PROPAGANDA Reviews: Morris The Mankiest Monster

Morris The Mankiest Monster

by Giles Andreae and Sarah McIntyre

David Fickling Books

It’s years since he last changed his t-shirt.
It’s crusty and crawling with ants.
His shoes are all slurpy and squelchy inside.
And potatoes grow out of his pants.

Just look at the cover – sweet, cute and fantastically gross. But what you can’t see is the brilliantly embossed green bogey on the cover. So it’s a book that plasters a huge smile across your face even before you’ve opened it up. Thankfully, no-one at DFB thought to make this a scratch and sniff cover – that would have been too much!

(One of the lovely double page spreads that feature throughout Morris The Mankiest Monster.Published by David Fickling Books, text © Giles Andreae, illustrations © Sarah McIntyre.)

Inside you’ve a beautifully drawn and written picture book that should delight younger readers; boys and girls alike will be enthralled by Morris’ mucky and smelly world and will want you to read the rhyming text over and over and over again. Every page is full of little details, most of them as revolting as possible.

Both writer and artist have got form in the brilliant books stakes – Giles Andreae is the creator of Purple Ronnie and was behind those Edward Monkton cards and merchandise that sprung up a few years ago. And you may well be familiar with Sarah McIntyre if you’re a long time reader of the FPI blog. We (that’s me and my daughter, 10 year old Molly) first noticed her a few years ago with Vern & Lettuce, her delightful strip in the much missed DFC comic. (For our views on Vern & Lettuce, see here and here).

(Molly’s favourite page in the book – how many smelly, revolting things can you spot? Published by David Fickling Books, text © Giles Andreae, illustrations © Sarah McIntyre.)

Molly thought the book was riotously funny, loved the gross bits and kept pointing out all of the muck and filth to her Mum, encouraged by every single Yuck and Euurgh she received. Here’s what Molly had to say:

I liked the way that Morris is small and cute but gross as well. Every page has something to make you laugh and it’s wonderfully colourful. My favourite page is the one with Morris’ kitchen and the shelves full of horrible things like Toe Jam, Armpit Custard and Sun-dried Nose Hair. I hope Sarah likes my Maggie!

(Molly’s version of Morris – Maggie the 2nd mankiest monster)

Morris The Mankiest Monster – a worthy successor to Raymond Briggs’ Fungus The Bogeyman, packed with fun, a great rhyming reader to be enjoyed again and again, beautifully drawn and guaranteed to have your young ones asking for more. Hopefully they wont get any ideas and start making their own collection of pickled toenail clippings or belly button cordial.

Morris The Mankiest Monster - one for the children (and me!)

More future releases to talk about. But no apologies because if you’re anything like me you can’t look at that image without grinning inanely. That’s Morris The Mankiest Monster, the first children’s book by illustrator Sarah McIntyre (of the much missed Vern & Letuce in the DFC). It’s written by Giles Andreae (who did all of the Purple Ronnie and Edward Monkton cards and other funny stuff).

When even the cover and the press release can raise a smile it’s a good sign that this will be a really good picture book for children (and grown ups as well!). Morris should be released by David Fickling Books early October.

Terry Pratchett: I Live In Hope I Can Jump Before I Am Pushed...

There’s a Terry Pratchett feature and article on the Daily Mail website written earlier this week dealing with the difficult and emotive issue of assisted suicide. His comments come in the wake of the ruling in the House Of Lords over the case of Debbie Purdy (BBC) and, as you might expect from Terry Pratchett, it’s impassioned, emotive and most of all a shining light of simple, plain, reasonable common sense.

As you probably know, Pratchett, 61, was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers disease in 2007 and has since become a very public advocate of greater research and greater understanding of the disease. And although it’s sad to hear the man talk about the day he will decide he wants to end his life when the disease takes it’s toll and takes his words away it’s also a very positive and thought provoking piece.

“We are being stupid. We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still. At least, that is what I thought until last week.

