Author Siobhan Curham Running Poetry Competition

To celebrate the launch of her new book Dear Dylan, Siobhan Curham will be running a poetry competition on her website

Entrants must be age 10 – 17 and the poems should be based on one of the following themes:

Friendship: Dear Dylan is the story of a friendship that begins online – in fact the whole novel is made up of emails between the two characters as their friendship grows. Perhaps you would like to write a poem about your own experience of friendship and how important your friends are to you.

Family: The main character in Dear Dylan, Georgie, hasn’t had the easiest family life. Her father died when she was little and she doesn’t get on with her step-dad at all. There is no denying that families can be very complicated. But they can also be full of love and good times. Maybe you would like to write a poem about your own experience of family life – good or bad, happy or sad…

Dreams: Georgie dreams of being an actress and the book follows her determination to pursue her dream, no matter what obstacles life – or her step-dad – throw at her. Do you have a burning dream or ambition? Would you like to write a poem about your pursuit of this dream, and the importance of never giving up?

Please send your submissions to: contact[AT]siobhancurham[DOT]co[DOT]uk by Monday 2nd April. And please give your name and age in your covering email.

The three winning entrants will each receive a signed copy of Dear Dylan and their poems will be published on her blog http://thefadedbookmark.blogspot.com/ in April as part of the official book launch celebrations.

City Read London Oliver Twisted Competition

‘The world according to Oliver Twisted is simple. Vampyres feed on the defenceless, orphans are sacrificed to hungry gods and if a woe-begotten catches your scent it will hunt you forever.’

City Read London is giving away two copies of Oliver Twisted, JD Sharpe’s new teen horror mash-up. Post your name on their wall, and share this link: https://www.facebook.com/cityreadlondon to be in with a chance to win. Winners announced on City Read London site tomorrow.

Blade: Enemies by Tim Bowler

Meet Blade. But be careful. You may not like what you see. He’s dangerous. He needs to be. Because there people who want him dead.

It’s dog eat dog in his world. Win or die. He thought he was safe. But now they’ve found out where is. And they’re coming.

I will just state for the record that I am a massive Tim Bowler fan. I love what he does with ordinary words – he puts them together in such a way that they weave a compelling narrative that sucks you in keeps you gripped to the very end.

I am by nature a law-abiding citizen, I have respect for the organs of state and that includes the police force. Yet by the close of the first chapter of Enemies, I had developed such a hatred of the policeman that was grilling a young Blade in the lock up that I was hoping he would get shanked. In five pages Mr Bowler made me identify with a seven year-old and turned me into a police-hating Blade fan.

The rest of the book was even better! Terse, exciting prose with a protagonist that broke the fourth wall and addresses the reader throughout the novel, cluing us in to what he is doing and why. It is quite possible that blade is an unreliable narrator, he openly admits to being a liar and gives us the choice to follow him or wig out and let him go his own way.

We have all seen or know teenagers like Blade, hard, solitary beings who want or need no-one, at least on the surface. Enemies lets us in to Blade’s thoughts and shows us his distrust and loneliness. Enemies is a brilliant set-up to a series, Blade has many powerful enemies but we do not know who they are or why they are following him, we do not even know who he really is or what he has done.

Enemies is noir for teenagers, Blade is no Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe but he has his own moral code and although his instincts warn against it he cannot turn away a damsel in distress even though the forces arrayed against him are cast and powerful.

Enemies is the beginning of an epic quest set against the dirty streets of a modern world, where a boy must stand alone to stay free and battle against his darker instincts that threaten to drag him down!

Enemies was previously published in two parts as Blade: Playing Dead and Blade: Closing In.

Laura Jarratt: Why I wrote Skin Deep

In the first instance I wanted to write a book that teenage readers would want to read and re-read. A page-turner that would stay with them. And the inspiration for that was a book I read when I was thirteen: The Changeover by Margaret Mahy. I adored that book and its characters. Before I wrote Skin Deep I saw some reviews of The Changeover on Amazon from people who’d read it years ago like me and still remembered it and loved it. I knew I wanted to write a book like that, where you could be a crazy little bit in love with the male mc and also totally rooting for the female mc.

