BfK News: January 2004
NEWS
Poet Benjamin Zephaniah hit the headlines in November when he revealed that he had turned down Tony Blair’s offer of an OBE (Order of the British Empire). Perhaps Blair hadn’t read Zephaniah’s poem, ‘Bought and Sold’ in which he tells us ‘Smart big awards and prize money / Is killing off black poetry / It’s not censors or dictators that are cutting up our art. / The lure of meeting royalty / And touching high society / Is damping creativity and eating at our heart.’
PRIZES
Nestlé Smarties Book Prize 2003
The winners are: Ursula Jones and Russell Ayto for The Witch’s Children and the Queen (Orchard) for the 5 & Under age category; S F Said for Varjak Paw, illustrated by Dave McKean (David Fickling Books) for the 6-8 age category; and David Almond for The Fire Eaters (Hodder) for the 9-11 age category.
Booktrust Teenage Prize 2003
The winner of the newly established Booktrust Teenage Prize, which aims to recognise and celebrate contemporary teenage fiction, is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon (David Fickling). The prize website (
www.bookheads.org.uk
carries comments and reviews from young readers.
The IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award
The Award for 2004, initiated by the International Board on Books for Young People and sponsored by the Japanese newspaper company, Asahi Shimbun, has been given to the First Words in Print project from South Africa. This project is promoted by the Centre for the Book in Cape Town and is sponsored by local institutions and organizations involved in the production of children’s books in South Africa. It has been praised for its ambitious but effective promotion of literacy among South African children and their families and its commitment to the development of a national literature for young children in their mother tongue.
MacArthur Fellowship
Peter Sis, author of The Tree of Life (Walker), is one of this year’s winners of the US MacArthur Fellowship which give the recipients $100,000 a year for five years to spend as they wish.
FELLOWSHIP
Eileen Wallace Research Fellowship in Children’s Literature
The Eileen Wallace Research Fellowship in Children’s Literature, valued up to $5,000 (CDN) per annum, invites proposals for research and scholarship using the resources of the University of New Brunswick’s Eileen Wallace Children’s Literature Collection.
Proposals are welcomed from anyone who can provide evidence of competence and scholarly background and outline a practical and worthwhile project using the resources of the Collection. Application forms are available from the Office of the Dean of Education, University of New Brunswick, PO Box 4400, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3, Canada, tel: (506) 453-4862, or on the website www.lib.unb.ca/collections/clc/
Deadline for application is 1 March of any year, with fellowship to be awarded after 1 July of the same year.
Obituary
Charles Causley
24 August 1917 – 4 November 2003
Liz Attenborough writes…
The children’s book world was saddened to hear of the death of Charles Causley, aged 86. I first came across him as a junior editorial assistant wanting to make use of one of his poems in an anthology. He was always utterly charming, whether to a junior or senior member of staff, and made friends with the illustrators who worked on his books. He was also encouraging to other poets, and must have been an inspiring teacher to the primary school pupils he taught after the war, through until 1976. Charles Causley was born and lived most of his life in Launceston, Cornwall, so our meetings were rare. He wasn’t one to talk much about work in progress, but I remember with delight when the completed manuscript for Early in the Morning (1986, winner of the Signal Poetry Award) arrived on my desk. His poetry for children is much anthologised, with ‘I Saw a Jolly Hunter’ perhaps the most frequently reproduced, and he produced over 40 books, including plays, translations and anthologies. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1967, and the CBE in 1986.
Obituary
Tessa Krailing
Felicity Fair Thompson writes…
All those who knew Tessa Krailing will be sad to hear of her death at the age of 68 in October after a long battle with cancer. Tessa started her career as a production secretary at the BBC but found London claustrophobic. Back in Sussex where she had grown up, she began teaching English and art to children. In 1980 she wrote her first book, A Dinosaur Called Minerva. With this success Tessa decided to concentrate full time on her writing and moved to the Isle of Wight. Two radio plays and a children’s play for the Dramarama series on TVS followed, then How to Write For Children, and ‘Wellington Square’, an educational reading scheme for children with special needs, and over the years countless more books for young readers and teenagers. Children, she believed, are an honest and appreciative audience, and deserve the best. She loved the opportunity to meet them at schools and libraries all over the country, and typically she left some of her royalties to a children’s charity. She often said she was writing for the child inside herself and, for me, her success as a person sprang from her talent for sharing and celebrating the laughter and excitement of children.
EVENTS
Words About Pictures
Saturday 6 March, 10.30-16.00, at The Learning Centre, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA.
A one-day seminar and workshop for teachers, librarians and children’s book reviewers, in association with the Quentin Blake Gallery of Illustration and Books for Keeps, in which participants will explore ways of discussing and writing about the visual aspect of children’s books, with Quentin Blake and other artists and specialists. The day will include a visit to the exhibition Quentin Blake: Fifty Years of Illustration at the GIlbert Collection, Somerset House. Fee: £100 including tea/coffee and sandwich lunch. For further information/booking form, please telephone The Learning Centre on 020 7420 9406.
World Book Day 2004
Readers across the world will have the opportunity to chat online with J K Rowling when she launches the second World Book Day Online Festival on Thursday 4 March. Six specially produced World Book Day £1 books for six different age ranges by leading children’s authors will be available and can be exchanged for the £1 World Book Day Book Token. The Tokens will be given out at schools and pre-school organisations across the country, thanks to Book Tokens Ltd, principal sponsor of World Book Day 2004, and to participating booksellers who redeem the tokens at their own expense. Further information on the many events that will take place from
www.worldbookday.com
4th Annual National Storytelling Week
31 January – 7 February 2004
Following the success of last year’s events (over 350 of them nationwide!) the organisers hope that as many people as possible will join in the celebration of one of the oldest traditions of the world. For further information or if you would like to take part, call Del Reid on 020 8866 4232 or Tina Bilbe 0118 9351381.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
More Christmas Nights
Dear Mistress Editor, ma’am
Not all the books in Whitaker’s regularly updated microfiche Books in Print are actually books in print. Their presence is however as it were balanced by the books in print that don’t put in an appearance. Among the latter is a version of The Night Before Christmas which ought to have been included in my back page article in the last BfK, a pop-up rendering by Robert Sabuda, published in 2002 by Simon & Schuster at £19.99 [sic] – ISBN 0 689 83683 X. Geoff Fox, who is one of your pop-up correspondents, was kind enough to alert me to the volume of which he has a high opinion. It is indeed wondrously elaborate, unusual in its use of white – snow-white – card and with secondary pop-ups opening out from the leading edges of the leaves. The whole of Moore’s text is there, but such is the distraction of the movables, which need very careful handling (‘Not suitable for children under 36 months’ say the publishers, quaintly – ‘Due to small parts’) that it may get overlooked. Still, perhaps everybody now has it off by heart and it does lend itself to dramatic recitation so long as you avoid the clumping rhythms.
Brian Alderson
unclearly@uk2.net
