Today launches the Children’s Book Council of Australia week, from Friday 18 August to Thursday 23 August, to celebrate children’s books.

The awards for the Book of the Year will be announced today at noon. The categories include:

• Older Readers – 13-18 years
• Younger Readers – 8-12 years
• Early Childhood – 0-7 years
• Picture Book of the Year – 0-18 years – the story is primarily told through illustrations
• Eva Pownall Award – 0-18 years – the main focus is a factual account
• Crichton Award for New Illustrators – 0-18 years – to encourage new talent

My favourite book of all the shortlisted titles is How to Bee – you can read my review about this quirky and original story with a strong voice here.

The shortlist is a great reading list if you are looking to encourage your children to read quality literature.

Schools and kindergartens often hold a dress-up day for Book Week. Over the years, my kids have dressed up as:

• Fancy Nancy – you can never add too many accessories!
• Hagrid – Mr 9 did not have the necessary height or girth but he gave it a good shot with a cushion stuffed under his top and a black beard attached to his chin
• witches – think Witch School, Meg and Mog etc
• Alice in Wonderland – this was my costume one year when I was rostered on kinder duty for book week! I wore a blue dress, tucked a white tea-towel around my waist for an apron, and of course, wore a blue headband in my hair.

This post from Allison Tait might give you some more ideas for Book Week dress-ups, particularly if you have a cloak – useful for all kinds of characters, particularly if your kids are fond of the Ranger’s Apprentice series.

While this week is more for younger kids to celebrate books and have a fun day, let’s not forget the importance of encouraging kids of all ages to read. Mr 14 recently had his parent-teacher interviews and he was encouraged by at least half of his teachers to read – more often and more widely. Readers make leaders!

 

There are a lot of things I love but I particularly love bookshops. I love the rows upon rows of colourful spines in wooden bookshelves. I love the new releases, displayed with their book covers facing out and often a staff recommendation attached. I love the bibliophile merchandise – the mugs, the tote bags, the pencil cases – there for anyone who wants to declare their love of reading. I love the people who work there, who tell you they stayed up all night reading the book you are about to buy and recommending another author to try. And I love the atmosphere of possibility, of escape, of knowledge, of entertainment, of debate, of shared ideas.

The Love your bookshop organisation recently blogged about 5 reasons why you should support your local bookshop. I agree with all of them. And here are mine –

1. Buying a book supports an author – one step away from bookshops are the authors who write all those books. Did you know that the average yearly income for an Australian author is less than $13,000? That’s why most authors have a job and write during tram rides to work, on their one day off, on the weekends around their kids’ sport, at 5 in the morning or during the midnight hours. Writers often describe their days in shifts – the first shift is paid work, the second is looking after the kids, the third is housework and life admin and the fourth is the odd hour or two to write. That’s why social media and writing workshops and writing festivals are so important because it provides a platform for authors to promote their books.
2. Opens your mind and your heart – hand in hand with knowledge comes empathy. I wouldn’t have any empathy for people of British-Pakistani descent if I hadn’t read Home Fires. I wouldn’t know what it was like to a be a ten-year old girl living through WWII if I hadn’t read The war that saved my life. I’m currently reading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book, The full catastrophe – and I’m learning meditation to help with my migraines.
3. Local is wonderful! I know the booksellers at my local bookshop – they ask about my writing, I ask them for recommendations and we have a shared discussion about books. I’m supporting a local business, they’re providing me with choices and community. And I’m not paying for postage or packaging.
4. I’m buying a book that I can share with others. If I buy children’s fiction, my kids will read it. I often share my children’s books with teachers at my kids’ schools, and I share adult fiction bookswith my friends.
5. It’s for me – I’m buying myself a few hours of entertainment, or escapism or daydreaming or  general knowledge or writing knowledge, which can lead to shared discussions with others.

I hope you find time tomorrow to go out and support your local bookshop, strike up a literary conversation, support an author and grow your mind and heart and community!

This little adventure happened to me yesterday, and I thought I’d use it as a story example. Perhaps it might help you or your kids in writing stories.

