He also remarked on the very wide range of books that these children read - from picture books to adult titles, but pointed out that the range is much wider for girls than for boys.

The audience had a go at picking the top 10 titles, top 10 stand alone titles (ie not series books), top 10 male and female authors and top 10 New Zealand authors and titles. Some were unsurprising, others were unexpected. (And if you are wondering: top NZ author listed - Margaret Mahy. Top NZ title - Hairy Maclary!)

The session with Swedish children's writer Ulf Stark was a total delight. It also introduced us to his lovely wife Janina, who teaches children's literature at Stockholm University, and revealed another side of his Gecko publisher Julia Marshall, who is fluent in Swedish and acted as his translator. (Ulf said he was going to speak in Swedish "because you all have to learn this beautiful language.")

Julia said that Ulf had written over 30 books, but later he revised that to over 60 - "but maybe only 30 good ones!" She promised to introduce us to the "warm, funny, sometimes sad and very humane world" of his writing, and asked if he would ever have expected books to bring him out to New Zealand. "I didn't even know in the beginning that there was a country called New Zealand," Ulf declared, "and I almost still can't understand that I'm here, although I had 40 hours to understand this on the way here. But I've always loved the feeling of coming somewhere else. When I was little, the idea of 'coming somewhere else' was what you did when you read, looking and travelling into another place, another country, another time, other people's minds."

Ulf told some lovely anecdotes from his childhood, about his "nasty brother" ("not so nasty",) and his mother reading to him while his father stood in the doorway making suggestions about books filled with facts to read instead. He started as a poet, and sees poetry as similar to picture book writing in that it requires "a small amount of space to say what you want to say."

Julia asked why he tackles subjects like death in his writing, for example in Can you whistle, Johanna? Ulf said, "Death is a part of life and every child and adult will meet it, one way or another... and I don't think you win so much by trying to bury it. I think it's a good thing to meet some of these sad things as a child - often it's the parents who are more afraid that the child is." He describes Can you whistle, Johanna? as being "about the importance of living" and "how you can taste the small fruits of life."

Ulf also gave us a lovely description of his latest book, The shadow children and we also heard why he never wants to write detective stories (because "it's important to get down to the deep, and that's hard if there's too much tension on the top.")

It was unfortunate (sad both for him and for the audiences looking forward to hearing him) that Francis Spufford had to cancel his NZ appearances, but the end of the day was marked by a very successful book launch for Mary McCallum's new children's novel Dappled Annie and the Tigrish, published by Gecko Press. It was made an extra special occasion by the presence of the four Gecko authors and illustrators visiting for the festival (Ulf Stark, Leo Timmers and Aleksandra and Daniel Mizielinksy.)