Now, however, I live in hope – hope that before the disease in my brain finally wipes it clean, I can jump before I am pushed and drag my evil Nemesis to its doom, like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty locked in combat as they go over the waterfall.

In any case, such thinking bestows a wonderful feeling of power; the enemy might win but it won’t triumph.”

We've seen Alzheimer's in our family. My maternal Grandma had it. I was too young to fully grasp what was going on but the memory of how badly it affected both my Grandma and mother are enough to convince me that Pratchett is talking complete sense. And I know that if I'm ever unfortunate enough to suffer from it in later life I'll be making exactly the same plans as Pratchett. And like him, I can only hope that sense and humanity prevails and by that time it's no longer a requirement to skulk away to Switzerland in relative secrecy and snatch your last moment of free will miles away from home.

At least they're reading something I suppose ........

This is slightly scary. I haven't read any of her books and I shouldn't really base my view of Twilight and Stephanie Meyer on the dull, lifeless, dreary movie we watched a while back.

But 1 in 7 books sold in the US during the first 3 months of 2009 were penned by Stephanie Meyer (USA Today). Even if these were great and wonderful works of literature there's still something very, very wrong with one author being so dominant.

The good news is that Moore & Gibbons' Watchmen was on the top 10 list as well.

PROPAGANDA Reviews: Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book

by Neil Gaiman.

Illustrated by Chris Riddell (younger readers version) and Dave McKean (adult version and slipcased edition)

The Graveyard Book’s been out for quite a while now, having received many plaudits and accolades along the way and most recently winning the prestigious Newberry Medal, given by the Association for Library Service to Children to recognise the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. I held off reading it for a little while as I’d decided that it was something I wanted to read with 9 year old Molly after we read Coraline (reviewed here).

We find Neil Gaiman’s children’s books, every single one of them, to be wonderful, imaginative and magical things. We’ve read them all in our house and the act of reading them out loud has convinced me that Gaiman works best this way. His adult prose may lack something for me (one of these days I will convert you to them! - Joe), but his storytelling, his works as performance are great things. And so it is with the Graveyard Book. Night after night Molly and I read this one, with Molly deciding that she wanted the room as dark as possible so she could close her eyes to better imagine the creatures filling the pages of the book.

Now, considering that The Graveyard Book begins a particularly nasty serial killer brutally killing every member of a family except the baby, this could potentially have led to many, many nights of terrible nightmares. Luckily, Molly’s made of stern stuff and realises, just like many children do, that sometimes the stories need a little death to make a life more interesting.

(“They say a witch is buried here” Art from chapter 4 The Witch’s Headstone by Chris Riddell.)

The Graveyard Book starts, as I’ve already mentioned, with a grisly set of murders. The murderer; The Man Jack, is a genuinely chilling and scary villain and mother, father and daughter lie dead by Jack’s hand. Miraculously the baby of the family escapes and finds unexpected refuge in the local graveyard where he’s given a new name; Nobody Owens, and gains a new extended family of ghosts, ghouls, spectres and spooks all doing their best to hide him from The Man Jack who carries on his hunt for the one that got away.

And if all this sounds rather familiar, a young boy rescued by a strange group of creatures and raised as one of their own, all the while under threat from a powerful monster, it’s no surprise. It’s the Jungle Book with dead folks and Gaiman acknowledges his huge debt to Kipling’s story in the back of the book.

So Bod finds a new home in the graveyard, looked after by his ghostly adoptive mother and father, tutored by ghosts, mentored by his vampiric guardian and given the freedom of the graveyard. It may be no ordinary life that Bod has, but it’s certainly not boring. But there’s only so much that the dead can teach about life and Bod finds himself drawn, time and again, into the land of the living where danger and adventure waits in equal parts.