Set-up – My petrol light had been flashing low for a day, and I decided I’d better fill it up now, rather than tomorrow. Even though it was almost five o’clock in the evening and I could potentially be caught up in a little traffic. Even though I just wanted to go home and start cooking my chicken curry.

Inciting incident – I pulled up in front of the petrol tank, jumped out of the car and started to flick the petrol cap open. But it didn’t open. I yanked it. Still didn’t open.

I stood for a minute, confused. Maybe I should press a button from inside the car? But this is what I always do! But maybe this isn’t what I always do?

First attempt to solve problem – I sat back in the driver’s seat and looked at all the buttons – the same buttons that I’ve looked at for the past ten years while driving this car. Nope. There was definitely no button to flick open the petrol cap.

I jumped back out, yanked on the petrol cap but it didn’t budge. I thought of the flashing orange light, indicating a low tank of petrol and of the hour or so of driving I needed to do tomorrow.

Second attempt to solve problem – So I called out to the man next to me who had just finished filling his car with petrol. ‘Excuse me, would you mind helping me with my petrol cap? I think it just needs some more force.’

Secondary characters – The very kind man, and his equally kind friend, spent five minutes trying to help me. They agreed there was indeed no button to click open the cap and they did not want to force the cap. Google suggested I lock, then unlock the car, but that didn’t work.

I thanked them, and said I would call my car service centre.

Third attempt to solve problem – Once home, I called the car service centre and was put through to a lovely man, Stefan. I followed his instructions for manually overriding the petrol cap from over the phone. Open the boot. Lift the mat. Find the triangle piece of felt in the corner. Take it off. Locate the white control box.

Dark night of the soul when all is lost – Couldn’t find it. Maybe it was because I was sitting on the open boot, holding the boot mat up with one shoulder, shining the torch on my phone into the black depths of a corner of my car I’d never seen before.

So Stefan sent me a picture of the control box. ‘Lift the felt off the side of the car.’

A moment of hope – ‘I can see it!’

‘Great! Now pull forward between the two white sections. It’ll release the petrol cap.’

A final gathering of courage by the protagonist to solve problem – It moved but it didn’t do anything. I still couldn’t open the petrol cap.

A potential solution – Stefan offered to stay back at work if I could drive my car to the service centre – fifteen minutes away.

‘I’ll have another go, then I’ll drive over if I’m not successful,’ I said.

I called Mr 14 – who had spent the day on the couch sick – to help. ‘I just need you to hold up the mat and then shine the torch here. It’s so I can open the petrol cap.’

‘Like this, Mum?’ he asked, flicking open the petrol cap.

The ending – ‘Yes! Exactly like that!’

Now, don’t judge me – because I wrote this story in five minutes! It’s ok for a first draft – all the material is there. But this is where it gets interesting.

Let’s develop the main character. Instead of a woman in her forties, let’s imagine she’s in her twenties. Instead of needing a tank full of petrol for driving kids around, maybe she needs her car for a work conference where she’s presenting a paper on new ovarian cancer trials to a room full of doctors and journalists. Or maybe she needs her car to visit her dying father – it’s a two-hour trip and she needs to leave immediately. Or maybe she’s about to go on a date, and she’s already running late.

Setting – instead of a ten-year-old car, maybe it’s brand new. What does that say about our character? Or maybe it is indeed a ten-year-old car – what does that say about our character? Is she in the street, trying to fix her car? Maybe someone walks by and has a conversation with her. Does that person walk on or do they stop to help? Maybe it’s raining and her freshly dried hair is now looking limp.

Theme – maybe the theme is kindness. After all, three strangers gave up their time to help me. Or maybe it’s about the character learning that she needs to be more organised and fill up the car with petrol the moment that lights flashes (ahem!). Perhaps the theme is taking a risk – that woman is more capable than she thought.

