tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6698991345498915702024-03-13T13:53:27.609+00:00Candy GourlayCandy Gourlay is a Filipino author based in London. Her books have been listed for the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children's Book Prize and many other prizes.Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comBlogger209125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-14307433887607086742020-11-29T13:39:00.003+00:002020-11-29T14:14:32.973+00:00The Manila International Book Festival 2020: Social Justice and Children's Books<div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I had to wake up at 5 in the morning today to appear in the Manila International Book Festival, which went online this year.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gTsbcqdtXNw" width="560"></iframe></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Such a treat for this London based Filipino author to be invited to the festival, even though it did mean rising in the winter gloom. The MIBF is an astonishing tribute to a voracious book reading public in Manila – for the past five years, it's featured queues around the block, massive crowds and shoppers laden down with stacks of books they've purchased.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: georgia;">It definitely feels a more sedate affair online (especially if you're appearing from the other side of the world in London), but still filled with the book-loving joy of its original manifestation.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I appeared with moderator Lance Caperal and my friend Zarah Gagatiga, librarian and children's author, to talk about social justice and children's books. You can<a href="https://lovealibrarian.blogspot.com" target="_blank"> view Zarah's presentation on this link</a>.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--REv1hFJdMw/X8OhAX6qRzI/AAAAAAAA0tQ/1ZPBzQUEbvotbUXkzG5TsS9umnzA-VkxgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Screenshot%2B2020-11-29%2Bat%2B13.22.31.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: georgia;"><img alt="Manila International Book Festival panel with Lance Caperal, Candy Gourlay and Zarah Gagatiga" border="0" data-original-height="1132" data-original-width="2048" height="351" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--REv1hFJdMw/X8OhAX6qRzI/AAAAAAAA0tQ/1ZPBzQUEbvotbUXkzG5TsS9umnzA-VkxgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h351/Screenshot%2B2020-11-29%2Bat%2B13.22.31.png" title="Manila International Book Festival panel with Lance Caperal, Candy Gourlay and Zarah Gagatiga" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's been ten years since I wrote my debut novel <i>Tall Story</i>, and to discuss social justice, I had to revisit the questions I had asked myself as I was writing it long ago.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Time is a funny thing – I am not the same person I was when I wrote <i>Tall Story</i> back in the early 2000s. At the time, I still introduced myself as a journalist foremost. And my experiences as a journalist were still fresh to me. Today, 20 years later, I no longer introduce myself as a journalist.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: georgia; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YTrGFjnSDpU/X8OgLQRLUEI/AAAAAAAA0tE/EOjHhRPDqHczm2gyzPAnoMFRXPOeFxLugCLcBGAsYHQ/s1545/TALL-STORY-Philippine-edition-1000px.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Tall Story by Candy Gourlay" border="0" data-original-height="1545" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YTrGFjnSDpU/X8OgLQRLUEI/AAAAAAAA0tE/EOjHhRPDqHczm2gyzPAnoMFRXPOeFxLugCLcBGAsYHQ/w258-h400/TALL-STORY-Philippine-edition-1000px.jpg" title="Tall Story by Candy Gourlay" width="258" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Cover illustration: Rommel Joson</div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">At the time, the main source of my reportage was Filipino immigration. I interviewed many Filipinos all over Europe who had left home to work abroad. And in 2005, I presented and wrote a programme on BBC Radio 4 called <i>Motherless Nation</i>, exploring what happened to the children left behind by the feminized migration in the Philippines.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">In <i>Tall Story</i>, my hero was a boy left behind by his mother to work as a nurse in the UK – something I experienced myself when my father left us to work in Libya and Guinea. Eleven percent of Filipinos have a close relative who has left the country to work abroad.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Social justice, like right and wrong, is not black and white. There are many shades of grey in between. And a novel is a safe place to ask questions that may not have answers. It holds up a mirror to the child who experiences these situations – and there is something cathartic and enabling to know that you are not alone. It encourages critical thinking that does not jump to easy conclusions – society and humanity are full of contradictions.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Should children be exposed to these hard questions? Well, they are already living it! We cannot underestimate what children notice about our world. Reading gives them the capacity to understand – and if not totally understand (because not everything can be explained) then at least to endure and to forge their way in life, despite it.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I <span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">read about the 'Notice and Wonder' teaching strategy in a New York Times educational series called </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/learning/whats-going-on-in-this-graph-jan-30-2019.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What’s Going On in This Graph?</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which helped teachers use New York Times graphs and diagrams as a platform for Maths teaching. The students were asked to look carefully at the diagrams and think about, among others, these two questions:</span></span></div><span id="docs-internal-guid-542e2337-7fff-d54c-ff7f-1aff73449148"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><li dir="ltr" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What do you notice?</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What do you wonder? </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What are you curious about what you notice?</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The students then conclude with “The story this graph is telling is …”</span></p><br /><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Reading up on the Notice and Wonder® strategy led me to this presentation by teacher Annie Fetter </span><a href="https://twitter.com/MFAnnie" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">@mfannie</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> called </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-Fth6sOaRA&feature=youtu.be" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-decoration-skip: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ever Wonder What They’d Notice?</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I encourage you to watch it.)</span></span></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I realised that books do the same thing. Books ask children: 'What do you notice?' 'What do you wonder about?'</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">There are no right or wrong answers because you are just teaching the children how to open their eyes and see things.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">My second novel, <i>Shine</i>, presents as a ghost story. A girl yearning to see her dead mother again. But it also asks questions about how society chooses to treat people who are different. People perhaps who suffer from mental illnesses or from visible disabilities or from homelessness due to poverty. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-97bdtfp0EVs/X8Oj2XspSnI/AAAAAAAA0tg/B82A4Se8rSEXnA-v8Lu7ZLnprZ_4b5S8wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1140/Screenshot%2B2020-11-29%2Bat%2B13.36.09.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Shine by Candy Gourlay" border="0" data-original-height="1140" data-original-width="756" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-97bdtfp0EVs/X8Oj2XspSnI/AAAAAAAA0tg/B82A4Se8rSEXnA-v8Lu7ZLnprZ_4b5S8wCLcBGAsYHQ/w263-h400/Screenshot%2B2020-11-29%2Bat%2B13.36.09.png" title="Shine by Candy Gourlay" width="263" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Cover illustration: Ricky Villabona</div><br /><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have no interest in lecturing children about what is right or wrong, but by 'capturing' them with my novel, I hope they find themselves noticing how my fiction moves in parallel to their own experience, and I hope my storytelling moves them to ask the questions that will help them develop empathy and make the best of their experiences.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">My third novel, <i>Bone Talk</i>, harks back to a time when a foreign power, the United States, invaded my native Philippines. American writings from that era constantly portray the savagery of Filipinos as compared to civilized Americans. The invasion was portrayed as necessary to bring civilization to the Philippines. The question I asked in that novel was: what does it mean to be civilized? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0d2A--b-LfU/X8OjpCRXc-I/AAAAAAAA0tc/mIprkOT-0UsLVaVnMDvCX-Tgtp4CDDIugCLcBGAsYHQ/s1172/Screenshot%2B2020-11-29%2Bat%2B13.35.12.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Bone Talk by Candy Gourlay" border="0" data-original-height="1172" data-original-width="774" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0d2A--b-LfU/X8OjpCRXc-I/AAAAAAAA0tc/mIprkOT-0UsLVaVnMDvCX-Tgtp4CDDIugCLcBGAsYHQ/w263-h400/Screenshot%2B2020-11-29%2Bat%2B13.35.12.png" title="Bone Talk by Candy Gourlay" width="263" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Cover illustration: Kirby Rosanes</div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">It was not an easy question to ask because my characters, with ritualistic practices, dressed in g strings with a headhunting, animist culture, have all the trappings of what our modern society condemns as savagery. Its hero is a boy who <span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"> </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">thinks that being circumcised will instantly turn him into a man. To his frustration, something happens to postpone this declaration of manhood – instead he has an adventure that teaches him there's more to manhood than a ritual. </span></span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">I know parents and teachers might find it a challenge to be confronted with this. </span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">The Bontok (I spell it with a k to differentiate the culture from the present capital of the Mountain Province) were a headhunting tribe encountered by U.S. invading forces in 1899. American propaganda of the era portrayed them as uncivilized, little better than animals. </span></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Writing this book, I learned that to be civilized is not about how you dress or what you believe ... it is about being able to see the humanity of someone who is not like yourself. This is the journey that my young reader takes – he or she comes to </span><span>realize that the Cut does not define who the Bontoc are, just as my hero realizes that it is not the Cut that will make him a man.