The book is almost structured as a series of short stories, as Bod ventures through the graveyard’s various mysteries, finds a ghostly witch girl her headstone, takes part in the Danse Macabre where the dead venture from the graveyard and dance amongst the living, and becomes the imaginary friend to a young girl (told by her parents that the boy she plays with is her imaginary friend and why should she disbelieve them?). At one point I began to wonder where Gaiman was taking us with the story, as each chapter / short story seemed to be only moving the story along by accident rather than design. But I need not have worried, as he skilfully and magnificently draws all of his many threads together as The Man Jack comes crashing back into Bod’s life to finish the job he started nearly 16 years previous.

(“The four men stood at the door to number 33″. Chris Riddell’s wonderfully detailed art is the perfect match for Neil Gaiman’s decidedly scary story of The Graveyard Book.)

It might be a prose story, but I have to mention the artwork of the book. Gaiman’s frequent collaborator, the great Dave McKean provides some magnificent art for the adult version of the book. But I picked up the children’s version for Molly, with illustrations by Chris Riddell. And it surprised me, because when I did see McKean’s visuals I realised that, not only did I prefer Riddell’s version, I actually thought the pictures were far scarier than McKean’s. Take that image above, from Chapter 7 where the mysterious men representing the Convocation appear, as threatening and disturbing as anything Gaiman can think of.

Not that McKean’s images aren’t as impressive as usual, far from it. His images of Bod and the graveyard are lovely, haunting things. I just find Riddell’s to be far more disturbing and suitable for the book.

(Bod in the graveyard. Art By Dave McKean from the adult version of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.)

The Graveyard Book is typical Gaiman; packed with imagination and invention, delightfully scary with at least a couple of truly disturbing moments that are almost guaranteed to have younger children cowering with thrilling fear beneath the covers. Yet for a book set so firmly amongst the dead, The Graveyard Book’s real message is that life, no matter who, what or where you are, is always worth living and a really good life has to be experienced rather than observed.

It’s a book to be treasured for a long time, a natural successor to the great Coraline and, whether it’s enjoyed from under the covers late at night with Dad providing all the scary voices, or a little later on to be read alone with the scares all playing out in their head, it’s something children and grown ups will absolutely love.

The Graveyard Book is available in three flavours: The Children’s Version, illustrated by Chris Riddell; The Adult Version, illustrated by Dave McKean and the slipcased edition illustrated by Dave McKean. It’s also available from the Mouse Circus website (Gaiman’s site for younger fans) as a series of videos, each from one of Gaiman’s Graveyard Book tour readings from October 2008, where Gaiman reads the entire book over nine stops.

The Kindle thing....

Scott McCloud weighed in recently with his thoughts on the supposed print killer of Amazon's Kindle. There's an article on it over on the FPI blog.

Basically Scott's argument goes:

“Cinema is wider than it is tall. TV is wider than it is tall. Theater is wider than it is tall. Laptop and desktop monitors are wider than they are tall. In fact, with the advent of widescreen TVs, there’s little difference in the shapes. They’re all around 3×5 or 4×5 range. Wider than tall. All of them.
And print? Well, print is taller than it is wide right? The printed page is the exception to the rule, isn’t it?
Wrong. The default shape of print is not taller than wide. It’s wider than tall just like all the rest, because the default shape of print is two pages side-by-side. And the reason is the same reason as the shape of TV and cinema and theater and surfing and all the rest: because we have two eyes next to each other, not one on top of the other.

I don’t even have a Kindle yet, so this isn’t meant as a specific critique of the device. And I’m sure its engineers had solid practical reasons to design the device the way they did. You can even turn it sideways when needed. It just reminded me when I went to Amazon this morning and saw images of the latest, how design principles in the wild can always be adjusted on the fly, but as soon as they’re embedded in hardware, they tend to stick around. For decades in some cases.

So if I could humbly suggest a new cardinal rule of designing anything meant to be read (including webcomics): Step #1, look in a mirror.”

But I think he's wrong. Print is most definitely, at least for me, a portrait medium. In fact, his final comment of "look in a mirror" doesn't even work because most mirrors tend to be portrait as well - or at least a lot of the ones I look in.

