Whatever it was it will live on in fond memory or infamy…

Burning freedom fighters traitors in effigy and fireworks – what is there not to love about Guy Fawkes Night? The less said about rampant antiCatholicism the better eh what?

The Fifth of November is the perfect time to run a book discussion about Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, the film was not bad it is just the book is far superior – feel free to disagree that is what book discussions are about.

In the current climate of fear created by the closing and threatened closing of libraries this is the perfect time to introduce a new generation of protesters to their civic duties and rights of protest

If you wanted you could even have an activity – cut out and create your own Guy Fawkes mask: downloadable guy fawkes mask. You can also pick them up for £6 at Forbidden Planet where your average Anonymous protester shops.

There once was a young artist called Karou who drew tales of monsters and demons that delighted and enthralled those around her.
But she has a secret, a secret that ties her to a dusty subterranean chamber, where her beloved guardian brokers dark deals in a place that is not here. A place that is Elsewhere.
Living with one foot in each world, Karou has never really known which one is her true home.
Now the doors to Elsewhere closing . . .

I have fallen in love – with a book!

With this book specifically.

I have had a look at some of the notes I had written while I was reading. They are:

Elegant

I love this book!
After that there were no more notes because this book demands your full attention.

Set mostly in Prague my favourite city that I have never visited (yet but soon…) Daughter of Smoke and Bone is the story of Karou and the start of her journey of discovering who she is and where she comes from.

Angelic beings, demonic creatures (Chimaera), ex boyfriends and endles errands across the world all vie for her attention as do friends, art classes and the attempt to live as normal life as possible. Daughter of Smoke and NBone is the first book in a trilogy and for this I am so so happy – if i was being melodramatic (and no I am not above that) I would have said that I wept after I finished the book as it truly is a thing of beauty. This is not just Karou’s story although she is the protagonist it is also the story (I hope) of brimstone, Issa, Akiva and the story of a millenia old battle that is being fought in a world that is not our world but that has influenced our myths and beliefs.

I am pretty sure that Daughter of smoke and Bone will draw comparisons to some of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, the multi-layered anrrative, the drawing in of myths and creatures that exist in stories and fable. It is very much its own story and what a story it is!

The story is such that I want to experience it again with no foreknowledge, to have that sense of wonder and delight as my eyes devour each page.

Ultimately this is a novel about love, self-discovery, magic and family wrapped up in adventure, magic and war!

Once you have picked up a copy of Daughter of Smoke and Bone you will find it very hard to put down but remember to hurry because the doors to elsewhere are closing!

WIN a copy of Daughter of Smoke and Bone with Teen Librarian. To enter leave a comment in the form of rhyming verse as to why you should win in the comments field. Competition will run for a week and is open in the UK & abroad. Winner will be chosen by me (Matt) on basis of humour and ability to rhyme.

http://tartanofthyme.blogspot.com
To stand a chance of winning one of the doodled bookmwarks leave a comment on this post to say why you think you should win it!

The rioters have misrepresented the young community by attacking pointlessly and gaining goods that aren’t going to help them. A valid cause for protest has become a mass free for all shopping spree.

Elias Wachenje, 12 Years Old

You know – I think the kids will be alright! This should be read by everybody, please share the links.

I must say that I did not expect it to start so soon. One lovely letter refererd to ‘teenage morons’, with views like that sometimes I begin to despair!

Meanwhile in other news today:

London riots: Teacher, 31, pleads guilty to looting as court cases start (link)

Wow – an adult teacher, not a teenager.

Just goes to show that all ages were involved. Children, teenagers, adults.

It is not important trying to figure out which age group had the most involvement, what we should do is try and work out how we can stop this from happening again. We are all capable of reaching out to people outside our comfort zones, start small – try saying hello, strike up a conversation. I think that libraries are perfectly placed to help begin the healing. They are one of the few places where everyone is welcome and libraries actually encourage loitering without making people passing through feel uncomfortable. It also makes talking to strangers less uncomfortable, books, DVDs and magazines are pretty innocuous topics to begin a conversation with.

Strike up a conversation in a library! At the very least you may find a new author to enjoy and you could also start seeing things from someone else’s perspective or maybe even make a new friend.