</span></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><span style="font-family: georgia;">By the end of the story, he has experienced life, death, discovered the true meaning of friendship ... and he learns what is important – <i>and it isn't the Cut</i>.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The othering of the Bontok people finds parallels in many issues such as race and gender that bedevil modern society to this day. Fiction is a great vehicle by which our young people can live in the shoes of people who are not like them. </span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here is a video of that morning panel at the Manila International Book Fair. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GuZ7UV91FY8?start=4340" width="560"></iframe>
</span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a></span>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-60459256754231966612020-07-15T21:42:00.006+01:002020-11-29T14:14:54.896+00:00Dear Susan: a tribute to my cousin Susan Quimpo<div><i>Susan Quimpo was my cousin but she was also one of my best friends. She died yesterday after a long illness. I want to share the story of our friendship so that not just my children but other young Filipinos will know of her and her struggle. The darkness </i><i>gathering</i><i> in the Philippines right now feels so bleak and reminiscent of the Martial Law years that Susan's family endured and fought. I would like to believe that everywhere there are people like Susan who take action, wasting no time on the inertia (and empty performance) of outrage. Through her work, I'm sure Susan touched the hearts of many. Here is how she touched mine.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="500" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KoA5vJQDWwo" width="800" youtube-src-id="KoA5vJQDWwo"></iframe></div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Transcript:</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Dear Susan<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">When we first met, I was a teenage intern at the Philippine Sesame Street Project, making props, clay models and looking after the head of Pong Pagong the giant turtle equivalent for Big Bird who had tofrequently take off his head because of the heat.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Your job at Sesame Street was so cool: you travelled through the provinces, collecting folk stories. Still in the midst of discovering my future self as a children’s book writer, I was instantly drawn to you and delighted to discover that we were distant cousins. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">But though we shared a surname and relatives and both grew up in large families, our lives were a contrast. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">You were the youngest of a family coming of age in a time of <b>resistance</b> – the 1970s – which began with what was called the First Quarter Storm – when students rose up in protest and the government of Ferdinand Marcos responded with a calculated brutality that drove young people underground, including many of your siblings.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">I on the other hand was one of the oldest in a family that came of age in a time of <b>apathy</b> – when the activism had been driven underground and the Marcos dictatorship had already silenced the media, killed its enemies, and stolen the wealth of its people. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">This was not an era of fight but of flight, when leaving the Philippines in search of a better life became the norm.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">I spent my childhood in a typical, middle class Filipino household with too many children and financial struggles.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Yours was a childhood that was first shattered by the death of your mother. She pushed you out of the way but then herself was struck down by a jeepney. Then as the Marcos dictatorship cracked down on young activiists, the rest of your childhood was spent wondering when you would see your siblings again. Visiting morgues to identify bodies that might possibly be your next of kin. Packing food parcels to take to your brothers in Marcos detention centres.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">When a short film I directed won fourth place in an ECP – Experimental Cinema of the Philippines – competition, the prize was the chance to have a short film funded and mentored by the vast resources of the ECP. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Excitedly, you and I decided to write a film together. Having no privacy, and no money to sit in cafes, we sat in car parks planning a short film about the torture of a political detainee. We pitched the idea, to the ECP and then … nothing. <o:p></o:p>We were so naïve to think a Marcos-created organization would be interested in our film. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Your activism was intense during the years running up to the 1986 revolution. I know because in those years I became a reporter for the Opposition press and how I looked forward to running into you at those rallies, a chance to <i>chika chika</i> with my favourite cousin. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">You were performing with a street theatre group called Peryante … singing and dancing in the middle of slums, inviting slum dwellers to sing and dance with you, to tell their stories. I loved coming along, watching you rehearse. The cover of your family memoir, <b>Subversive Lives</b> shows you at one of those gigs – I remember taking the photo. You told me it would be too dark so I gathered up all my loose change and bought some really expensive film rated at 1600 iso! I took many terrible photos that night but this one came out almost okay. I was pleased to see it on the cover of your book.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">In 1984, you and I had an idea to shoot a small documentary about a strike by steelworkers at a company called Globe Steel. We began visiting the strikers, getting to know them, taking photographs. You wrote about the story of the strike in your family memoir. It amazed me because I had forgotten all those details. Unlike me, you had kept a diary through the years. You remember more about what happened to me in my youth than I do.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">We never made that documentary but we were there to witness men and women lie down in front of trucks bringing scabs into the factory. We were there to see men in Philippine Constabulary uniform use cattle prods to try to disperse them. We were there to see them drag the women away and we were there to see them beating up the men. We were there to see one policeman pull his gun out and shoot at the men who tried to run away.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">I was supposed to be the better photographer, but it was your photo, of the truck with the bodies piled in front of it, that made the cover of my magazine. I still see those photos now being used in documentaries and stories about police brutality and the Marcos dictatorship. But I wonder what happened to those poor people. Sometimes I feel guilt and I wonder if their resistance became performative, because we were there to take photos.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Two days after Globe Steel we met again at a rally by the Welcome Rotonda monument. We greeted each other and chattered away until the megaphones started to call the rallyists into position. I said, ‘See you later!’ and withdrew with the other journalists behind the lines of the riot police with their shields. Because it was safer therealthough we claimed that it was just the better place to take photographs.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">When the rallyists wouldn’t budge, the police took out water cannons and hosed everyone down, firing tear gas for good measure. I remember 80 year old Lorenzo Tanada and 71 year old Chino Roces, publisher of the Manila Times, two old activists, standing up to the water with their eyes shut titght.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">And then ... the police began to fire their guns.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">There was pandemonium. I ran into the lines of the rallyists calling your name but I couldn’t see you thorugh all the tear gas and the running and the screaming. Later, after phoning all the hospitals to get a casualty count for our news stories, we all met up in Chinatown and there, one of the other reporters told me you were okay. It felt like a brush with death.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">After the fall of the Marcos Dictatorship we found ourselves in different parts of the world. I married Richard Gourlay, a British foreign correspondent, we left Manila to began to make a life here in London. And you became a teacher and pursued masters in Southeast Asian Studies in the United States where you fell in love with George Chiu. You told me how your heart ached for Filipino Americans who yearned to learn about their Filipino heritage, which was like a missing jigsaw puzzle piece to their identity. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">So of course you had to do something about it. So with George, you created Tagalog On Site, to introduce Filipino Americans to the Philippines. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">But you being you, it was not enough to teach them how to speak Tagalog and take them to tourist sites. You took them to meet shamans in the Cordilleras. You introduced them to the indigenous people of Mindanao. And movingly, you orchestrated a meeting between Filipino Americans and the Amerasian children of U.S. servicemen with Filipino women whom they squired then left behind, like many thousands of madame butterflies.