Print is portrait to me. Every time I open a book, comic or magazine I may initially view it as a 2 page spread, but when I'm reading both eyes are focused on just one page - portrait.

But it's worth reading Scott's views and worth even more to think about it yourself. Will electronic readers eventually supplant print? I think they will - but only up to a point. I read a lot more articles online and onscreen now - simply because they're there. And I can certainly see something like the Kindle (or whatever Apple inevitably comes out with) becoming the way newspapers and magazine articles are read in the future. They're temporary, transitory things - read once and then dispose of.

But books and comics are different. Sort of. I can't ever see electronic readers replacing the actual physical pleasure of reading long form works such as books and graphic novels. They're just to fixed in the psyche as a form. The often used analogy with music or film doesn't wash - these media have been switching formats regularly since the first methods of recording sound or moving images. But the printed page, bound between covers has been such a fixed point in civilisation that I really can't see a sudden shift to a slab of electronic screen. Sure, there might be uses - the holiday book bag replaced by a lightweight reader perhaps. But near complete replacement the way that mp3s and similar are replacing records, tapes and cds - can't see it.

However, comics are a different matter. I've been a champion of the comic form since I first read one. And I've long been a champion of the collection, the graphic novel as the perfect form for the medium. I see comics as mere previews to something bigger. They, at least to me, are throw away, temporary things, just like newspapers. If I'm interested in a comic I'll read an online preview or buy the first issue. If it's worth it, I'll wait for the collection. So I can see an electronic reader, if it reproduces the look of the comic page well enough, replacing that aspect of my comic reading.

How about you?

PROPAGANDA Reviews: Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess

Blueberry Girl

by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess

Bloomsbury

For an explanation of the genesis of this book there’s nothing better than the author’s own words from Neil’s introduction to the book at his website for younger readers; Mr Bobo’s Remarkable Mouse Circus:

“This is the kind of book that comes about when a friend phones you and says, “I’ll be having a baby in a month. Would you write her a poem? A sort of prayer, maybe? We call her the Blueberry. . . .” And you think, Yes, actually. I would.

I wrote the poem. When the baby was born, they stopped calling her the Blueberry and started calling her Natashya, but they pinned up the handwritten Blueberry girl poem beside her bed. I kept a copy at my house, taped to a filing cabinet. And when friends read it, they said things like “Please, can I have a copy for my friend who is going to be giving birth to a daughter?” and I wound up copying it out for people, over and over.

I wasn’t going to let it be published, not ever. It was private, and written for one person, even if I did seem to be spending more and more of my time handwriting or printing out nice copies for mothers-to-be and for babies.

Then artist Charles Vess (whom I had collaborated with on Stardust) read it. And somehow, it all became simple. I made a few phone calls. We decided to make some donations to some charities. And Charles began to draw, and then to paint, taking the poem as a starting point and then making something universal and beautiful.

It’s a book for mothers and for mothers-to-be. It’s a book for anyone who has, or is, a daughter. It’s a prayer and a poem, and now it’s a beautiful book. I hope you enjoy it. I’m really proud of it. And I hope this means I don’t have to copy it out any longer…. Neil”

(Gorgeous Charles Vess pencils and finished page from Blueberry Girl.)

And after such an introduction, it shouldn’t be a surprise to find out that Blueberry Girl is a beautiful, moving and deeply poetic book. At just 28 pages and 18 lines of long, there’s barely anything to it, but it’s still a wonderful, loving thing. Gaiman’s words, although written just for Tori Amos’ daughter, have enough universal meaning to be applicable to any mother, to any daughter. His message is simple, his emotions true and touching, every line is full of love and sentiment.

Whilst most of Gaiman’s children’s work tends to be more father & child orientated, he shows with Blueberry Girl that he’s just as capable of identifying so well with the intense bond of unconditional love between mother and daughter. He’s managed to perfectly capture that nighttime prayer that every parent says over their sleeping child at some point in their lives. The wish for their lives to be blessed, glorious things, full of adventures and wonder. And these Blueberry Girls are living that wish; with lives of adventure, exploring the world, laughing, dancing and filled with joy.

