BfK News: July 2003
NEWS
Morpurgo is new Children’s Laureate
Michael Morpurgo, winner of the Children’s Book Award, the Smarties Prize and the Whitbread Children’s Book Award, is the third Children’s Laureate. The role of the Children’s Laureate is awarded once every two years to an eminent British writer or illustrator. The illustrator Quentin Blake was the first Children’s Laureate from 1999 to 2001, and the author Anne Fine held the position from 2001 to 2003. Michael Morpurgo says of his appointment as Children’s Laureate, ‘Quentin and Anne had the right idea. The best way is to be yourself, do what you do best. So I shall tell my stories wherever I go, far and wide, in this country and abroad, to teachers, to parents, to children and to anyone who is interested, to show that literature comes before literacy – and let’s call it literature hour instead – for we want more children, all children (grown up ones too) to discover and rediscover the secret pleasure that is reading, and to begin to find their voice in their own writing.’ The award is sponsored by Waterstone’s.
Palestine becomes the 65th IBBY Section
Palestine has become the 65th IBBY Section. The Section will be housed at The Tamer Institute for Community Education in Ramallah whose work was described in BfK No. 138. IBBY (The International Board on Books for Young People) was founded in 1953 by Jella Lepman, a German Jew who had been forced to flee Germany with her children in 1938. Her vision – to promote understanding among the world’s children who are the hope for a peaceful future ‘by supporting and unifying those forces in all countries connected with children’s book work’ – is as relevant today as when she founded IBBY in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Terry Pratchett gives name to Gifted Youth Scholarship
The comedy fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has agreed to the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth at the University of Warwick naming one of their Summer School Scholarships after him. The Scholarship will be given to support a gifted young person from a less privileged background who wishes to take part in the Creative Writing stream of one of the National Academy’s Summer Schools. Terry Pratchett was declared to be one of the UK’s top two favourite authors in the BBC’s Big Read Survey – only he and Dickens had five books nominated in the Big Read top 100, making him the UK’s most popular living author. Further information from www.warwick.ac.uk/gifted
Roehampton rehouses prestigious Children’s Book Collection
The Booktrust Collection of more than 50,000 toy and board books, picture books, juvenile fiction and non-fiction is now housed in a purposely-refurbished building on the Roehampton University’s Mount Clare site and is open, free of charge, to anyone with an interest in modern children’s books. Since the 1970s, most UK publishers have sent copies of every children’s book they publish to Booktrust, where they are displayed for two years. Following this, the books were stored in the National Museum of Childhood at Bethnal Green. The collection provides a good overview of British children’s book publishing of the recent period. To make an appointment to visit the collection, contact Julie Mills or Sue Mansfield on 020 8392 3772, email J. Mills@roehampton.ac.uk or S. Mansfield@roehampton.ac.uk or at Information Services Learning Resources Centre, University of Surrey Roehampton, Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5SZ.
Harry Potter headlines
* For the first time since library loans records began, Catherine Cookson has been ousted from top of the most borrowed list to be replaced by J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
* A fork-lift truck driver at Clays, the company printing the long-awaited Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (which was finally published on 21 June), was given an 180-hour community service order after admitting stealing pages from the book. He tried to sell them to a newspaper pre-publication.
* Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J K Rowling’s fourth Harry Potter book, published in 2000, was the fastest selling book in history on the first weekend of its publication. All four Harry Potter books have been Number 1 bestsellers and are currently on bestseller lists in Britain, the USA, and around the world.
* It is reported that J K Rowling is now richer than the Queen.
PEOPLE
Many congratulations to BfK’s Chairman and loyal advocate, Martyn Goff OBE, on his 80th birthday. Best known as Director of the National Book League (now known as Booktrust) from 1970 and its Chair from 1992 to 1996, he is also the Prize Administrator of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction besides being a novelist and reviewer in his own right. And these are just a few of the many hats he wears. Much respected and admired, Martyn has been one of the most influential figures upon the literary world for the past 30 years. We wish him the happiest of birthdays.