So I sat down to think about how I could write this page-turner that readers would remember and then promptly forgot all about that as I met Jenna and Ryan. They took over and I wanted to let them tell their stories in their own way. So writing the book became much less calculating than it initially sounds. There they were with their respective problems: when I put them together on the page, Skin Deep is what happened. I didn’t set out to write a book that preached a message. Any message a reader gets from Skin Deep is one they discover as a result of spending time with Jenna and Ryan and walking in their shoes. Neither of them is perfect; they have their flaws as do all the characters in the book.

There is one factor that crucially influenced the direction of the book. Jenna’s accident didn’t initially open the book until a friend sent me a link to a clip of The X-Factor. It was Susan Boyle’s first performance and my friend thought it was inspirational. I didn’t. I was disgusted by how the judges and audience reacted to Susan when she first came on stage. After that, we had a vigorous discussion (read slight argument) about how people are judged on appearances. It was then I decided to bring in Jenna’s disfigurement at the very start rather than it being something that happened in the past so the reader could better see how it had changed her.

Whenever I write a book I really have two desires: one is to entertain and the other is to make the reader walk a mile in the moccasins of my characters. I don’t see those as two separate desires but as two twinned essentials which must exist in the book for me to feel satisfied with it. If my characters don’t have something of value to say, then I’m not happy with my book. It’s not about preaching but about opening up someone else’s world for the reader to visit.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

When Mara Dyer wakes up in hospital with no memory of how she got there, or any explanation as to why the bizarre accident that caused the death of her boyfriend and two best friends left her mysteriously unharmed, her doctors suggest she start over in anew city, at a new school, and just hope her memories gradually come back.

But Mara’s new start is anything but comforting. She sees the faces of her dead friends everywhere and now she’s started to see other people’s deaths before they happen. Is she going crazy? As if dealing with this isn’t enough, Noah Shaw, the most beautiful boy she’s ever seen, can’t seem to leave her alone. But does he have her best interest at heart, or another agenda altogether.
 
 
    
 
 
 

When I was a child (many years ago now) one year my family and I went on holiday to a camp site on the bank of a river. I was swimming one afternoon when a slow current caught me, I was a fair distance down river when I finally noticed what was happening I was unable to swim strongly enough against the current and was helpless in its grip. Reading The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer was like that, I was reading lazily and all of a sudden I was gripped and unable to put it down, and unlike my episode in the river, there was no-one that plunged in to drag me back to the bank.

I must admit that I judged this book by its cover! When I saw it at the Simon and Schuster offices I thought oooh pretty! and was fortunate enough to wheedle a copy, the cover of Mara Dyer is one that I would have liked to have had as a poster when I was a teenager. Usually with most of the books I have read, the cover image has had something to do with the story but the only connection is the ethereal, otherworldly style that suffuses the story.

I can honestly say that I was very confused throughout the entire novel, trying to figure out if it was a paranormal tale or not. Even at the end when things are supposed to become clearer as to what was going on it left me guessing!

I will say that my confusion and inability to work out if what was happening was real or in her head in no way impacted on my enjoyment.

I do know for a fact that I will be picking up volume two so I can find out what happens next!

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is a beautiful novel that reads like a dream!

The Week of Woo!

The Week of Woo a celebration of all things John Green by Hot Key Press.

In their own words:

What is this all about?

We love John Green’s books.
At the moment, his latest book The Fault in our Stars is only being imported from the US. We want all his books to be properly looked after by a British publisher who is committed to bringing him over to the UK to meet Nerdfighters on tour.

So, we have planned this Week of Woo to show him how much we care.

We’d love other UK Nerdfighters help…

Please tweet messages to @realjohngreen with #DFTBAintheUK and the link to this page http://bit.ly/ymTUmU

Got more time? Post a British-themed happy dance video on our YouTube, Twitter or Tumblr, or a vlog with you/ your friends/ large groups of people saying “DFTBAintheUK”.

STAY TUNED for daily updates, more giggles, punishments and perhaps a contest to come…

Who are we?

See our blog…

See our ‘Why Hot Key Books Doesn’t Suck’ manifesto

What’s a Nerdfighter? What’s DFTBA?

The best people to explain this are John and Hank Green!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyQi79aYfxU

DFTBA stands for what Her Majesty so sagely said: “Don’t Forget to be Awesome”.

Teen Librarian Monthly February 2012

The latest edition of Teen Librarian Monthly is now available for download: tlmfebruary2012

Gypsies, Nerdfighters, an open-source ebook creator and an interview with Jane Prowse all in this edition!

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse.

August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school—until now. He’s about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you’ve ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie’s just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he’s just like them, despite appearances?

R.J. Palacio made me cry!*

That is all I need to say really, in Wonder I have found a story that made me laugh, it made me cry and it made me feel more for any fictional characters than I have for years.

Auggie’s story is told from his perspective and also the perspectives of those around him – his sister, his friends, his sister’s boyfriend and others. This works extremely well, as we obtain a bigger picture than we would if the story was told from Auggie’s perspective alone.

Wonder is a story about individuals, about families, friendship but mostly (I think) it is a book about seeing and understanding.

There have been many books written about vampires, werewolves, the undead and future worlds with characters fighting to survive, but none of these stories can compare to the horror of being a child and being different amongst other children.

I cannot write a long review, I mean I could but I won’t, I love the story, I love the characters and their development over the course of fifth grade and 313 pages. It would have been so easy to make this story grim and miserable, instead R.J. Palacio has woven a tale shot through with humour, bravery, loss and acceptance (also Star Wars, lots and lots of Star Wars!)

I urge everyone that reads this to believe me when I say that you should read this book – buy it, borrow it from your local library – if your library does not have it order it so they do and once you have read it make sure that other people you know read it too!

Wonder is now my favourite book of 2012!

* Pages 204 & 221

Oliver Twisted by J.D. Sharpe (and Charles Dickens)

“Flesh,” the woe-begotten moaned at Oliver, baring teeth which were ragged and black. “Flesh” came another moan, and he turned to see two more behind. They began to shuffle towards him, barefoot. The world according to Oliver Twisted is simple. Vampyres feed on the defenceless, orphans are sacrificed to hungry gods and if a woe-begotten catches your scent it will hunt you forever. On the advice of a corpse, Oliver flees his ghastly orphan life to seek his destiny in the dark streets of old London Town, despite the perils of the woe-begotten zombie-infested journey. There he meets the shadowy Dodger, the evil old soul-stealer Fagin, and the menacing Bill Sikes, who is more beast than man. But will Oliver Twisted be the world’s salvation, or its downfall?!

I am a fan of the original Oliver Twist but it has been replaced in my affections by Oliver Twisted. If I am brutally honest the whole literary classic/horror mash-up genre was getting a little tired for me, I had enjoyed some of them but on the whole I thought it had pretty much run its course. Then I was sent a copy of Oliver Twisted, I was planning on purchasing myself a copy, but when Egmont contacted me offering a review copy I said a big YES PLEASE! (I have no shame) When it arrived I was immediately impressed by the cover and the tag line – Please Sir I want some GORE! I am (as those that know me are aware) a fan of puns, the more groan-worthy the better. Then I started reading.

Oliver Twisted is no mere mash-up! This is the Buffy-verse version of Oliver Twist! Hell has vomited up its damned souls; they now roam the earth as the woebegone – which is the best euphemism for zombies that I have ever come across.
But that is not all, there are demons, witches, were-beasts and young Oliver, born in the poorhouse under a prophecy that proclaims him as the saviour of mankind… or the tool of its eventual destruction!

Stir in a satanic conspiracy bent on the overthrow of mankind, a devious soul-eater that runs a gang of young thieves, a vicious werewolf and young Oliver who is abandoned, betrayed and alone, an innocent soul that although unwilling to do wrong is often consumed by a rage that threatens to consume him.

All is not dark and evil in this world, there are the Knights of Nostradamus, a secret organisation pledged to overturn the world order and return mankind to the light, but they are few and beset on all sides…

You do not need to have read Oliver Twist to enjoy this book but it will heighten your enjoyment to see how subtly the originals have been turned with the addition of a world overrun by supernatural phenomena.

The Holocaust: Graphic Novels

The term Holocaust, originally from the Greek word “holokauston” which means “sacrifice by fire,” refers to the Nazi’s persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people. The Hebrew word HaShoah, which means “calamity” or “devastation” is also used for this genocide.

The thought of what was wrought between 1933 & 1945, not just to the Jews but also to Gypsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities and many others is almost impossible to comprehend. It was inhumanity of a scale that dwarfs the imagination. I have known about what happened for years, it is taught in schools, many volumes have been written about what happened but until I visited the Holocaust exhibit at the Imperial War Museum several years ago, my knowledge was academic. Seeing the pile of shoes in the exhibit and the clothes worn by the inmates of the camps and everything else displayed there affected me so much that I am actually frightened by the thought of going back in to the exhibit.

In 2010 I was working for Brent Libraries and for Holocaust Memorial Day we were fortunate to have artist Maurice Blik a survivor of Belsen come in to Willesden Green Library to give a talk to a combined group from local secondary schools. I wept as I listened to him speak of his experiences as a child and the loss of his younger sister. He is a phenomenal artist and also a fantastic speaker.

That brings me on to graphic novels, it has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words and that is true of comic books. The belief that comics could be more than disposable entertainment had already begun to change when Art Spiegelman’s Maus: a Survivor’s Tale was published, but it was this book more than many of the other graphic novels published in the late 1980’s that helped change that supposition.

Maus is the tale of Art Spiegelman’s troubled relationship with his father Vladek, a Holocaust survivor, and, through his conversations with his father the story of his family’s experiences of Hitler’s Final Solution. In Maus the Jews were represented as mice, the Germans as cats (Katzies), the French as Frogs and so on. Maus has been described as ‘the most affective and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust’ by the Wall Street Journal and after over 20 years of publication it is still a powerful and moving narrative of the Holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors. Art Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 after the second volume had been published. A companion volume entitled MetaMaus was published in 2011.

 

In the pages of METAMAUS, Art Spiegelman re-enters the Pulitzer prize-winning MAUS, the modern classic that has altered how we see literature, comics, and the Holocaust ever since it was first published twenty-five years ago.
He probes the questions that MAUS most often evokes – Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics? – and gives us a new and essential work about the creative process.

Auschwitz by Pascal Croci begins and ends in a squalid room in former Yugoslavia in 1993, another graphic novel rendered beautifully in black & white, Auschwitz is a fictionalized story of an elderly couple trapped in the midst of the civil war that presaged the breakup of Yugoslavia. They relive their memories of being trapped in Auschwitz and what they had to endure to survive. Pascal Croci interviewed a number of survivors to make sure that his story was accurate, and based a number of incidences within the book on events that happened to his interviewees during the war. Auschwitz is relatively short – only 70 pages of story but it is no less harrowing for its brevity, it also contains background information to the creation of the book, including extracts from transcripts of the interviews and a glossary of terms used.

 

 

Eric Heuvel is the author and illustrator of A Family Secret, using the ligne claire style of drawing pioneered by Herge the creator of Tintin to illustrate the book, he tells the story of Jeroen, who, while searching in his grandmother’s attic for items to sell at a flea market finds a scrapbook created by his grandmother in 1936. On enquiring about what it was about, Helena starts telling her grandson about her youth in Amsterdam in the 1930’s and the arrival of Esther, a young Jewish girl, and her family.
A Family Secret is a wonderful example of a family split apart by politics and duty, viewed from the perspective of Helena who is telling the story. Using a child’s view for the narration gives the tale of the invasion of Holland and the indignities heaped on the citizens of Amsterdam and the Jews in particular. Helena’s father was a police officer and after the German occupation he had to become involved in clearing the Jews from Amsterdam and one evening he has to round up Esther’s family.

 

The Search, also by Eric Heuvel is a companion volume to A Family Secret and tells the story of Esther, and what happened to her before and during the war. Both volumes are told via flashbacks from contemporary Holland and America and focus more on what happened to Jewish families during and after the war and how some survived.
Out of all the graphic novels I read it was A family Secret and the Search that affected me the most, I found myself welling up whilst reading, this was in part due to my being a massive Tintin fan and seeing similar much-loved artwork being used to illustrate a heartbreaking story, these books are also the most positive, sad as they are.

A Family Secret and The Search are published by MacMillan, Teaching guides for both books are available from the US site.

 
 
Not all the graphic novels are black & white, Marvel Comics published a five issue mini series called Magneto: Testament, this is the backstory of Magneto, the greatest foe the X Men have ever faced. At first I questioned the idea of wedging a comic book villain into the story of Auschwitz and the events leading up to the final solution. It is not a super hero story, it is a story of the Holocaust and a boy who has to grow up quickly in the midst of the most inhumane conditions to not only survive but save the woman he loves and himself.
Writer Greg Pak and artist carmine Di Giandomenico bring you this heartbreaking and historically accurate look at one of the most popular characters in the X-Men canon.
Magneto: testament also contains extensive notes at the back of the book about the creation of the book and historical facts about Auschwitz as well as topics for group discussion.

 
 

Marvel Comics is not alone in publishing a Holocaust comic book, DC Comics published the amazing what if… story by Joe Kubert, titled Yossel April 19, 1943.

In 1926 Joe Kubert’s family tried to emigrate to America, but owing to the fact that his mother was pregnant with him at the time, their request was denied. Fortunately not willing to give up his family tried again shortly after his birth and they were successful with their second attempt.
With Yossel, Joe Kubert imagined what his life would have been like if his family had not made their second attempt.
As he wrote in his introduction:

If my parents had not come to America, we would have been caught in that maelstrom, sucked in and pulled down with the millions of others who were lost…
The usual procedure in cartooning is to do the initial drawings with pencil, then to apply ink over the pencils with brush and pen. The pencil drawings are then erased, leaving only the ink rendering.
The drawings in this book are pencil drawings…

As a concept the idea of a comic book composed of rough sketches does not sound too appealing, but when you open the book that does not matter anymore! You forget that these are only rough sketches; the sense of movement in them is amazing. I think that so much vitality would have been lost if they had been inked and coloured.
Again this is a fictionalised account of what might have happened to Joe (Yossel) and his family had they not left Poland. The date in the title is significant; the 19th April 1943 is the date of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Germans thought that they would be able to put down the revolt by the by then starving Jews in the ghetto in three days, but they were in for a shock, although poorly armed and hemmed in the Jews resisted until the 16th of May making the Nazi forces pay in blood for each foot of ground they took.

I have recently come across two biographies involving the Holocaust, the first the story of Lily Renée who was fortunate enough to be evacuated to England but her story is no less interesting – her ordeal as a refugee in England was one shared by many who escaped. The second is the official graphic biography of Anne Frank, adapted from her diaries and other works documenting her families life in Germany and Holland.

lily-reneeIn 1938, Lily Renée Wilhelm is a 14-year-old Jewish girl living in Vienna.

Her days are filled with art and ballet. Then the Nazis march into Austria, and Lily’s life is shattered overnight. Suddenly, her own country is no longer safe for her or her family. To survive, Lily leaves her parents behind and travels to England.

Escaping the Nazis is only the start of Lily’s journey. She must escape many more times – from servitude, hardship, and danger. Will she find a way to have her own sort of revenge on the Nazis? Follow the story of a brave girl who becomes an artist of heroes, and a true pioneer in comic books.
 
 
 
 

Anne-Frank-graphic-biographyDrawing on the unique historical sites, archives, expertise and unquestioned authority of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the New York Times bestselling authors Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon have created teh first authorised graphic biography of Anne Frank. Their account is complete, covering the lives of Anne’s parents, Edith and Otto, Anne’s first years in Frankfurt; the rise of Nazism; the Frank’s immigration to Amsterdam; war and occupation; Anne’s years in the Secret Annex; betrayal and arrest; her deportation and tragic death in Bergen-Belsen; the survival of Anne’s father; and his recovery and publication of her astounding diary.

 
 
 
 
Maus is already a staple in many library collections with the other titles not being as well-known but also deserving a space.
 
 
The Holocaust was not the only attempt at genocide in the 20th century, but it is the most well-known and reviled. To learn more about this and the Armenian Genocide, Rwanda, Darfur, Cambodia and others visit http://www.hmd.org.uk/