And thanks to the beautiful artwork of Charles Vess this tiny poem becomes an incredible picture book. Vess took Gaiman’s words, designed for one child, and drew his pictures in such a way to make the poem universal. The Blueberry Girl of the title becomes every girl and each page features a different child, wandering through the narrative on spectacular flights of fancy.

Gaiman’s words, together with Vess’ visuals have made a beautiful thing. There was a lump in my throat most of the way through. There was a tear in Louise’s eye when she finished it. This is a book that will speak to every parent, but it will sing to all mothers and it may well send expectant mothers into floods of joyous tears.

(More of Charles Vess’ gorgeous artwork from Blueberry Girl)

It’s possibly too late to really push this as exactly the sort of book you should be getting for Mother’s Day. But it’s exactly the sort of book you don’t need an artificial event for. Get it for a mother, she’ll thank you for it with her smile and her tears of simple joy.

Part of the proceeds from the sale of Blueberry Girl goes to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

Neil Gaiman’s website.
Charles Vess’ website.

Where The Wild Things Are

The idea of a live action movie of Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are seemed, at first, to be a completely wrong idea. Something so wonderful, so magical, so keyed in to my childhood couldn't possibly be made into a movie. Could it?



I've just watched the trailer from the forthcoming Dave Eggers written, Spike Jonze directed film. It looks amazing. There's a moment in the first few seconds when the mind tries to reject the images as silly and wrong, but then the emotion of the thing kicks in and I found myself going with it. One to watch out for.

10 Stories behind Dr Seuss tales....

Nice little Friday story; the stories behind the works of Dr Seuss.

I knew this one about Green Eggs And Ham:
"Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss’ editor, bet him that he couldn’t write a book using 50 words or less. The Cat in the Hat was pretty simple, after all, and it used 225 words. Not one to back down from a challenge, Mr. Geisel started writing and came up with Green Eggs and Ham – which uses exactly 50 words. The 50 words, by the way, are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you."

But this one's new to me:
"Yertle the Turtle = Hitler? Yep. If you haven’t read the story, here’s a little overview: Yertle is the king of the pond, but he wants more. He demands that other turtles stack themselves up so he can sit on top of them to survey the land. Mack, the turtle at the bottom, is exhausted. He asks Yertle for a rest; Yertle ignores him and demands more turtles for a better view. Eventually, Yertle notices the moon and is furious that anything dare be higher than himself, and is about ready to call for more turtles when Mack burps. This sudden movement topples the whole stack, sends Yertle flying into the mud, and frees the rest of the turtles from their stacking duty. Dr. Seuss actually said Yertle was a representation of Hitler."

Neil Gaiman and prose and me and Molly

We started reading Coraline by Neil Gaiman tonight for Molly's bedtime book. We started it a while ago but it was a little too scary for her. But she's ready for it now and we've decided to read it before we see the film in May.

And it's a great book, perfect for reading aloud, just like all of Gaiman's children's books that we've read so far. He writes glorious prose for this age group, scary, creepy stuff but . And I love his comic work. But I just find myself at a bit of a loss when it comes rto reading his adult prose. I keep trying to read his books; the last one was Anansi Boys which was alright but nothing like as good as either his comics or his children's books. So I'll keep enjoying his comics and I'll keep enjoying his books with Molly. But I may lay off his grown up prose for a little while.

Andi Watson's Glister and more from new Walker Books Graphic Novel imprint.

Over on Andi Watson's Live Journal page, he's put a link to the latest edition of Digital Bookseller, the online version of the Bookseller's Manga & Graphic Novels insert that went out to booksellers this month. There, on the inside cover is an ad for Walker Books which has this image:

So, after a couple of issues of Glister at Image it seems it's finally getting a good book deal. After all, if you're making a great small graphic novel ideally suited for children and perfect for girls, Image Comics may not be the best place to get it out to as many people as possible. Good luck to Andi with this; I'm sure you'll be hearing more about it in the new year.