Following the retirement of Leena Maissen, Kimete Basha has been appointed Executive Director of IBBY. Liz Page has been appointed Administrative Director.
Professor Peter Hunt has been selected as the ninth recipient of the prestigious International Brothers Grimm Award presented by the International Institute for Children’s Literature, Osaka and the Kirin Kai Foundation. He is the first British winner of the award.
At Oxford University Press Liz Cross has been appointed Publisher for Fiction and Picture Books and Lara Dennis Commissioning Editor for Picture Books. Vineeta Gupta has been appointed Head of Reference and Catherine Stokes is Head of Marketing.
Susan Winton has been appointed Rights Director at HarperCollins Children’s Books.
Polly Nolan has been appointed Senior Commissioning Editor at Macmillan Children’s Books.
Julia Wells has been appointed Commissioning Editor at Faber. She was previously at Macmillan Children’s Books.
AWARDS NATIONAL
Branford Boase Award
The winner of the 2003 Branford Boase Award is Kevin Brooks for Martyn Pig (Chicken House), his first children’s novel. The editor’s award went to Barry Cunningham, Publishing Director of Chicken House, who spotted Kevin’s talent and oversaw the publication of this first book. The annual Branford Boase Award celebrates the most promising new children’s writer of the previous year, and highlights the importance of the editor inidentifying and nurturing new talent. Martyn Pig is also on this year’s Carnegie Medal shortlist (see p.6).
CLPE Poetry Award
The new Centre for Literacy in Primary Education Poetry Award has been won by John Agard and Grace Nichols for their anthology, Under the Moon and Over the Sea (Walker). The judges of the award were Morag Styles, Reader in Children’s Literature at Homerton College, Cambridge; Michael Rosen, poet and author; and Margaret Meek of the London Institute of Education, who also chaired the panel.
INTERNATIONAL
The Patricia Wrightson Award
Simon French has won the prestigious Patricia Wrightson Award for his novel, Where in the World (Little Hare Books; UK distribution by Bounce).
Obituary
Anthony Masters
1940-2003
It is perhaps as a writer of books for children that Anthony Masters will be best remembered although he also wrote eleven novels for adults. His exploration of the inner world of the male adolescent carries a sensitivity that few writers can match. He fathomed the mind of the adolescent, stranded on the cusp between childhood and maturity, struggling with trust and distrust of family, with confusion and awe towards life, and wrote about it with harsh reality and magical fantasy. His most recent children’s work, finished just weeks before he died, is a novel for young adults exploring the relationship between an Irish teenager caught on the fringes of terrorism and a reclusive World War Two hero. To excite children about books Tony devised a series of adventure workshops, which he called Book Explosions, and which he personally ran in schools all over the UK.
Obituary
Audrey Laski
1931-2003
Ed Zaghini writes…
Audrey was educated at Colwyn Bay Grammar School. She then won a major scholarship to Newnham, Cambridge, when she was awarded a first in English. She undertook research on ‘Romantic Novelists’ at Kings College, London and then on ‘The Myths of the Hero in Victorian Fiction’ in Cambridge. She taught at Sheffield High School for Girls and then became Deputy Head of Peckham Girls School before moving to become head of Teacher Training at Central School of Speech and Drama. Reputable author of various novels for adults such as Venus in Transit (1964), The Keeper (1968) and The Dominant Fifth (1969), she began reviewing children’s books for the TES and became passionate about children’s fiction. Her knowledge, love and dedication of children’s books were eminent. She applied the same critical approach to baby books as to the most complex secondary sources on this subject. All those who knew Audrey were drawn into her charismatic personality and she will be very much missed among friends and those working with children’s books. Audrey died of cancer at the age of 71.
Obituary
Paul Zindel
1936-2003
Zindel’s first novel, The Pigman, was part of a new wave of US writing for teenage readers in the late 1960s and 1970s which dealt with the realities of life for young adults – including having feckless parents – with honesty and humour. His zany titles (eg Pardon Me, You’re Stepping on my Eyeball and My Darling, My Hamburger) were often suggested by his readers.