The word “youth” has been used a lot. This is not and has never been a political blog, I do not rant about the unfairness of how young people are looked upon and treated in the UK. I have heard people I know and in some cases have worked with refer to young people, as hoodies, rugrats, chavs and even worse. Now after the past few days of rampant vandalism and theft I fear that all young people are going to be tarred with the same brush and have more epithets added to the already large pool of slurs against them vandals, thieves, anarchists.

I have seen pictures and videos of children and teens taking part in the riots, disturbances wholesale theft and vandalism. What may be overlooked is the fact that these violent kids are in the minority, once the smoke clears and the rubble is cleared away and all the right noises have been made by the powers that be and various civic and community leaders the lasting legacy will be a memory of youth led violence which will lead to even more demonising of young people than ever before.

I could be wrong, money could be pumped into youth services and into libraries to offer young people an alternative. What are the chances?

Here is a bittersweet story that I will share with you:

When I worked in Edmonton Green Library I ran a monthly manga group, it ran on the first Thursday of every month without fail for nearly four years, from 3:30 – 7pm over 20 teens gathered in the library to share their passion for manga, anime and just to hang out in a safe location. I left Enfield Libraries a year ago to work for Brent, and within six or so months the manga group had been wound up due to staff lacking the knowledge and confidence to run it. Not everyone can work with teens and you do need a working knowledge of manga to be able to talk about it.

I dropped into Edmonton Green Library last Thursday to say hi to my ex-colleagues, and in the (reduced) Teen area were half a dozen of the original members of the manga group – they had enjoyed it so much that they had taken it upon themselves to keep it going at the same time and place each month.

They were relaxed and enjoying themselves and, as teens do, they got a bit noisy and I heard some staff tell them to keep it down or they would have to leave as they had been there all afternoon. From what I could ascertain no-one had complained and I had heard them make an even bigger noise when I used to be there. The kids did run a massive guilt trip on me for leaving and said they missed me and the library was not the same.

They are also feeling side-lined by the service. This is a group of young adults 16/17 years of age that want to run a group in the library, they do not cause more trouble than the average library user and are generally self-reliant and they are ignored! Why? Because working with teens makes some people feel uncomfortable and unless they are ordered to do it they will get away with not doing it. BAM! an entire segment of the community is sidelined – and people wonder why some teens say they feel like there is a conspiracy against them.

After this week it will be worse. I do not advocate hugging a hoodie like D-Cam did, actual physical contact between adults and teens is not advised, mainly to keep things simple.

All I am saying is that Teens are good people they are and have been affected by the rioting.

Next time you think something negative about a teenager try replacing the word “teenager” with “”black”, “gay” “disabled” and it may sink in that discriminating against someone on the basis of their youth is just that – discrimination.

The kids are not alright and we need to look after them and we can start by treating them like we treat everyone else, and it doesn’t hurt to smile either!

The COpyright Licencing Agency as put together a two page sheet called the Students Guide to Copyright that can be downloaded here

I was fortunate enough to be one of the book bloggers invited to attend the Indigo preview evening at Orion Publishers. Indigo is the latest (and greatest?) Teen Fiction imprint that will be hitting the market in September.

We were given a glimpse of the titles that will be released from September. These included:

Soul Beach by Kate Harrison

Kate reading from Soul Beach

When Alice Forster receives an email from her dead sister she assumes it must be a sick practical joke. Then an invitation arrives to the virtual world of Soul Beach, an idyllic online paradise of sun, sea and sand where Alice can finally talk to her sister again – and discover a new world of friendships, secrets and maybe even love . . . . But why is Soul Beach only inhabited by the young, the beautiful and the dead? Who really murdered Megan Forster? And could Alice be next? The first book in an intriguing and compelling trilogy centred around the mystery of Megan Forster’s death.