And it's not only Andi's Glister that's new to Walker Books. It seems they've jumped into the burgeoning Graphic Novel publishing market feet first with a new publishing imprint:

(Cover to the Walker Books Graphic Novel brochure, using art from Skim by Jillian Tamaki, coming from Walker Books in May 2009.)

Upcoming for 2009 are a host of interesting looking books aside from Andi's Glister that include the Dave McKean illustrated The Savage and the Tony Lee written Robin Hood. Plus much more for all ages and all tastes . Walker Books have a link to their new Graphic Novels imprint here and a 6Mb PDF download for the Graphic Novel imprint here.

Wanted - Graphic Novels for a small bookshop to try....

The local bookshop where I live; Simply Books of Pocklington, is a wonderful place. Tiny, cosy and an wonderfully inviting bookshop run by locals who care not only about the books but also about the town. (Just look at these great pictures from the Harry Potter book launch to see what I mean).

They've decided to move into slightly bigger premises from the incredibly tiny shop they have at the moment. And I happened to email the owner and congratulate her on her move and suggested that she might want to think about stocking some graphic novels.

She's very keen, but has no idea what to order to try it out. I've got ideas, of course, and will be talking to her about them. But I thought it would be interesting and fun to see what everyone else thought about it. What would you stock in a small bookshop to accurately reflect the medium? To start you off, I think a small adult selection of maybe 10 titles and a slightly larger children's selection would be good.

Over to you.... comments or email.....

Frugal Living for Dummies lesson 1:

Chanced across this one tonight. Frugal Living For Dummies.


Surely lesson 1 of Frugal Living For Dummies should be:
Don't waste your money on books that tell you how to save money?
Or is that just me?

Odd And The Frost Giants

Molly's reading shelf is a little like mine right now. At least half of it is waiting to be read. Everywhere we go, whether it's libraries, school, charity shops or the local independent bookshop; Simply Books, we seem to come back with something to read.

So it's no surprise that we've only just gotten around to finishing Neil Gaiman's World Book Day offering: Odd And The Frost Giants.

First off, the strangest thing about it was how I found myself reading it. I've recently listened to a couple of Gaiman's audio books and I found myself quite naturally reading it in his style. Not a problem as I would imagine it reads well when he reads it in his style as well. So for the past 5 nights, Molly and I have been immersed in the world of the Norse Gods. It's Molly's first meeting with them so her ideas and images of them were all new and based on what Gaiman gave her to play with. Mine though are all based on reading Marvel Comics' Thor as a child.

With Odd, Gaiman's taken the old Norse tale of the Frost Giant stealing both Thor's hammer and the Goddess Freya and shifted it slightly. No Thor in a dress for a start.

Odd is a strange boy, with an infuriating ability to smile a knowing smile guaranteed to annoy everyone. Odd's life has been anything but lucky so far; his father lost at sea, his leg crushed by a falling tree and his mother remarried to an boorish oaf. He's decided he's had enough and makes his way to his father's old woodcutting hut. Which is where he meets an Eagle, a Bear and a Fox who turn out to be Odin, Thor and Loki, all tricked into animal form by the Frost Giants, who've taken over Asgard and want the goddess Freya's hand in marriage. Now Odd, being Odd, simply decides that a trip to Asgard to free Freya, vanquish the Giants and return our three animal Gods to their right and proper form is the thing he should do so he sets about doing it.

Once there, Odd discovers it's not an army of Frost Giants who've conquered Asgard, but just one. And he's stuck through pride and an unwillingness to lose face. Frankly he's getting a little fed up with Freya as well, who hasn't stopped shouting at him yet. But how can a boy with only one good leg defeat a Frost Giant?