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">On one of my visits home,you took me to San Pablo, to scout another experience for these young people. We visited a group that supported Filipino overseas workers in Hong Kong, mostly women working as maids.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"> The group had several big beige computers that the families left behind used to use new-fangled Skype to visit with their mums. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Do you remember how we were moved to tears by the stories of children embracing the computers, trying to get closer to their missing mothers. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Later, I made a Radio 4 Documentary called <b>Motherless Nation</b>, about the children left behind by the Philippines’ migration phenomenon that started during the Marcos regime that is now such a massive industry that 11 percent of the population working abroad.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Susan, even as your illness worsened you continued to travel all over the country, campaigning to include Martial Law in our history education in the Philippines as well as telling your own story. You were so tired and yet you were tireless, and everything you do, you do for others.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Your life has been so full of meaning and compassion and I feel so lucky to have had a small role in it.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">You wrote me at the start of the lockdown to tell me you were dying. You said a lot of activists from our generation have been dying. “I wonder,” you said, “if I am part of that harvest. If so , it would be an honour to join them. I’ve had peace with my version of God and I am quite ready.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">And when I burst into tears and wondered what I would do without you, you wrote:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">“Haha! I will creep into your dreams!”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">Oh I hope so. Knowing you makes me a better person and I will miss you forever.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: cambria; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-2638559134045341262020-06-28T16:44:00.003+01:002020-06-28T16:59:59.031+01:00My Lockdown Keynote on Reading for Pleasure <div><font face="georgia">By <a href="https://www.candygourlay.co.uk" target="_blank">Candy Gourlay</a></font></div><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><div><font face="georgia"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ATmmNb3kDUY" width="560"></iframe></font></div><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><div><font face="georgia"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2lOc0apaDWA/Xvi5WSPf9kI/AAAAAAAAx6s/BViV-q9UnLoFpSlhWgNAYj-WwtRuj2GeACK4BGAsYHg/s834/Candy-Gourlay-2020.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="834" data-original-width="640" height="164" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2lOc0apaDWA/Xvi5WSPf9kI/AAAAAAAAx6s/BViV-q9UnLoFpSlhWgNAYj-WwtRuj2GeACK4BGAsYHg/w126-h164/Candy-Gourlay-2020.png" width="126" /></a></div>I am pleased to share the video above of my virtual keynote before the Reading Teachers = Reading Pupils Conference of the <a href="https://www.cheltenhamfestivals.com/literature/" target="_blank">Cheltenham Literary Festival</a> – via Zoom, of course. </font></div><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia">The teachers in attendance had been reading my novel <a href="https://www.candygourlay.co.uk/bone-talk" target="_blank">Bone Talk</a> as part of the programme.</font></span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); white-space: pre-wrap;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></div><div><font face="georgia">I was very conscious of the fact that I was speaking to teachers, who know a lot more than I do about the art of seducing children into reading ... so I decided to focus on the PLEASURE in Reading for Pleasure. The video's 21 minutes, so get yourself a cuppa and put on some headphones!</font></div><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><div><font face="georgia">'Reading is the key to so much,' said Ali Mawle, <span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.7px;">RTRP </span>Director of Learning and Public Engagement, in her introductory remarks. </font></div><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><div><font face="georgia">She quoted author <a href="http://www.aidanchambers.co.uk/" target="_blank">Aidan Chambers</a> (<b>Postcards from No Man's Land</b>): 'We are not just reading for pleasure, we are reading for survival'.</font></div><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><div><font face="georgia">After my presentation the conference continued with talks by RTRP teachers Luke Holder, Claire Coates and Kat Wood on their inspirational efforts to bring the joy into reading for their young charges – reading newsletters, bedtime stories, fluency projects, 'reading that reflects where they are now not where we want them to be".</font></div><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><div><font face="georgia"><font color="#333333"><span style="background-color: white; letter-spacing: 0.7px;">In an <a href="http://www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/free-article/how-festivals-can-transform-lives/" target="_blank">article</a> about Cheltenham's year round outreach to put books into the hands of low income children, </span></font>Ali writes: </font></div><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); letter-spacing: 0.7px;"><font color="#e67c73" face="georgia" size="5"><blockquote>Inspired children need inspiring teachers; inspiring teachers need to be regularly inspired themselves. RTRP does just this, providing the time and space for teachers to talk about the latest books and to share ideas for using them in the classroom. One teacher spoke for many when he wrote: 'The classroom is now alive with literature and inundated with books that the children have purchased for themselves based on our new shared love of reading.'</blockquote></font></span></div><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><div><font face="georgia"><span class="caps" style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">RTRP</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"> has expanded from Gloucestershire to a further eight regions of the UK and includes both primary and secondary groups. The project also partners with other literacy organisations including </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"><a href="https://www.bradfordlitfest.co.uk" target="_blank">Bradford Literature Festival</a></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"><a href="https://clpe.org.uk">Centre for Literacy in Primary Education</a></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"> (</span><span class="caps" style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">CLPE</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">), </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"><a href="https://justimagine.co.uk" target="_blank">Just Imagine</a></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"><a href="https://literacytrust.org.uk">National Literacy Trust</a></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"><a href="https://www.keap.org.uk/the-writers-block" target="_blank">Kernow Education Arts Partnership</a></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"> (The Writers’ Block), </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"><a href="https://peters.co.uk">Peters</a></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">, </span><a href="http://www.sevenstories.org.uk" target="_blank"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">Seven Stories</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"> </span></a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"> and </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"><a href="https://www.thereader.org.uk">The Reader</a></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">.</span></font></div><div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"><font face="georgia"><br /></font></span></div><div><font face="georgia"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">Warm thanks to </span>the RTRP team who got my virtual speech up and running – especially Education Manager for Literature Sarah Forbes and Education Administrator Khazana McLaughlin. </font></div><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><hr /><div><font face="georgia"><br /></font></div><font face="georgia">Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a></font>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-60683386615436835062020-03-03T14:28:00.001+00:002020-03-03T14:40:04.734+00:00My Virtual Keynote Speech at Undiscovered Voices 2020<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kWaZCpoybtU/Xl5lUEBZhrI/AAAAAAAAu60/vXYGR8PG5VgELInELr4viBC-pghq73dCACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/UV%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kWaZCpoybtU/Xl5lUEBZhrI/AAAAAAAAu60/vXYGR8PG5VgELInELr4viBC-pghq73dCACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/UV%2B1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Standing: Dr Adam Conors, Sharon Boyle, Yvonne Banham, Helen MacKenzie, Laura Warminger, Harriet Worrell, Michael Mann Seated: Angela Murray, Anna Brooke, Claire Harlow, Annaliese Avery, Urara Hiroeh</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I've written about my the <a href="https://www.candygourlay.co.uk/about-candy" target="_blank">Undiscovered Voices competition</a> being my big break in children's books. Imagine my delight when the UV crew invited me to be this year's honorary chair, joining such luminaries as <a href="http://www.undiscoveredvoices.com/?page_id=40" target="_blank">Malorie Blackman, Sally Gardner, Frances Hardinge, Alexis Deacon, Chris Riddell and Melvin Burgess</a>! I mean ... skulky, wrinkled, old me in that stellar company?<br />
<br />
And then the good news: my daughter announced she was starring as Velma Kelly in her university production of Chicago! My favourite musical starring my favourite daughter (well, my ONLY daughter)! Of course, I couldn't miss it for the world!<br />
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The bad news: it was the very same night as the big UV reception, where as honorary chair, I was meant to deliver a keynote. Gah. What to do?<br />
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I did BOTH!<br />