Problems – if we’re turning this little incident into a story, we need more problems. Maybe the woman can’t unlock the petrol cap, and she needs to drive to the car service centre and ask the mechanic, Stefan, for help. Maybe she misses her date, but she connects with Stefan and realises she’d rather be with him. Maybe Stefan lost his mother to ovarian cancer and wants to support our woman character to present her paper. Or perhaps the person walking by the street when she’s trying to unlock the cap wants to help her but she refuses his help because he went through university with her and mocked her publicly in a presentation. Maybe she can’t sort out the car problem, gives up and catches an Uber instead to her presentation and is an embarrassingly half an hour late, running to the podium at the last minute.

Antagonist – there wasn’t really an antagonist stopping me from unlocking the petrol cap but our story would definitely need one to add interest. Maybe it’s Stefan, who could have fixed the problem in a minute but decided he couldn’t be bothered because he didn’t like young women who drove fancy cars and expected quick service. Maybe it’s the old university colleague who mocked her.

Can you see all the possibilities here? I think we have the potential for a literary masterpiece – all from this one tiny real-life incident! It’s a good example to show kids how they can use their own holiday or weekend events to create a story.

And if you ever need to manually override the lock for your petrol cap, I’m your girl!

 

My bookclub discussed this book, Home fire by Kamila Shamsie a couple of nights ago. Thank you, L, for a great choice! Home fire was published in 2017, long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2017 and won the Women’s Prize in 2018.

It’s a remarkable story, told by five different viewpoints. First we have Isma, 28 years old, a British-born Pakastani woman who is interrogated on her way from London to Massachusetts, where she’ll study sociology. She’d given up her dreams of studying seven years ago when her mother died, leaving her with her twelve-year-old brother, Parvaiz, and his twin sister, Aneeka, to raise. While in Massachusetts, she meets the son of the British Home Secretary, Eamonn. Isma already knows who he is – his father as a MP made a cruel comment to her family about her jihadist father who left when she was young. Isma and Eamonn become friends, but it never develops into the something more that Isma hopes for.

When Eamon leaves to go back to London, he ‘arranges’ to meet Aneeka, the beauty of the family. At nineteen, she is studying law. Although she’s initially hostile to Eamonn, she initiates a relationship with him. Eamonn is besotted for a few months, until Anneka tells him she wants his father to allow Parvaiz back into the country.

Parvais has spent the last few months in Syria. He was groomed by Farooq, who told him his father was a hero, and that Parvais should try to emulate him. Fatherless from birth, Parvais is an easy target, but struggles to follow the Isis culture.

The last two sections are told from Aneeka’s viewpoint, then Karamat Lone, Eamonn’s father. I’m not going to explain any further, otherwise I’ll spoil the story for you!

There’s so much sadness in this book. Isma longs for a relationship and then finds out that her sister has what she wants. Aneeka, forever connected with Parvais in their special twin way, feels desolate when he is gone. Parvais’s account of his time in Syria is brutal.

I read the ending at the kitchen table, a few hours before our bookclub meeting, and literally covered my face as I read the last page. No spoiler alert here, but be warned!

It’s a topical, contemporary book which shows many viewpoints and covers many settings, from London, Pakistan, Istanbul, Syria and the US. It’s based on the Greek play, Antigone, by Sophocleous.

Sarah Sands, the judge for the Women’s Prize explained –

“To humanise a political story in that way really does show what literature can do, that it can tackle a hard subject that otherwise would never have that sense of layered sympathy and understanding. It really advanced our understanding of the whole issue of identity.”

In this brief video interview with author Kamila Shamsie, she explains that the heart of the novel is about competing loyalties and loves.

It’s an excellent bookclub book because there’s so much to discuss. I’m still thinking about this book days after finishing it. It’s definitely one of my top ten reads for the year!

It’s such a dramatic title, isn’t it? The war that saved my life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley is a middle-grade book for 10-12 year-olds, and is a Newbery Honor book. Miss 11 read it a while ago and has told me many times that I needed to prioritise it because I would ‘just love it’ and she was absolutely right.