You won't be surprosed to know that Odd takes a very Gaimanesque path to this particular fight. It's a feature of Gaiman's work, and a commendable one, that his characters more often than not seem to think themselves out of a problem. And so it is with Odd.

Molly's long been a Neil Gaiman fan thanks to my insistence of giving her his books every opportunity I could. Luckily, she loves them all and it's still a special treat to curl up with Why I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish or Wolves In The Walls. Over time I can see Odd joining that list as well. Five nights of really great reading for £1. Marvellous.

Alison Bechdel's Compulsory Reading

Alison Bechdel did a lovely four page strip for the 1000th issue of Entertainment Weekly and has now kindly put it online. It's called Compulsory Reading and is just that. The diary of a compulsive reader, who just doesn't get time anymore. Oh, how familiar that sounds!

(via Katherine @ FPIblog)

Terry Pratchett's god lives just where mine does. Inside.

Caught this via Neil Gaiman's journal.

Terry Pratchett has been talking to the Daily Mail (someone has to I suppose) about his ideas on faith, God and why he doesn't believe.

So of course this headline is:

I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist, says fantasy author Terry Pratchett.

Uh, no he doesn't. What he does say is well thought out, honest and a genuine reflection of his faith and life following his revelation that he has early onset Alzheimer's disease. To cut to the chase, he beautifully sums it all up thus:

I number believers of all sorts among my friends. Some of them are praying for me. I'm happy they wish to do this, I really am, but I think science may be a better bet.

So what shall I make of the voice that spoke to me recently as I was scuttling around getting ready for yet another spell on a chat-show sofa?

More accurately, it was a memory of a voice in my head, and it told me that everything was OK and things were happening as they should. For a moment, the world had felt at peace. Where did it come from?

Me, actually - the part of all of us that, in my case, caused me to stand in awe the first time I heard Thomas Tallis's Spem In Alium, and the elation I felt on a walk one day last February, when the light of the setting sun turned a ploughed field into shocking pink; I believe it's what Abraham felt on the mountain and Einstein did when it turned out that E=mc2.

It's that moment, that brief epiphany when the universe opens up and shows us something, and in that instant we get just a sense of an order greater than Heaven and, as yet at least, beyond the grasp of Stephen Hawking. It doesn't require worship, but, I think, rewards intelligence, observation and enquiring minds.

I don't think I've found God, but I may have seen where gods come from.

It's a great article, but please, please, read past the headline.

Buffy comic - Rockwell or Ladybird?

This is the cover to Buffy issue 20 by Jo Chen. Lovely isn't it?

On her blog she mentions the Norman Rockwell type feel she was after. I imagine that works well for those American folks. But all I thought of was the Ladybird images I grew up with:

From The Carnival, art by M Aitchison. You can even buy these as prints now from the Ladybird Prints website and there's a great website on all things Ladybird called the wee web. Worth a look just as a excuse for nostalgic wallowing.


(via)

No To Age Banding on Books

On last Saturday's Guardian Books Online Phillip Pullman wrote a piece regarding his concerns over age banding books. Specifically it detailed his complete objection to the idea that the publisher puts a suggested reading age on any of his books.

“When I sit down to write a book, I know several things about it: I know roughly how long it will be, I know some of the events in the story, I know a little about some of the characters, I know - without knowing quite how I’ll get to it - what tone of voice I want the narrative to be cast in.

But there are several things I don’t know, and one of those is who will read it. You simply can’t decide who your readership will be. Nor do I want to, because declaring that it’s for any group in particular means excluding every other group, and I don’t want to exclude anybody. Every reader is welcome, and I want my books to say so. Like some other writers, I avoid giving the age of my characters for that reason. I want every child to feel they can befriend them.”

In fact, his objection is so strong that he's joined with Anne Fine and Adèle Geras to set up NoToAgeBanding.org. I've signed up for it and I'd encourage you to do the same.