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Below is the video speech that was screened at the UV reception. If I had still been a UV finalist, this is what I would have wanted to hear. Congratulations forever after to the UV finalists, you are on your way! And big congrats too, to the UV team who made the competition happen. What a generous gift! I will never forget that the Undiscovered Voices opened the door to my own career as a children's author.<br />
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/tv/B9GAmR8nzw1/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">This year I was so honoured to be invited to be honorary chair of the Undiscovered Voices, the very competition that launched my own children's writing career back in 2008. But the big night, when the children's book industry gathered to celebrate 2020's winners happened at the same time as a very important family event. So I delivered my keynote via a video. Here is my video message to this year's crop of winners, apologies for the sound. I'm still looking for a good mic. And thank you to Working Partners, the agents and editors who have supported UV since that time 12 years ago, when I found myself on the list. And thank you especially to the hard working volunteers of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, who have made the dreams of aspiring writers like me come true.</a></div>
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A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/candygourlay/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" target="_blank"> Candy Gourlay</a> (@candygourlay) on <time datetime="2020-02-28T02:42:06+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Feb 27, 2020 at 6:42pm PST</time></div>
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-31386414648423018132020-02-21T13:49:00.001+00:002020-02-21T13:49:13.798+00:00How I workI dared show a photo of my messy garden office <a href="https://www.wordsandpics.org/2020/01/creative-secrets-candy-gourlay.html">in a guest blog for Words and Pictures</a> last month – complete with the table cloth clamped to stands that I used as a backdrop for a few videos. <br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x5HEBv-hfns/Xk_eVeOZqzI/AAAAAAAAuew/uDH4dnbFQlMjV13qOV3pq2lXXirUBt-mQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20191007_120047.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x5HEBv-hfns/Xk_eVeOZqzI/AAAAAAAAuew/uDH4dnbFQlMjV13qOV3pq2lXXirUBt-mQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20191007_120047.jpg" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mCbZvN2Tf6w/Xk_eaQoCC3I/AAAAAAAAue0/PLT_Ck8nn-k5mUDTyZEmoppHykDGct2mACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20190924_123202.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mCbZvN2Tf6w/Xk_eaQoCC3I/AAAAAAAAue0/PLT_Ck8nn-k5mUDTyZEmoppHykDGct2mACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20190924_123202.jpg" /></a><br />
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You can't tell what a mess it is from the outside. Here's a picture of my garden, which was particularly lush last summer. I'm a mad gardener ... I can't wait for winter to be over! Move, Winter, I want my garden back!<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DZOCzuKF6EE/Xk_ey8WSatI/AAAAAAAAufA/j1Dz2kkDliMIGvli9UrzJgheDiU09BN5gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20190815_164453.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DZOCzuKF6EE/Xk_ey8WSatI/AAAAAAAAufA/j1Dz2kkDliMIGvli9UrzJgheDiU09BN5gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/20190815_164453.jpg" /></a><br />
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Thanks to <a href="https://carolinedeacon.com/">Caroline Deacon</a> for featuring me on <a href="https://www.wordsandpics.org/">Words & Pcitures</a>! Read the article about my writing day <a href="https://www.wordsandpics.org/2020/01/creative-secrets-candy-gourlay.html">here</a> <br />
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-29790312934005323982019-12-23T17:34:00.002+00:002020-02-21T13:52:35.400+00:00With love from me to you<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TP29M1DNy0g/Xk_glQhUBWI/AAAAAAAAufM/lOpxBg-iEs03Y_4SJql5d4E3BZRd4AJ2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-02-21%2Bat%2B13.51.39.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="891" data-original-width="1600" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TP29M1DNy0g/Xk_glQhUBWI/AAAAAAAAufM/lOpxBg-iEs03Y_4SJql5d4E3BZRd4AJ2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-02-21%2Bat%2B13.51.39.png" /></a></div>
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This is beautiful.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ak6sdSAcNkw" width="560"></iframe><br />
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And this is the season to recapture what is beautiful.<br />
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May this season be one of love and friendship for us all.<br />
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Thank you for all the good things that happened to me in 2019. <br />
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-54136821556285590662019-10-28T15:06:00.000+00:002019-10-28T18:47:57.445+00:00The Wokingham Children's Book Festival<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yWXqZk7e3RE/XbcC5ELI5-I/AAAAAAAArmM/PBvNPybwyhMy_kReQvknzOJXl9WGYBcMwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.44.35.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="846" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yWXqZk7e3RE/XbcC5ELI5-I/AAAAAAAArmM/PBvNPybwyhMy_kReQvknzOJXl9WGYBcMwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.44.35.png" width="622" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I met a boy and a bear while signing books at the Wokingham Children's Book Fest. <br />
Thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/books_let" target="_blank">Let Them Eat Books</a> for the photo!</td></tr>
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I presented Is It a Mermaid session at last weekend's <a href="https://wokingham-tc.gov.uk/bookfest/" target="_blank">Wokingham Children's Book Festival</a>.<br />
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Sadly, I don't usually get to run into author friends appearing at the same festivals and this one had quite a few of on the programme – <a href="https://fionabarker.co.uk/" target="_blank">Fiona Barker</a>, <a href="http://www.cathhowe.com/" target="_blank">Cath Howe</a>, <a href="http://www.tonybradman.com/" target="_blank">Tony Bradman</a>, <a href="https://www.chitrasoundar.com/" target="_blank">Chitra Soundar</a>, <a href="https://www.laynmarlow.co.uk/" target="_blank">Layn Marlow</a> and others. But they were performing at other times. We were like ships that passed in the night.<br />
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I did run into this lot though as I was leaving in my big red coat:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Louiestowell/status/1185940199685185536" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1160" data-original-width="1178" height="630" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-23dVpW9WuWA/XbWD1FwdW3I/AAAAAAAArls/NoHYNYKLLpITUHtLf8IaFJzF9zgYhgNYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.46.47.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Louie Stowell (The Dragon in the Library), Jenny MacLachlan (The Land of Roar), Lane Marlow (You Make Me Smile) and me!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JRt_4tJrxzE/XbWCfFM2RLI/AAAAAAAArlY/FsZtLmxOMq0Gj1nOtFpWvwuus0SwPNtHACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.41.30.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1206" data-original-width="1308" height="588" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JRt_4tJrxzE/XbWCfFM2RLI/AAAAAAAArlY/FsZtLmxOMq0Gj1nOtFpWvwuus0SwPNtHACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.41.30.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pleased to meet organizer Elizabeth McDonald. Festivals take a lot of emailing back and forth, and Elizabeth was a saint.</td></tr>
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All authors were greeted with custom cupcakes skillfully created by Claire Groves.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IkuqfDXxOpY/XbV65o5KipI/AAAAAAAAric/RhRRo5QR1RklLevUBwLLjQMH2D4Z1D-mwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.08.50.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1236" data-original-width="1190" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IkuqfDXxOpY/XbV65o5KipI/AAAAAAAAric/RhRRo5QR1RklLevUBwLLjQMH2D4Z1D-mwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.08.50.png" width="616" /></a></div>
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... here are mine!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5mhg0e0NjYc/XbWCrI-VjsI/AAAAAAAArlc/LO97qDF2C6kYJqDEz6xwPs8Qty7cnTO-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.42.18.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1446" data-original-width="1142" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5mhg0e0NjYc/XbWCrI-VjsI/AAAAAAAArlc/LO97qDF2C6kYJqDEz6xwPs8Qty7cnTO-QCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.42.18.png" width="500" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cupcakes by Claire Groves</td></tr>
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I was lucky enough to arrive on time to attend Blast Off Into the Big Beyond with poet and picture book author <a href="http://www.jamescarterpoet.co.uk/" target="_blank">James Carter</a>, whose easy delivery, with a bit of had the smiling audience spouting lines of poetry. What a delight!<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AYI9iRrt8Vg/XbV7R91aSAI/AAAAAAAAris/2mwH5QwMHqIRa7aN8-4R73NU5dQojNBhQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.10.38.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1120" data-original-width="1486" height="482" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AYI9iRrt8Vg/XbV7R91aSAI/AAAAAAAAris/2mwH5QwMHqIRa7aN8-4R73NU5dQojNBhQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.10.38.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/books_let" target="_blank">Let Them Eat Books</a> for this photo catching James playing his uke to a young fan.</td></tr>
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I also got to meet bearded <a href="http://www.afharroldkids.com/" target="_blank">A. F. Harrold</a> for the first time – A is for Ashley. Known for his novels like <a href="https://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/book/10408/The-Imaginary-by-A-F-Harrold.html" target="_blank">The Imaginary</a>, illustrated by Emily Gravett. At this festival, he was featuring on the younger stream of events, talking about his poetry rather than his novels. I realised very quickly that his poetry readings would make brilliant videos – here's a sample from my Instagram feed:<br />