Ada, the nine-year-old protagonist, lives with her mother and younger brother, Jamie, in a single room above a pub in London. It’s 1939, and children are being evacuated due to concerns about the Germans bombing London. Ada’s mother is absolutely horrible to Ada – mainly because she has a club foot. Ada isn’t allowed to leave their room and she’s miserable while Jamie is at school.

Ada decides to teach herself to walk, despite great pain. This means she can escape with Jamie early one morning on the day the children at Jamie’s school are evacuated to the country. Ada and Jamie are the last children to be billeted out, possibly because of their dirtiness and Ada’s cross demeanour. They are taken to Susan’s house, a single lady who is still mourning the loss of her best friend, Becky.

At Susan’s house, Ada finds out that her twisted foot could have been fixed with an operation when she was a baby. This gives her another reason to hate her mother. While life with Susan has its difficulties, Ada makes new friends, watches for German spies, learns to ride a pony and most importantly, begins to trust Susan.

Miss 11 enjoyed learning about the war – references to Germans and ration cards and blackouts are skilfully woven into the story so that all the historical facts are integral to the story, rather than artificially thrown in.

Ada’s voice is strong. Here’s the first page –

‘Ada! Get back from that window!’ Mam’s voice, shouting. Mam’s arm, grabbing mine, yanking me so I toppled off my chair and fell hard to the floor.

‘I was only saying hello to Stephen White.’ I knew better than to talk back, but sometimes my mouth was faster than my brain. I’d become a fighter that summer.

Mam smacked me. Hard. My head snapped back against the chair leg and for a moment I saw stars. ‘Don’t you be talkin’ to nobody!’ Mam said. ‘I let you look out that window out a’ the kindness of my heart, but I’ll board it over if you go stickin’ your nose out, much less talkin’ to anyone!’

‘Jamie’s out there,’ I mumbled.

‘And why shouldn’t he be?’ Mam said. ‘He aint’ a cripple. Not like you.’

Wouldn’t you read on, too? We have a strong, feisty protagonist who has become a fighter, maybe because of her bad leg and is struggling against the antagonist, her mother.

There is a sequel, The war I finally won. When you enjoy a book so much, it’s wonderful to know that there is an equally enjoyable sequel.

While I loved Alice in Wonderland as a kid, I still identify with her story as an adult. I took Miss 11 and her friend to see the ACMI Alice in Wonderland exhibition yesterday.

The exhibition is timed, so I booked online for 11am – a perfectly civilised school holidays time to be in the city. But we were slightly late. I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date. Oh, the irony in being late white rabbit style! But it didn’t matter at all, and we were ushered down the rabbit hole for a wonderful display of the various different ways Alice has been depicted from the publication of Lewis Carroll’s book in 1865 to the 21st century.

Our favourite section was the Mad Hatter’s tea party. The ten minute wait was worth it – we sat on white wooden chairs around a cluster of white tables with white crockery. We watched a four minute film which was shown on the surrounding walls of the room, as well as the table and crockery. There were quotes from the book, scenes of dreamlike images and the crockery kept changing patterns.

I flicked through my copy of Alice at home and found some of my favourite quotes –

“Who are YOU?” said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I–I hardly know, sir, just at present– at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

Sometimes it seems that when I wake up in the morning I know exactly who I am and what I need to do but by the end of the day, I may have turned into several different people! One moment I am a writer merging two chapters into one, the next minute I am a mother organising playdates, then I have morphed into an uber driver, a chef, a workshop presenter …

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

It’s not the believing that’s tricky – it’s the achieving! Dreaming up six impossible things before a breakfast green smoothie is fine – it’s getting them done that’s the challenge.

The ACMI exhibition is on until October 7th – it’s definitely worth a visit, both for children and adults. Miss 11 and her friend enjoyed following the Wonderland map for the curious and finding all the links, and I enjoyed all the displays of the art, costumes and history.

Curioser and curioser!

 

I’m not alone in having a ‘busy life’. Anyone with work commitments, family responsibilities, life admin, a cat to feed, a garden to weed, meals to cook, groceries to buy, a car service to book has a ‘busy life.’ So sometimes the idea of putting myself in a small room without anything on that list sounds like a dream come true.

For Sarah of Hartham, the protagonist in Robyn Cadwallader’s book, The anchoress, this is exactly what she did. Sarah is seventeen, living in a small village in England in 1255. After the death of her beloved sister, Sarah willingly commits to becoming an anchoress, a holy woman who encloses herself in a small room built off the side of a Catholic church for the rest of her life. Once she enters, the door is nailed shut behind her forever.

Her cell is nine paces by seven paces, with a squint (a small niche into the church so she can receive communion) a window leading to her maids’ room and a window leading to the tiny parlour where her confessor and the women of the village may meet with her for counsel. Sister Sarah, according to the Rule, a book to guide her, is not allowed to have any contact with men apart from her confessor, Father Ranaulf.

While Sarah’s physical surroundings block her in to keep her focused on prayer, village life creeps into her room. The lives of her maids and the women who come to talk with her bring in the outside world which Sarah is trying to shut out.

Sarah relies on her senses – the touch of the stones in her cell, the scent of the herbs her maid uses in her food, the smell of the women who visit her, fresh from the fields, the colours of her embroidery threads. There’s also the lack of sight outside, so Sarah’s sight is contained to inside of her cell.

I found the story absolutely captivating, and loved the world Sarah inhabited, with monks who were responsible for the beautiful illuminated manuscripts, painstakingly copied and the lives of the villagers revolving around the seasons and harvests.

The idea of blocking the outside world out in order not to be distracted is something you have to learn to do as a writer or a creative in order to bring forth your art. I often wish I could empty my head of the dentist appointments and the dinner menu and the basketball schedules so there would be more space for creativity.

The Me too movement is relevant here, although this book, published in 2015, is set in England, 1255. There’s a strong message that women can do the right thing and still be overpowered by men. Sister Sarah eventually faces up to her past, as she confronts the demands of her new patron, sir Thomas Maunsell.

I loved the focus on quiet – the gentle silence at a poignant moment between Sarah and Father Ranaulf.

The silence slipped through the gaps under the curtain and into the cell beyond. A velvet thing, it seemed. It swellled and settled, gathering every space into itself. He did not stir; he lost all sense of time. all he knew was the woman but an arm’s length away in the dark, breathing. That was enough.

The ending was lovely – for a while I wondered which way this book would end, which choice Sarah would make. The ending seemed perfectly fitting.

I’m looking forward to reading Robyn Cadwallader’s second book, Book of colours.

While a retreat from the outside world sounds beautiful and quiet, I can’t quite imagine how I would manage it. However, we are taking a family holiday next week so I hope there will be lots of time for spacious thinking and maybe some quiet, too. I’ll post again in two weeks.

Wishing you some quiet in your busy lives, too!

 

Would you like to read a story about a gorilla who’d like to wear glasses because she thinks it will make her look wise and smart? How about a guinea pig who wants to be a wrestler but her parents won’t let her? Or would you like a story about a slug who wants to beat Usain Bolt in a race? Maybe you’d like to hear about a hippo who wants to be the next prime minister?

These story ideas and more were generated in a series of three workshops I presented to a grade three class. We focused on funny animal stories, so the kids created their main character as an animal.

I read quite a few picture books about animals to begin each session. While the kids laughed at the story, they were also fabulously serious and curious about analysing the characters and the language.

I find that kids are great at creating a character but often they become stuck when it comes to putting that character in a story. Once the kids had their character, we talked about what that character wanted more than anything else in the whole world. Once we have that wish sorted, then we focus on who or what is going to stop that character from getting what they want. After all, it’d be a pretty boring story if the character found what they wanted within the first three sentences.

We also discussed repetition – how writers can use it to build up suspense and help the readers to guess what is coming next. The repetition in Doreen Cronin’s Click, clack, moo – cows that type was particularly popular!

Click, clack, moo.
Click, clack, moo.
Clickety, clack, moo.

The grade three classes were so receptive and open to learning a new way of writing, and their story ideas were absolutely amazing. Watch out bookshops and libraries, there may be some fabulous animal books coming your way!

If you would like me to run a writing workshop for your school, please email me at karen@karencomer.com.au. I teach a range of workshops on different themes to suit different year levels.

This could be my shortest blog post – read this book! But as you may want to know why you should read The lost flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland, I’ll make this post a little longer for you.

From an aesthetic viewpoint, the cover and chapter illustrations by Edith Rewa Barrett are beautiful. I adore botanical illustrations, and Ringland’s book has a gorgeous cover of Australian native flowers and each chapter begins with a pen and ink botanical illustration and a brief description of a specific flower, complete with botanical name, common name and meaning for the chapter title. Really, why should illustrations stop for adult books?

As you may have guessed from the title and cover, Australian native flowers feature heavily in Ringland’s book. Alice Hart loses both her parents in a fire at the age of nine. She deeply misses her fragile mother who loves gardening and has nightmares about both the fire and her abusive father.

She’s taken to Thornfield, her grandmother’s flower farm, a long drive away and doesn’t talk for a couple of months. There’s a strong matriarchal history of her family at the farm, and she slowly understands her family and her place in it, surrounded by the care of the twelve women who are also working and healing at the farm, under the care of June, Alice’s paternal grandmother. June teaches Alice to use the language of flowers as a way to communicate the words that are too hard to share. There are many secrets and many unspoken words at Thornfield.

The second half of the book focuses on adult Alice, as she falls in love, has her heart broken and leaves Thornfield.

Ringland explains the editing process by Harper Collins, Fourth Estate, in this short video clip, where she states that she needed to go a little deeper into some of the more difficult chapters to write which she had been avoiding. Her editor helped her to look at these chapters more clearly.

This book rings with authenticity and authority. It’s one of my favourite reads for 2018 – maybe it will be one of your favourites, too!

If you are a Stars Wars fan, you live for the next movie. If you love watching Test cricket, you hang out for the first match in Australia. And if, like me, one of your favourite authors is Rebecca Stead, you buy her latest book as soon as it’s published and read it cover to cover in a day!

Rebecca Stead is the author of award-winning books like When you reach me, Goodnight stranger, Liar and spy and First light. I have reviewed her books here.

She has co-written a  book with Wendy Mass called Bob, with gorgeous illustrations scattered through the chapters by Nicholas Gannon. (I’m looking forward to reading Mass’s many, many books now!) It sits at the lower end of middle-grade fiction – I know both Miss 11 and Mr 8 will read it once I pass it on.

Livy (ten and a half) has come back with her mother and baby sister from Massachusetts to visit Gran in Australia. Livy knows she’s forgotten things since her last visit five years ago. She can’t remember her old elephant toy Rufus or why she loved holding on to the black pawn piece from the chess set.

And she certainly can’t remember the name of the green zombie (who’s not really a zombie) who’s wearing a chicken suit, lives in a closet and has been waiting for her to come back for the last five years.

Bob reminds Livy of the best parts of her ‘old’ self, is excellent at reading her face and is pretty much invisible to adults in his homemade chicken suit. Livy tries to help Bob find a way back home by remembering how he saved her, and then how she saved him. The story is fresh and original – it is a quest book and there is magic but there’s nothing predictable about it. There are themes of friendship and memory, and a small thread of rain and droughts.

Stead writes the chapters from Livy’s point of view and Mass writes the ones from Bob’s perspective. It has been a labour of love for both of them for about seven years, sending the chapters back and forth, responding to each other’s work.

“Since so much time would pass between when I would work on it, I would always start by reading the book from the beginning,” Mass said in an interview with Publishers Weekly. “It definitely got to the point where I couldn’t remember who wrote what.”

Teachers can find notes and classroom activities here.

Please buy this beautiful, beautiful book for your kids, your grandkids or your library. Be warned – if you are one of my lovely nieces or nephews or if you invite Mr 8 or Miss 11 to a party, you may well receive this book during the next few months! Everyone needs a Bob!