As an ex-retailer, as a parent and as a reader I object to being told by the publisher what is suitable for my reading pleasure. I'd rather be the judge of that. And when it comes to Molly, I'd rather the pair of us decided what is suitable for her to read. She does it very easily and very simply. She makes a reasoned, informed decision and tries things out. And critically, we talk about books, about what she's reading, about the world and about anything she's interested in.

I was involved a little while ago in a debate at my Teaching assistant's course when the tutor expected us to decide which books were suitable. I was not pleased and made my point quite forcibly. This is just the same.

When I was young I devoured the shelves of Dudley children library, emptying them of everything I wanted to read. So it was onto the adult section and the delights of the Science Fiction, crime, thriller and fiction shelves I found there. There was just one incident when I was challenged over it. One librarian decided I was too young to be in the adult library and refused to check out my pile of books. Luckily I was meeting Dad there. Even more lucky was the fact that my dad believed in reading. And he believed, just as I do today, that age is no indicator of reading level. He complained and I was immediately given an adult library card, signed by us both. But if these horrible age banding proposals were in place it may have been different. All it takes is one librarian or bookseller having a bad day, one manager getting too officious, one edict from head office following some stupid complaint from a parent and I could have been turned away. And why? Because some committee somewhere has decided that this book is suitable for this age and unsuitable for that age.

The more I think about this, the more it annoys me. It's so blatantly wrong to force children's reading habits into nice age categories at the point of contact. Like Pullman said, it's one thing for a bookseller or Librarian to suggest, to selectively shelve, to discuss with a child or their parents about what book choices they may have. This is an informed and sensible way of doing it. A poor reader aged 12 may be perfectly happy with a book that a better reader may have read at age 6. Similarly an intelligent, literate, mature 10 year old could easily be reading books that many 16 year olds or even adults would be usually reading. It has nothing to do with age ratings. It has everything to do with a child given a suitable book after a reasoned decision is made. And it doesn't have to be someone making it for the child either. I've seen Molly do exactly the same thing. She'll pick up a book or graphic novel and she'll make a reasoned decision on it's suitability. Because we talk to her, because we educate her, because we trust her, because of all of these things we're fostering a love of reading that will hopefully stay with her for life.

Adrian Tomine New Yorker cover

Adrian Tomine has done the cover for the Fiction issue of the New Yorker four times in the past. His latest is by far his best. It's also a very clever dig at modern culture and the ongoing debate - shops or amazon?

Personally I'm torn.
I've used online shopping for years and used to almost exclusively buy books, cds and dvds from here. Of course, nowadays I don't buy cds that much anymore and dvds come from Amazon rental anyway because there are very few films worth keeping - probably because I'm fairly safe in the knowledge that the films I want will always be available from now on in our information rich society.
Books are a strange one though. We've our own independent bookshop in Pocklington, plus my ongoing book embargo plus a desire to use the library some more means I've been getting less books from Amazon. And I do like to support the local bookstore when I can, although every time I pay full price on a book I practically wince.

Charlotte Sometimes.

Before it was a quite wonderful Cure song (see the lyrics) Charlotte Sometimes was a book of the same name, featuring a young girl called Charlotte (what else?) who travels back in time from 1963 each night swapping places with another girl in 1918.
Robert Smith of the Cure is obviosly a huge fan, having based not just Charlotte Sometimes & it's b-side Splintered In Her Head (from 1981) on the novel but also a third song; The Empty World (1984) from The Top.

But what consitutes a fan borrowing themes and ideas from a thing they love and what constitutes whole sale plagarism? It seems the distinction is small and often depends on how nice the fan is about borrowing so much.

Chain Of Flowers, the excellent Cure blog and website, which is much better and informative than the official Cure website, has links to the blog of Penelope Farmer where she discusses the issue and her meeting with Robert Smith. It's heart warming, funny and perfectly told.
Part 1 - The Cure(d)
Part 2 - Robert Smith for ever.

Such is the case with Charlotte Sometimes.