Darkness Falls by Mia James

Shelter by Harlan Coben – starring the nephew of his best-selling hero Myron Bolitar

Dark Parties by Sara Grant
Neva keeps a list of The Missing – the people like her grandmother who were part of her life but who have now vanished. The people that everyone else pretends never existed. In a nation isolated beneath the dome of the Protectosphere – which is supposed to protect, but also imprisons – Neva and her friends dream of freedom. But life is becoming complicated for Neva. She’s falling for her best friend’s boyfriend – and she’s learning more than she ever wanted to know about what might be happening to The Missing…

The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick
Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve lived another life? Been somewhere that has felt totally familiar, even though you’ve never been there before, or felt that you know someone well, even though you are meeting them for the first time? It happens. In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumour has it that no one ages and no children are born, a visiting journalist, Eric Seven, and a young local woman known as Merle are ritually slain. Their deaths echo a moment ten centuries before, when, in the dark of the moon, a king was slain, tragically torn from his queen. Their souls search to be reunited, and as mother and son, artist and child, forbidden lovers, victims of a vampire they come close to finding what they’ve lost. In a novel comprising seven parts, each influenced by a moon – the flower moon, the harvest moon, the hunter’s moon, the blood moon – this is the story of Eric and Merle whose souls have been searching for each other since their untimely parting.

The Double Shadow by Sally Gardner

Arnold Ruben has created a memory machine, a utopia housed in a picture palace, where the happiest memories replay forever, a haven in which he and his precious daughter can shelter from the war-clouds gathering over 1937 Britain. But on the day of her seventeenth birthday Amaryllis leaves Warlock Hall and the world she has known and wakes to find herself in a desolate and disturbing place. Something has gone terribly wrong with her father’s plan. Against the tense backdrop of the second World War Sally Gardner explores families and what binds them.

The Dragon Heir by Cinda Williams Chima

In 2012 there is more to look forward to – which will almost make up for the end of the world (if the Mayans are to be believed)

The Hunting Ground by Cliff McNish
Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding
Crossing Over by Anna Kendal.
The Double Edged Sword by Sarah Silverwood
Hollow Pike by James Dawson
An Act of Love by Alan Gibbons
Dark Mist Rising by Anna Kendall
Firespell by Chloe Neill
Darkness Falls by Mia James
Raining Fire by Alan Gibbons
The Traitor’s Gate by Sarah Silverwood
My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher
A Bright and Terrible Sword by Anna Kendall

After the official presentations and author talks we were invited out onto the Orion patio where we ate snacks, drank our way through the wines and juices on offer and chatted to the authors and Orion’s Fierce Fiction team.

Sally Gardner is fantastic, very forthright about her views on children’s literature and a total pleasure to chat to. She is one of the (many) authors I think will go down a treat at my school. The cover to The Double Shadow is an image taken from a 1930′s German film, the premise sounds amazing and I am looking forward to reading it!

I met Sara Grant while waiting to be let in to the Orion Offices at the beginning of the evening, and afterwards we chatted for ages about the importance of good libraries, reading and networking. She is currently in my top 10 list of nicest authors I know, she was so lovely that I had to hug her. Dark Parties is her first novel.

This event is the first time I have had the opportunity to meet Marcus Sedgwick he looks the part of a rock star author and everything said about him by the people I know that have met him is true (very relaxed and easy to talk to).

I did not have much of a chance to chat to Kate Harrison except to get my proof copy of Soul Beach signed as she was surrounded constantly by a group of eager bloggers.

I would like to say a BIG thank you to Nina and Orion for the invitation (and ARCs), getting an idea of what is coming soon is exciting and getting to meet authors as well as the Indigo team was fantastic! I am looking forward to reviewing the titles that I have received.

A slideshow of photos from the evening follows below and a group photo of the authors and bloggers..

Bloggers & Authors in no particular order: Liz Bankes Carly Bennett Jenny Davies Liz de Jager Mark de Jager Louise Ellis Barrett Suzi Feay Caroline Fielding Sarah Gibson Darren Hartwell Matthew Imrie Neil Jackson Beth Kemp Karen Meek Amanda Rutter Becky Scott Jeanette Towey Keith Walters Vivienne Dacosta Michael Thorn Andrew Hall Marcus Sedgwick Sara Grant Kate Harrison Sally Gardner

The stories are a mix of grim, gritty and unremitting teen life as well as aspirational storytelling and a pinch of fantasy but each tale has a core of hope

I did find a book trailer for A Most Improper Magick: