Red House Children’s Book Award blog tour: Stuart Hill

princeoftheicemarkI enjoyed writing The Prince of the Icemark enormously; and in fact it was inspired by several readers who sent fan letters asking to know more about Redrought as a character. He was killed quite early in The Cry of the Icemark but obviously the huge bear of a man who was the King of his country, a doting father and loved cats with a passion, made quite an impression on the readers, and so the scene was set for a revisit. But this time I wanted to study Redrought as a boy just before he settled into the throne of the Icemark. And then when he was finally forced to become King after his brother was killed, I wanted to show him growing into the job.

I actually based part of Redrought’s character on every awkward, stumbling and shy teenage boy I’ve ever known – including me! As a grown-up he was a like a cross between a friendly Viking and a grizzly bear; the type of bear that would deliberately break wind loudly in quiet exam rooms or tell vicars dirty jokes and then roar with laughter, not noticing the silence that had settled around him. But as a boy he was very different. He’d blush if a girl so much as looked at him, and he’d definitely fall over his own feet if he had to do something terrifying like actually go for a walk with one of the strange creatures that he found so fascinating.

Stuart HillI also wanted to go back and tell the stories of some my other favourite characters, especially the Vampire King and Queen. I absolutely loved writing about them; I particularly enjoyed their snobbery, their refined manners and their sarcasm – and all of that, coupled with their ferocity, made me think of some of my old teachers (not all of them – I had some great teachers). I could just imagine His Vampiric Majesty as an old-style headmaster who’d sweep through the corridors in a long gown, on the hunt for prey or for any pupil who’d forgotten their homework! And Her Vampiric Majesty would just have to be a maths teacher … precise, professional, petrifying!

I think there are more stories to be told involving the young King Redrought, his fighting, farting cat Cadwalader, and his future wife Athena, the warrior princess of the mighty Hypolitan. Perhaps one day, I’ll tell them.

RHCBA2015

The Power of Reading: A YLG London training day

YLG London are delighted to announce that the booking period is open for this years One Day School entitled ‘The Power of Reading’. We have a great line up of authors, practitioners, librarians and speakers from across a range of organisations coming together to deliver this course. The Course aims, objectives, programme and booking form are included in the body of this email. If you would like further information, please don’t hesitate to contact Simon.

Friday 14th November 2014

CILIP
7 Ridgmount Street
London WC1E 7AE

COURSE AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

This course is aimed at frontline library staff working with the public and Librarians with an interest in promoting stock and engaging readers. The course will provide;

· Practical advice for engaging with young people

· Ideas for reading promotion

· Raised stock awareness

· Raised awareness of the wider literary network

BOOKING INSTRUCTIONS

Course Fee

£50 + VAT CILIP Personal members

£55 + VAT Non members

£40 + VAT Unwaged

Places are limited to 40 and will be confirmed in writing or by e-mail on a first come first served basis. To book a place, please complete the enclosed booking form including your CILIP membership number if applicable and return to:

Simon Smith
YLG London
62 Belmont Road
Reading
RG30 2UU
simonsmith78@btinternet.com

COURSE OUTLINE

08:45 Registration

09:30 Welcome and Introductions

09:35 Power of Reading

Keynote speaker: Julia Eccleshare MBE

10:15 Power of Awards

Panel discussion

Fen Coles – Letterbox Library

Emily Drabble – Guardian

Clare Shanahan – Booktrust

11:10 Break

11:30 Power of Poetry – bringing poetry to life

Performance poet Joe Coelho

12:00 Power of Performance

Group discussions – using examples of books – what can you draw out of books to inspire and motivate – activities/success stories

12:55 Summary of morning

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Power of Summer

Getting the best from the Summer Reading Challenge – Sarah Mears

14:30 Group discussions – what works/doesn’t/ideas

15:00 Power of Authors

Panel discussion with:

Rob Lloyd Jones

Katie May Green

Rob Biddulph

Piers Torday

15:55 Summary of afternoon

16:00 Refreshments and Book Signing. Books on Sale Big Green Bookshop

The CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway (CKG) Awards process

  • The Awards are overseen by the Youth Libraries Group (YLG) which is a special interest group within the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP)
  • Books can be nominated by any member of CILIP
  • Each member can nominate up to two books for each award
  • The CKG Judges as CILIP members are also allowed to nominate titles
  • Nominations for the 2015 Awards were open from the 1st September to the 6th October
  • Nominated titles are then checked for eligibility by the CKG Working Party & CILIP:

    Titles must have been first published in the UK between 1 September 2013 and 31 August 2014

    Books first published in another country must have been co-published in the UK within three months of the original publication date

  • When the nominations lists are made public the judges receive a full set of each of the Awards titles and start reading
  • From the nominations list a long-list of around 20 titles is selected by the judges working together under guidance from the Chair of Judges and referring to the full criteria for each award
  • The long-list is then be made public (10th February 2015)
  • The judges revisit and reread each of the books and scrutinise them even more closely before making a decision on short-listing, selecting six to eight of the titles for the short-list
  • The short-list is then made public (17th March 2015)
  • The hardest part of the judges’ task begins: selecting the most outstanding titles from the short-list
  • The winning titles are made public in June.
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    The CILIP Carnegie Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding book for children and young people
    The Carnegie Award is a gold medal and comes with £500 worth of books that the author can donate to the library of their choice.

    The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding book in terms of illustration for children and young people
    The Kate Greenaway Award is also a gold medal and comes with £500 worth of books but also the Colin Mears Award which is a £5000 bequest left to the winner of the Kate Greenaway Award by Colin Mears, this has been awarded annually since the year 2000.

    Doctor Who: Friendly Dalek teaches you to code

    The BBC has unveiled a computer game called The Doctor and the Dalek, as part of the Make it Digital initiative to get more young people into computer coding.

    It is voiced by Peter Capaldi and the story, starring a friendly Dalek, is written by Doctor Who series writer Phil Ford.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29645991

    First UK Comics Laureate Announced

    Bestselling graphic novelist Dave Gibbons is to become the first Comics Laureate. The announcement was made by internationally acclaimed comics authority and graphic novelist Scott McCloud at the launch of new charity Comics Literacy Awareness (CLAw) at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival on 17th October.

    The role of Comics Laureate is to be appointed biennially to a distinguished comics writer or artist in recognition of their outstanding achievement in the field. Their role is to champion children’s literacy through school visits, training events for school staff and education conferences. Dave Gibbons has won universal praise for his comics and graphic novel work for Marvel and DC Comics including the ground-breaking Watchmen (with Alan Moore), as well as the UK’s own 2000AD and Doctor Who. “It’s a great honour for me to be nominated as the first Comics Laureate,” he says. “I intend to do all that I can to promote the acceptance of comics in schools. It’s vitally important not only for the pupils but for the industry too.” Dave Gibbons takes up his two-year position from February 2015.

    Comics Literacy Awareness (CLAw) is a new UK charity formed by a group of passionate, highly experienced professionals from the fields of education and comics. Its primary aim is to improve the literacy levels of children and to promote the variety and quality of comics and graphic novels today, particularly in the education sector.

    The Board of CLAw’s trustees includes renowned graphic novelist Bryan Talbot, winner of the 2012 Costa Award for Best Biography for Dotter Of Her Father’s Eyes (a collaboration with his wife Mary Talbot). He says, “In many other countries, comics and graphic novels have been used extensively in literacy drives. The sheer accessibility of the medium, the way in which complex information can be easily absorbed through its combination of words and pictures, actively encourages reading in those intimidated by endless blocks of cold print.”

    The other trustees are Julie Tait, Director of the Lakes International Comic Art Festival; Ian Churchill, comic book artist for DC and Marvel, and writer/artist on his Image Comics title Marineman; Emma Hayley, Managing Director and Publisher of UK’s independent graphic novel company, SelfMadeHero; Paul Register, school librarian and founder of the Stan Lee Excelsior Award; and Dr. Mel Gibson, comics scholar and senior lecturer at Northumbria University.

    Alongside the Comics Laureateship, CLAw will work closely with schools on a number of initiatives, including staff training events and classroom visits by comics professionals. They will liaise with museums and galleries on a variety of comics-related projects, and provide reading lists and general guidance to school staff and parents unfamiliar with the comics medium, demonstrating the wider educational benefits it can offer.

    For further information about: Comics Literacy Awareness (CLAw) – www.claw.org.uk

    Teen Librarian and the CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Awards

    Those readers who also follow me on twitter or know me in real life will be aware that for the next two years I will be a Judge for the CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Awards.

    The effects of the CKG Awards have been slowly creeping in to the way I have been running Teen Librarian. I have been reading as many of the potential nominations as I could so that when the list of nominated titles is revealed I would not have an almost insurmountable task in getting through all of them. I have not felt that it would be a good idea to review the books I have read over the past year as it may create a conflict of interest if my views on them are made known and they are nominated.

    My reviews will cease entirely from now as I will have no time to read anything other than the nominated titles, the list of titles will become public next week.

    The voices of past judges has become a Greek chorus in my mind, collectively and individually they have all said the same thing: Life as you knew it is over! All your free time will be taken up with reading the nominations, you don’t really need eight hours of sleep a night and say goodbye to your friends and significant other…

    The list of things in life that will be set aside because of the awards does go on a bit, but those were the salient points.

    I know that I am not the most prolific of posters in the library & book blogging worlds but I may become even quieter. I will not be posting on any of the authors and titles nominated, or about any of the meetings relating to the Awards. I will keep posting ideas and items of interest as I usually do and if anyone reading this would like to become involved with writing articles or reviews for Teen Librarian please do let me know.

    I will also not be able to answer any questions relating to views on the nominated titles or authors, or about the awards process or my fellow judges. I will be happy to talk about the importance of the Awards, the criteria and any general questions people may have. I may even write posts about those subjects in case.

    First Story National Writing Competition

    First Story is very excited to announce the launch of its annual National Writing Competition!

    Students from state schools across the country are invited to submit 850 words or less of poetry or prose on the theme of ‘Home’ – what does home mean to them? Is it a place, a smell, a taste, a group of people?

    This year we are delighted to offer the fantastic prize of a residential Arvon creative writing course for the winners. We will also publish all the shortlisted pieces in a collected anthology, and hold a special prize-giving ceremony at LSE in 2015.

    The competition will be judged by five acclaimed writers: Anthony McGowan, Bernardine Evaristo, James Dawson, Kate Kingsley and Laura Dockrill.

    Teachers will run the first stage of the competition within schools, and then send 3 top entries to First Story before the deadline on Friday 5th December 2014. The first 100 teachers to get 50 entries within their school will be given £100, and £30 in book tokens will be given to every school to be awarded to the top three winners within each school.

    Four stories from each key stage (KS3, 4 and 5, twelve stories in total) will be selected by First Story from the final entries submitted by each school, and then the five judges will pick a winner for each key stage. One winner overall will be selected, with the results announced in a prize ceremony at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) in early 2015. The three key stage winners will each be offered a places on an Arvon residential writing course in March 2015. And on top of that, they get to invite 3 friends to come on the course too, and bring the teacher who entered their piece along with them.

    Teachers can also enter themselves, in a separate contest: 4 top teacher pieces will be chosen, and a final winner, selected by the judges, will also get a place on the Arvon course.

    For full details and resources please visit this page:

    http://www.firststory.org.uk/2014/09/24/first-story-national-writing-competition/

    Historical Graphic Novels

    historical graphic novels threeFor everybody who thinks that the Spartan’s were the squeaky clean heroes of democracy portrayed in 300 (the graphic novel and the film).

    Three is a fictional tale of three Helots – the slave class that resided in Greece, set a century after the Battle of Thermopylae and their attempt to escape from 300 Spartans despatched to kill them.
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    Crecy_cover_artA longbow-man’s view of the Battle of Crecy, written by Warren Ellis. Crecy is a relatively brief introduction to one of the most important medieval battles that England fought in Europe. It contains a copious amount of swearing, but is highly entertaining and informative.
    white barrier
    terra-cover-for-blogTerra Australis charts the epic voyage of the First Fleet from London to Port Jackson, Australia.
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    historycomicsuffragetteTells the story of the campaign for votes for women. This title presents a tale of loyalty, love and courage, set against a vividly realised backdrop of Edwardian Britain, it follows the fortunes of a maid-of-all-work swept up in the feminist militancy of the era.
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    historycomicdotterPart personal history, part biography, this title contrasts two coming-of-age narratives: that of Lucia, the daughter of James Joyce, and that of author Mary Talbot, daughter of the eminent Joycean scholar James S Atherton.
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    Charleys-War-coverDescribed by Andrew Harrison as “the greatest British comic strip ever created”, Charley’s War tells the story of an underage British soldier called Charley Bourne. Charley joins the British Army during World War I at the age of 16 (having lied about his age and told the recruiting officers that he was 18; they conveniently overlook the fact that Charley gives his date of birth on his application form as 1900), and is quickly thrust into the Battle of the Somme.
    white barrier
    Berlin-cityofstones-jasonlutes-cover Berlin: City of Stones is the first volume of a trilogy of graphic novels detailing the decline of Weimar Germany.
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    battleofbritainOn the 15th of May 1940, the forces of the 3rd Reich surged into the north-west of France. In preparing for complete peace, the unwary French are surprised and defeated without having been able to avoid the manoeuvres. The Germans block off the British Expeditionary force in the ‘Dunkirk Pocket’. This book tells the story.
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    CASTRO_COVER_FINAL_RGB_115dpi-e1308319065443In October 1958, Karl Mertens, a young journalist, arrives in Havana. Having read an interview with Castro in the New York Times, he sets out to meet and interview him. When he arrives, he finds himself in a country plunged into revolution, he quickly becomes involved in its events.
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    waltz_with-Bashir_coverWaltz with BBashir is a graphic novel adaptation of an animated film about an israeli soldier’s search for lost memories of his time in Lebanon during the Israeli-Lebanon War of 1982.
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    persepolisPersepolis is an autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi depicting her childhood up to her early adult years in Iran during and after the Islamic revolution.
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    Marzi-coverMarzi is Marzena Sowa’s memoir growing up in communist Poland during the lead up to the fall of communism in the 1980’s.
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    Bloomsbury launches HARRY POTTER BOOK NIGHT

    HPBN-logox
    February 5th 2015 will see the first ever Harry Potter Book Night. This exciting event will give new and existing fans a chance to share the wonder of J.K. Rowling’s unforgettable stories and, most excitingly, to introduce the next generation of readers to the unparalleled magic of Harry Potter. You are hereby invited to embrace the magic and banish the midwinter blues!

    Bloomsbury Children’s Books is inviting schools, bookshops, libraries and community groups to host early evening events in celebration of Harry Potter Book Night. Bloomsbury is creating a complete Harry Potter Book Night Kit – available for free download – offering hosts everything they need to plan an unforgettable evening. The kit will include invitation templates, an event poster, games, activities and quizzes as well as ideas for dressing up and decorating the venue. The kit will be available from the new website harrypotterbooknight.com. Event hosts can register now at the site to receive the kit and updates in the run up to the big night.

    In addition to the community events outlined above, there will be public events in London and key regions, a major competition for UK and Irish schools and many further treats and surprises – all celebrating J.K. Rowling’s seven iconic Harry Potter books – to be revealed soon.

    Bloomsbury Children’s Books will be marking Harry Potter Book Night on February 5th in their key territories, giving fans across the world an opportunity to join in the celebrations.

    Bloomsbury is working closely with Harry Potter partners on plans for the inaugural Harry Potter Book Night, and this interactive celebration joins the new Jonny Duddle jackets, Harry Potter book festival events and the Jim Kay illustrated editions publishing October 2015 as part of a wider strategy from Bloomsbury to pass the magic of these unique adventures on to as many readers as possible.

    Find out more details here

    The Rather Amazing Race: Introducing Students to Finding Information Quickly

    Telling students that finding information in a book can be faster than using the internet is fun!

    I told a class of year nines this morning and I could see the naked disbelief in their faces. The moment the words left my mouth a sea of hands shot up and a clamour of voices stridently disagreeing with me filled the library.

    They shouted that the internet was faster, easier and had more accurate sources. I managed to quieten them down and then one lad stood up and said that he would show me that using the internet was faster. I asked him how he would accomplish this and he challenged me to a race.

    He said that he would use the internet and I would use the books in the library. The rest of the class cheered loudly at this.

    I was rather surprised, as I had been planning on running a books versus the internet lesson in October so I agreed. I suggested that we both stand in the centre of the library and said that the first person to take the information they found to their form tutor who was also in the library would win. I also gave him the choice of subject.

    He said one word: “Football!”

    He ran to the closest available computer while I walked over to World Book Encyclopedia, took Volume 7 (F) off the shelf and looked up Football. World Book is an American publication, so the information contained therein was about American Football, but it did reference Soccer (Association football). So I grabbed Volume 18 (So-Sz) found the entry on Soccer and took it to the teacher.

    By the time my worthy opponent had started shouting that the computer was too slow, so I called him back to the rest of the class who started accusing me of cheating. I disagreed with them but that only made their fury greater, they told me that it was not fair and that I knew where all the information books in the library were and could just walk to them and find the information I wanted.

    At this point I gave a silent thank you to whoever was listening and then agreed with the students.

    The point of the exercise I told them, was not to show off what I can do in the library, but rather to show them what they can learn to do. The point of library lessons for year nine is to continue helping them learn how to find relevant and reliable information for the work they are doing, both in print and online.

    I think that the lesson went well, the class was quieter by the end of the lesson than it has ever been before. They thought about what I was offering them over the course of the year ahead.

    The next lessons will focus on finding information online.