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/tv/B4Kk9g5He7D/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Candy Gourlay (@candygourlay)</a> on <time datetime="2019-10-28T14:41:17+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Oct 28, 2019 at 7:41am PDT</time></div>
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I love doing my Mermaid act because it's a chance for me to draw and I love drawing! The festival provided the children with clipboards and paper so the children could draw as I performed. At the end, a wee girl came up to me with this picture!<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EiMJpHco33Y/XbcCxGJSnJI/AAAAAAAArmI/Bc1Nxpgk0FoStMOHp1jRf8XnDqhetaEcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.52.54.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1210" data-original-width="1380" height="560" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EiMJpHco33Y/XbcCxGJSnJI/AAAAAAAArmI/Bc1Nxpgk0FoStMOHp1jRf8XnDqhetaEcgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.52.54.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XEiK7OwVFVE/Xbc3olcWNhI/AAAAAAAArmg/a-Ajn6ZA_qAiPgWBmS_C3nTSF65aBDGXQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-28%2Bat%2B18.44.17.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1236" data-original-width="976" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XEiK7OwVFVE/Xbc3olcWNhI/AAAAAAAArmg/a-Ajn6ZA_qAiPgWBmS_C3nTSF65aBDGXQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-28%2Bat%2B18.44.17.png" width="500" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: Wokingham Children's Book Festival</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oJRvXCoteYc/Xbc3qKffXjI/AAAAAAAArmk/NJpzx5PJq6AZZi7KDvEQJt66c6LcCb0cQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-28%2Bat%2B18.44.43.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="974" data-original-width="1600" height="388" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oJRvXCoteYc/Xbc3qKffXjI/AAAAAAAArmk/NJpzx5PJq6AZZi7KDvEQJt66c6LcCb0cQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-28%2Bat%2B18.44.43.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: Wokingham Children's Book Festival</td></tr>
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Huge congratulations to the Wokingham Festival team who made everything ran like clockwork, at the same time making sure we authors had a great time!<br />
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<a href="https://www.wokinghampaper.co.uk/wokingham-childrens-book-fest-hailed-a-massive-success/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="1078" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YMU7HNz8yoE/XbV8fS54dVI/AAAAAAAArk8/Kt2YzV8N2YQHIkf61jgU1XHUcnQ0dhjogCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-27%2Bat%2B11.15.24.png" width="594" /></a></div>
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It was my last festival of the author season and I have to confess, I am looking forward to some downtime. Except of course I'm speaking at the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference on the first weekend of November. It's what it says on the tin, for writers and illustrators of children's books. Indeed, Wokingham's Elizabeth McDonald will be there to talk about what librarians want from school visits! I'm doing a day of demonstrating online tools, gadgets and promotion and platform-building techniques for authors. <br />
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See you there?<br />
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-39424715075300823342019-10-16T18:58:00.000+01:002019-10-21T18:58:32.069+01:00Undiscovered Voices Honorary Chair<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Tyk3tjluKqE/Xa3sSzfXDhI/AAAAAAAArOo/7BPEO1LOwggwbZ96dFK6iGMqll6W4bpswCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/EG_EOOjXYAA0v4a.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="531" data-original-width="531" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Tyk3tjluKqE/Xa3sSzfXDhI/AAAAAAAArOo/7BPEO1LOwggwbZ96dFK6iGMqll6W4bpswCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/EG_EOOjXYAA0v4a.png" width="250" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, it was announced that I am Honorary Chair for this year's Undiscovered Voices anthology for 2020. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: 23px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span> <span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you haven't heard of it, the UV was a competition for aspiring children's authors launched by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators way back in 2006. It was the brainchild of my SCBWI pals Sara Grant and Sara O'Connor which has so far transformed the lives of many, many writers, including me. You can read the story of Undiscovered Voices <a href="http://www.undiscoveredvoices.com/?page_id=23" target="_blank">here</a>.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span> <span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">What's amazing is the whole thing is volunteer run. Volunteers organise the competition, recruit agents and publishers to participate, all under the sponsorship of <a href="http://www.undiscoveredvoices.com/?page_id=32" target="_blank">Working Partners</a>, the book packagers. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span> <span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">I won a place in the first anthology in 2008. After many years of rejection, it opened the door to becoming an author, and I will always be grateful. I am grateful to be asked to be Honorary Chair, but I also feel slightly like a fraud. I still feel like one of the aspiring. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span> <span style="color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember getting the phone call congratulating me on getting into the anthology. I was thrilled, wracked with doubt, floating with joy, all at the same time. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></span> <span style="color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); white-space: pre-wrap;">Though, today, my thoughts are also with those who didn't make it into the anthology. It has probably been a tough day ... so difficult to celebrate a friend on the list when your own dreams have been dashed.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></span> <span style="color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); white-space: pre-wrap;">Rejection and disappointment cast such long shadows. I remember how disabling it was to be told my story was "not right" for a list, or that an agent was "not that passionate" about my work. It really sucked. So ... guys, gnash those teeth, shed a tear, it sucks not to be on the longlist.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></span> <span style="color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); white-space: pre-wrap;">But you know what? You've done the two most valuable things an aspiring author can do:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); white-space: pre-wrap;">1. Write your story.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #14171a; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "ubuntu" , "helvetica neue" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(20, 23, 26); white-space: pre-wrap;">2. Send it in. </span></span><br />
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Which took courage and self belief. The stuff it takes to become an author.<br />
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So BRAVO, to all Undiscovered Voices, longlisted or not. This is a worthy stepping stone on the long and rocky journey to publication. I wish you all courage and joy as you take the next steps.<br />
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May the best stories find you.<br />
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<i>This piece might look familiar, if you follow me on Twitter. I am slowly reproducing my Twitter threads on my blog in the name of keeping a proper record. </i><br />
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Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-23510159689707197992019-06-16T19:43:00.000+01:002019-10-21T19:44:29.588+01:00The Carnegie Greenaway Twitter TakeoverSo I took part in the #CKG19 Twitter Takeover today.Man, that was hard even with Tweetdeck. So here are my answers carefully organised for you.<br />
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit;">This piece might look familiar, if you follow me on Twitter. I am slowly reproducing my Twitter threads on my blog in the name of keeping a proper record. </span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a></span></blockquote>
Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-42598014031650212019-06-13T08:30:00.000+01:002019-10-21T20:17:54.567+01:00Meeting the Carnegie Shadowers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/BarnetLibraries" target="_blank">@BarnetLibraries</a> for this photo</div>
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One of the most important aspects of a Carnegie-Greenaway shortlisting is the Carnegie-Greenaway Shadowing scheme in which young people "shadow" the judging process. The read, discuss and review the books on each shortlist. <a href="https://player.vimeo.com/video/57496475" target="_blank">Watch a video on How to Shadow</a> the awards.<br />
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I was lucky enough to be invited to a great day in the company of shadowers in Barnet, North London – one of the few times I get to discuss Bone Talk with children who have actually read it. Our discussion touched on Colonialism, the Raj and the Windrush. Fantastic. Thank you, Barnet librarians for organising!</div>
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Here is the Twitter thread from that day:</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">L to R: Presentations from Friern Barnet School, Hendon School and East Barnet.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Signing books with all my paraphernalia: Cartoon Stamp, Stamp Pad, Multi-coloured Gel Pens.</td></tr>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit;">This piece might look familiar, if you follow me on Twitter. I am slowly reproducing Twitter threads on this blog in the name of keeping a proper record. </span><br />
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-79924352575770116302019-05-31T15:13:00.001+01:002019-07-09T17:33:09.093+01:00My Ridiculous May: a literary salon, a Twitter chat, the Leeds Book Award and the Hay FestivalBy Candy Gourlay<br />
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Since leaving Facebook, I've been trying to figure out how to neatly keep a record of my author activities. Twitter's ever scrolling feed made it hard to keep a record until I discovered 'Moments' which allows you to order and compile the explosion of tweets after every event.<br />
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To help me keep track of my ridiculously packed life, I'm hoping to document things on my author blog. So here are some Moments from my ridiculously busy May: The WordsAway Literary Salon, The Leeds Book Award 2019, the Hay Festival and #UKMGChat.<br />
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And yes, May isn't over yet. I am currently sitting in a hotel room in LA (I hopped on a plane as soon as I got back from the Hay Festival) where I've been participating in a delicious new project. But more of that in another blog post. Here's a photo to keep you going!<br />
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">THE WORDS AWAY LITERARY SALON</span></h4>
Grateful to Kellie Jackson who invited me to speak at the Words Away Literary Salon at the charming Teahouse Theatre Cafe (they serve no coffee), on a small stage above a dragon's claw. Grateful to pals from SCBWI who turned up for the discussion on writing for children. Kellie kindly summarised the event <a href="https://www.wordsaway.info/new-blog/2019/5/25/writing-for-children-with-candy-gourlay" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<a class="twitter-moment" href="https://twitter.com/i/moments/1135610396663058434?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Words Away Literary Salon</a> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <br />
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">THE LEEDS BOOK AWARD 2019 (11 TO 14 CATEGORY)</span></h4>
Bone Talk was shortlisted for the 11 to 14 category of the Leeds Book Award 2019. The shortlist included The Book Case by Dave Shelton, Below Zero by Dan Smith, Child I by Steve Tasane, Mud by Emily Thomas, The Extinction Trials by SM Wilson. Steve Tasane won!<br />
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<a class="twitter-moment" href="https://twitter.com/i/moments/1134445211885551618?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Bone Talk is Shortlisted for the Leeds Book Award #LeedsBA19</a><br />
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">THE HAY FESTIVAL</span></h4>
It's been nine years since I appeared on the Hay Festival's programme. Boy, it was fun to be in that famous Green Room again!<br />
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<a class="twitter-moment" href="https://twitter.com/i/moments/1132772864543854593?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">My Hilarious #HayFestival2019</a><br />
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">#UKMGCHAT</span></h4>
If you're an aspiring children's author, you really ought to check out #UKMGChat. Created by children's authors Lorraine Gregory and Miriam Craig, there is a weekly discussion of writing craft and getting published focused around Middle Grade books. Lorraine and Miriam invite authors, agents, publishers to participate and many a golden nugget can be learned from the subsequent Twitter free for all. I was their featured author last week, it's a good Q&A – check it out!<br />
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<a class="twitter-moment" href="https://twitter.com/i/moments/1131295687352700929?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Candy Gourlay on #UKMGChat</a><br />
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what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-86035059703299862392019-05-11T19:19:00.002+01:002019-07-09T17:33:18.277+01:00Jan Pieńkowski: Lifetime of Achievement By Candy Gourlay<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jan Pieńkowski, enjoying tributes at the celebration of his Lifetime Achievement Award at the Garden Room of the Barbican in London. </td></tr>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dxliNh4oMgk/XNb-JOqYgGI/AAAAAAAApCo/sUxUaqvp2nMX9y_7C_g2VCiFirrEVeYNQCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-05-11%2Bat%2B17.53.00.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1172" data-original-width="718" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dxliNh4oMgk/XNb-JOqYgGI/AAAAAAAApCo/sUxUaqvp2nMX9y_7C_g2VCiFirrEVeYNQCLcBGAs/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-05-11%2Bat%2B17.53.00.png" width="193" /></a>On Thursday, I was privileged to attend <a href="https://www.booktrust.org.uk/what-we-do/awards-and-prizes/current-prizes/lifetime-achievement-award/" target="_blank">Booktrust's Lifetime Achievement Award</a> Ceremony for <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><a href="http://www.janpienkowski.com/about-jan/about-jan.htm" target="_blank">Jan Pieńkowski</a></b></span>, best-beloved illustrator in the UK of more than 140 books and a nightly presence during my (now grown) children's bedtime routines, way back when. It was a moving ceremony, not the least because Jan was diagnosed seven years ago with Alzheimer's – despite which he has continued working, publishing a retelling of <i>The Odyssey</i> just two years ago. The retelling was authored by his partner of 57 years, David Walser, who spoke on Jan's behalf. David has also co-authored five new <i>Meg and Mog</i> stories (Penguin) as well as <i>The Glass Mountain</i> (Walker), a collection of Polish tales.</div>
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'He has asked me to thank you (for the award),' David told a gathering that included the UK's top illustrators. 'Since being told about it, he has forgotten it many times so when I, or any friends in the know, remind him, it always comes as a lovely surprise. He has been able to enjoy the news many times over.'<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Author David Walser, who has been Jan's partner for the past 57 years</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">JAN'S LIFE</span></h4>
'Each of our lives is an odyssey,' David said. 'But some are more adventurous than others. Knowing a little of Jan's life gives us an understanding of what is behind many of his pictures and his way of coping with violence, in the children's literature he has often illustrated.'<br />
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I was so moved by David's account of Jan Pieńkowski's story that I feel compelled to share some of it with the wider world here.<br />
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Jan was three years old, living in what is now the Republic of Belarus, when both Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland.<br />
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"The Pieńkowskis feared the Bolsheviks even more than the Germans, " David said, "so when the two enemies began to fire at each other the family piled into their horse-drawn carriage and set out for Warsaw, abandoning their home, their possessions and, hardest of all, their dogs."<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“</span><span style="font-size: large;">A few years later Jan's grandmother in Warsaw, a leading gynaecologist who had supervised Jan's birth, was caught harbouring a Jewish medical colleague and a British pilot, whom she was nursing back to health. The Jewish doctor was shot on the spot, the pilot sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, and Jan's grandmother and her daughter who lived with her were sent to Auschwitz, where they died of typhoid. After the war, the pilot became a senior civil servant – and helped Jan to be given British citizenship.</span><br />
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</span><span style="font-size: large;">“During the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 an eight-year-old Jan saw things that no child should ever witness. He spent time among wounded and dying. When a firebomb landed on the hospital across the road, Wanda covered Jan's head but could not shield his ears. Since then he has never been able to stand screaming or any loud noises.</span><span style="font-size: large;">”</span></blockquote>
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When the war ended, the British government invited Polish soldiers and families to come to the UK if they preferred not to return to Communist Poland. On the ferry, Jan asked his mother if England was an island. 'Yes,' she replied. 'In that case,' he said. 'Let's never leave.'<br />
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">MEG AND MOG</span></h4>
Jan read classics at King's College Cambridge, where he made a name designing posters for clubs, societies and playhouses – which led to work designing for theatre and television as well as greeting cards. The TV work led to the idea for a book series starring Meg and Mog.<br />
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Jan told Alison Flood of the <i>Guardian</i> that the roots of <i>Meg and Mog</i> came from when a next door neighbour, in exchange for Jan drinking his milk, told him frightening Polish folk stories that inevitably included witches:<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“She’d tell me these totally unsuitable stories, get to a cliffhanger – and stop,” he said. “I used to have terrible dreams, nightmares, of this witch, always chasing me and trying to put me in a pot, and you know how you can’t run in a dream, you sort of freeze? It was all like that. I think in a way she gave birth to Meg, because I think Meg was really sublimating, isn’t that the word? Taking this terrible monster from my childhood and making it into a harmless toy.”</span></blockquote>
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According to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/09/jan-pienkowski-meg-and-mog-booktrust-award-picture-essay">article</a>, Jan used to meet his co-author Helen Nicoll at Membury motorway services, near Marlborough, to work in a fenced-off part of the dining area. "The images (are) so joyfully vibrant, that a restaurant in a service station on the M4 feels far too prosaic as their birthplace!"<br />
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">TWO KATE GREENAWAY MEDALS</span></h4>
Jan won his first Kate Greenaway Medal in 1971 for <i>The Kingdom Under the Sea and Other Stories</i> (Jonathan Cape), eleven fairy tales from Eastern Europe and Russia, retold by Joan Aiken.<br />
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His second Greenaway Medal was won for <i>Haunted House</i> (Heinemann, 1979), which librarians described as 'the house of petrifying pop-ups'. <br />
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I posted video excerpts on Twitter of the moving tributes to Jan by judges Nicolette Jones, Smriti Prasadam-Halls and SF Said – you can watch them in the tweet compilation I've embedded below. (If you can't see it, visit it <a href="https://twitter.com/i/moments/1126646364954349568" target="_blank">here</a>)<br />
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Jan's life story and achievement struck such a chord with me. How many children, like Jan, are currently fleeing war and strife in this troubled world of ours? How many are being given safety, a home, a chance for their potential to blossom? Perhaps Jan's award will open eyes and hearts, perhaps right now, there is another Jan Pieńkowski being given a chance to blossom and flourish because somebody heard this story.<br />
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With salutations and respect to Jan and David. And thanks to Booktrust for making this happen.<br />
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<a class="twitter-moment" href="https://twitter.com/i/moments/1126646364954349568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Jan Pieńkowski: Lifetime Achievement Award</a> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <br />
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Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-14404444276165026682019-04-29T16:35:00.003+01:002019-07-09T17:33:28.751+01:00The teachers who made Jarrett J. Krosoczka an author<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Ted Talk led me to Jarrett's graphic novel autobiography, a National Book Award Finalist. Moving, sad, uplifting. Highly recommended reading, especially for older teens.</td></tr>
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I just stumbled on this six-year-old <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/jarrett_j_krosoczka_how_a_boy_became_an_artist#t-1107430" target="_blank">Ted Talk</a> by children's author <a href="http://www.studiojjk.com/" target="_blank">Jarrett J. Krosoczka</a>, telling the story of how he became an author.<br />
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I was so moved to see how Jarrett fills his talk with the names and photographs of teachers and other people who gave a boy like him a chance ... who, throughout his childhood, nurtured the author in him.<br />
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I think all teachers, librarians and parents need to watch this video.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_k0ywFgMpFk" width="560"></iframe><br />
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In a blog post I wrote back in 2017 – <a href="https://www.candygourlay.com/2017/05/how-to-be-old-man-crone-spirit-guide.html">How to be the Old Man, the Crone, the Spirit Guide, the Mentor</a> – I wrote about how we, wittingly and unwittingly, are nurturing the young people around us.<br />
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It's worth quoting that post again now: <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">We all have the power to light a spark in someone else.</span></blockquote>
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-81686723082020280922019-04-27T20:30:00.000+01:002019-07-09T17:33:42.049+01:00An Unnoticed Golden Age of Children's Books? Here are some books to discoverBy Candy Gourlay<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4fCzF77E5UI/XL1hruH3_KI/AAAAAAAAo2Y/tTg_9zQua64UVksoTFn6uBfxXjB_IE3zQCLcBGAs/s1600/Crystal%2BKite%2BBritish%2BIsles%2B2019.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Ella on the Outside by Cath Howe, Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen, The Wondrous Dinosaurium by John Condon, Night of the Party by Tracey Mathias" border="0" data-original-height="1064" data-original-width="884" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4fCzF77E5UI/XL1hruH3_KI/AAAAAAAAo2Y/tTg_9zQua64UVksoTFn6uBfxXjB_IE3zQCLcBGAs/s1600/Crystal%2BKite%2BBritish%2BIsles%2B2019.png" title="The Crystal Kite Award Shortlist for the British Isles and Ireland" width="500" /></a></div>
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I was SO excited to see the shortlist for the Crystal Kite Award last week!<br />
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Every year, members of SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) in the British Isles and Ireland vote for their choice children's books of the year – I had cast my vote only days before and I am pleased to say MY BOOK MADE IT! (Sorry, I'm not at a liberty to divulge which one of these it was)<br />
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But there were other things about the Crystal Kite list that made me even happier.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">☑</span></b> All these books are written by debut authors who deserve to be discovered by readers everywhere.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">☑</span></b>All these books are FANTASTIC READS. I know, I read them all ... in fact, at the risk of bragging, these were the books on my personal shortlist (as well as some others 😁).<br />
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Last week, author and children's book expert <a href="http://dawnfinch.wixsite.com/home" target="_blank">Dawn Finch</a> declared on Radio 4: "This is really a golden age of children's literature and I've worked in children's books for 30 years and I've never seen books published of this quality – there are better books published now than have been for avery long time."<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dXE3p5tUbSU/XL1dtpDKB_I/AAAAAAAAo2M/gF209CZzN30C0Bis4Ac1hhOOmLoPF1zCgCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-22%2Bat%2B07.21.52.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="1056" height="232" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dXE3p5tUbSU/XL1dtpDKB_I/AAAAAAAAo2M/gF209CZzN30C0Bis4Ac1hhOOmLoPF1zCgCLcBGAs/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-22%2Bat%2B07.21.52.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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But, Dawn said, you wouldn't know that if you go into a supermarket.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">'Publishing is a business and as a business they have to make money – so super massive advances paid out to celebrity authors means that publishers have to get that money back somehow. And the way this is being done is by a highly visible, aggressively marketed pool of authors that is actually very small. So when you go into places that sell books ... you actually only see a very tiny selection of books available ... it's drowning out some very fine authors and that choice is being taken away from children.'</span></blockquote>
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Dawn pointed out that the closure of libraries, the shrinking amounts space devoted to children's books in the media, means that parents are struggling to identify and discover good books.<br />
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You can listen to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000463k" target="_blank">the discussion on Front Row</a> at about 19:06, also featuring editor and critic Imogen Russell Williams. I've also embedded my tweets about the programme at the very bottom of this post <span style="color: red;">⬇</span><br />
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So in the name of helping parents and teachers discover some amazing new titles of this golden age, it is my pleasure to present the shiny shortlist of the Crystal Kite Award for the British Isles and Ireland – including photos from each debut author's book launch (yes, I attended them all). Winners will be announced by SCBWI in June.<br />
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>Ella on the Outside by Cath Howe</b></span><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J52iDRp3_i0/XL1nQk9W78I/AAAAAAAAo3M/ujd8j6qiG5cnYc6oaVvQG_U1pd8IZn7AACLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-22%2Bat%2B07.33.55.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="746" data-original-width="486" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J52iDRp3_i0/XL1nQk9W78I/AAAAAAAAo3M/ujd8j6qiG5cnYc6oaVvQG_U1pd8IZn7AACLcBGAs/s200/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-22%2Bat%2B07.33.55.png" width="130" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.cathhowe.com/" target="_blank">Cath Howe</a> has been writing plays for performance in schools for years which is perhaps why <b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ella on the Outside</span></b> feels so perfectly pitched for middle grade, and enviably structured. The writing reminded me of Louis Sachar's <i>Holes</i>, so loaded with heart. It is about a girl with a camera and a terrible secret. She's the new girl in school and all the pressures lead to her making bad decision after bad decision and the reader wishes she could grab Ella's hand and lead her in another direction. It is not easy to write so simply and yet so evocatively, and I sighed with envy at every well turned out chapter. I loved it. Cath's second book, <a href="https://nosycrow.com/product/not-my-fault/" target="_blank">Not My Fault</a>, will soon be out and I can't wait to read it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pajmYQmayTs/XL1mZ8kV5OI/AAAAAAAAo2k/pNRy0cDm4JwEJgIsWmmSjfG_QkRR-ND2wCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-05-09%2Bat%2B16.32.18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1127" data-original-width="1600" height="449" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pajmYQmayTs/XL1mZ8kV5OI/AAAAAAAAo2k/pNRy0cDm4JwEJgIsWmmSjfG_QkRR-ND2wCLcBGAs/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-05-09%2Bat%2B16.32.18.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A fine new voice for Middle Grade: Cath Howe at the launch of Ella on the Outside at <a href="https://www.thealligatorsmouth.co.uk/" style="text-align: start;" target="_blank">The Alligator's Mouth</a><span style="text-align: start;"> in Richmond.</span></span></td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w3vctkotS4s/XL1nsVkwOXI/AAAAAAAAo3U/kwzHrE79OHosy_lYENb7wOelPN44cKq0QCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-22%2Bat%2B07.33.16.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="748" data-original-width="494" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w3vctkotS4s/XL1nsVkwOXI/AAAAAAAAo3U/kwzHrE79OHosy_lYENb7wOelPN44cKq0QCLcBGAs/s200/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-22%2Bat%2B07.33.16.png" width="131" /></a>From the moment you begin reading Matt Killeen's masterful <b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Orphan Monster Spy</span></b>, you realise that this is a work of depth, of thought, of heart that will stay with you forever. The opening scene, where a mother is shot dead as she tries to drive through a checkpoint, is a warning of the harrowing events to come for Sarah, a Jewish girl who infiltrates a Nazi boarding school for her mysterious rescuer. This is a thriller, a character study and a historical novel wrapped in one, with fresh, many layered insights to offer to a much written about period. Orphan Monster Spy deserves the accolades that have showered its launch, which includes a shortlisting for the mighty <a href="http://www.thebentagency.com/2018/11/matt-killeen-and-hilary-mckay-shortlisted-for-the-costa-book-award" target="_blank">Costa Award</a>. Bloody fantastic, Matt.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8QygEKEjctQ/XL1mekn96sI/AAAAAAAAo2o/dDnKBmK8CicyL1FoXLoul-gnM96KRpALwCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-06-05%2Bat%2B18.16.09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1172" data-original-width="1430" height="524" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8QygEKEjctQ/XL1mekn96sI/AAAAAAAAo2o/dDnKBmK8CicyL1FoXLoul-gnM96KRpALwCLcBGAs/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-06-05%2Bat%2B18.16.09.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is Matt Killeen at the launch of Orphan Monster Spy at <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/bookshops/trafalgar-square" target="_blank">Waterstones, Trafalgar Square</a>.</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>The Wondrous Dinosaurium by John Condon</b></span><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bh4GYgHbeLw/XL1ogT3vr9I/AAAAAAAAo3g/xvNYGhcMqf4YCgBZuEFXpOP8oCgaGPJ3gCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-22%2Bat%2B07.35.21.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="744" data-original-width="732" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bh4GYgHbeLw/XL1ogT3vr9I/AAAAAAAAo3g/xvNYGhcMqf4YCgBZuEFXpOP8oCgaGPJ3gCLcBGAs/s200/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-22%2Bat%2B07.35.21.png" width="196" /></a></div>
The lone picture book on the Crystal Kite shortlist is <a href="http://www.johncondon.co.uk/about/" target="_blank">John Condon</a>'s <b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Wondrous Dinosaurium</span></b>, with rollicking illustrations by <a href="https://www.stevebrownillustration.co.uk/" target="_blank">Steve Brown</a>. The story imagines the ultimate petshop – a dinosaurium with "EVERY ... DINOSAUR ... EVER". Like Doctor Who's tardis, it is small on the outside but humongous on the inside and our hero, Danny gets to pick his very own dinosaur pet ... with rather fun and chaotic consequences. I am delighted that a picture book has made it to a shortlist that has tended to favour chapter books, and I am even more delighted that the picture book happens to be John's!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cYIX10mlJvo/XL1mjwI2SRI/AAAAAAAAo2s/--Bw9jQf9V8-d12Mb-mEFoqWExywIi3XQCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-05-30%2Bat%2B19.20.02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1054" data-original-width="1600" height="420" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cYIX10mlJvo/XL1mjwI2SRI/AAAAAAAAo2s/--Bw9jQf9V8-d12Mb-mEFoqWExywIi3XQCLcBGAs/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-05-30%2Bat%2B19.20.02.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Condon at the launch of the Wondrous Dinosaurium at <a href="https://welbooks.co.uk/" target="_blank">West End Lane Books</a> in Northwest London.</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>Night of the Party by Tracey Mathias</b></span><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RMCL9rgYnhw/XL1ouSiM7EI/AAAAAAAAo3k/c0fcOvAblA0d-hopXR9jNWzfqer0EZZTQCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-22%2Bat%2B07.34.43.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="744" data-original-width="502" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RMCL9rgYnhw/XL1ouSiM7EI/AAAAAAAAo3k/c0fcOvAblA0d-hopXR9jNWzfqer0EZZTQCLcBGAs/s200/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-22%2Bat%2B07.34.43.png" width="134" /></a></div>
<a href="https://traceymathias.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Tracey Mathias</a> conjured this dystopian young adult thriller – a divided society, racism, lies, populist politicians – long before Brexit and Trump became our ordinary. The clock ticks relentlessly, a looming election could spell doom or relief for Zara, who must conceal the fact she is not British Born in a Britain that has decided to discard people like her. Once started, this book is impossible to put down, even though it often feels like someone is running an icy finger down your spine. There is social commentary here, but nothing is black and white under Tracey's subtle and intelligent pen. <b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Night of the Party </span></b>may make your heart stop once or twice, and it will definitely leave you pondering for some time to come. Perfectly pitched and with a powerful respect for its teen reader.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tracey at the launch of The Night of the Party at <a href="https://www.dauntbooks.co.uk/" target="_blank">Daunt Books</a>, Cheapside.</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Photos by Candy Gourlay</span></b><br />
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<a class="twitter-moment" href="https://twitter.com/i/moments/1120205989259677701?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">An Unnoticed Golden Age of Children's Literature</a><br />
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<br />
Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-46601906185407427082019-04-11T18:28:00.005+01:002019-07-09T17:33:53.362+01:00Re-reading Tom SawyerRecently, I opened a blog post with this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Growing up, books were my windows to other places, other people, and other ways of life. I travelled to the Swiss Alps with </i>Heidi<i> by Joanna Spyri, swam in the Mississippi with </i>Tom Sawyer<i> by Mark Twain, wandered in snowy Narnia with Lucy in </i>The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe<i> by C S Lewis, was lost in the Cave of Wonders with </i>Aladdin<i> ...</i></span></blockquote>
An acquaintance called me out, suggesting that I should not have mentioned <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer</i>, with its liberal use of the N word and its awful attitude towards Native Americans.<br />
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<i>Tom Sawyer </i>occupied 'favourite book' status for a long time in my childhood. It was one of the first novels I read, alongside <i>Heidi</i>, <i>Little Women,</i> and other books from that bygone era. In the decade I've been an author, I have often mentioned it as one of the books that made me write.<br />
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And I had not given any thought to how its 1875 attitudes might impact contemporary young readers.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frontispiece of my childhood copy. The illustrator of the beautiful pen and ink pictures throughout is not credited.</td></tr>
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My acquaintance was right. I had been uncritical in including Tom Sawyer.<br />
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The focus of that piece had been the idea that books can transport a reader to other places, other worlds. I may have honestly been listing the books that had done this for me as a child in Manila – but as a children's author, book advocacy is a huge responsibility.<br />
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It was uncomfortable to be called out, and I spent hours soul searching and reading, trying to understand what was wrong with mentioning this book that had been beloved to me for so long ... and how I could do better.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">FAMILIAR</span></b></h4>
As a young reader, I had adored Mark Twain's droll voice; the helpless warmth of characters like Aunt Polly, Tom's foster parent, Tom's irreverence towards church and school (so exciting for a child in a conservative Catholic community); the scary scenes with Injun Joe; the temptations of Huckleberry Finn's outlaw life the boys running away then attending their own funeral; and that final adventure, with Tom and Becky lost in a cave. <br />
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I did not question the portrayal of <i>Tom Sawyer</i>'s community where black characters were ever present but excluded from the unfolding adventure. Nor did I worry about the negative portrayal of Native Americans. I saw the same on TV and in the movies.<br />
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Indeed, the setting was not dissimilar to Manila of the period, where light-skinned <i>mestizos</i> were regarded as superior to darker complexioned <i>morenos</i>. There was also a big social divide. Families of middle class professionals were meant to stay away from the <i>bakya </i>crowd – <i>bakya</i> being the cheap wooden clogs worn by the poor.<br />
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Seeing white people look down on brown people on our screens and in our books no doubt contributes to our (Filipino) self-consciousness about flat noses and dark skin (<a href="https://www.rappler.com/life-and-style/wellness/184636-whitening-bleaching-cosmetic-surgery" target="_blank">skin whitening</a> is big business in the Philippines) – a self consciousness that borders on self hatred.<br />
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[The Philippines was a colony of the United States for 50 years, and before that, of Spain for 300 – America only granted us independence on the fourth of July in 1946.]<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A scene in which Tom and his friends play Indian. I was shocked and fascinated by the nakedness!</td></tr>
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So as a child reader of my time, I accepted the N word, the demonising of Native Americans, and the exclusion of black characters, as a given. It was as normal as the fact that I had never met a Filipino character in the books I loved.<br />
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That was just what books were like.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>REREADING</b></span></h4>
I have the actual crumbly, yellowing copy that I had read as a child, part of a collection of children's classics my father bought from a door to door salesman in the 1960s. About ten years ago, I rescued it from my mother's termite-infested book case in Manila, lugging the whole set of classics back to London in my cabin baggage, along with the rest of the collection.<br />
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It had been 30 years since I had read a line from the book, but as soon as I began I was transported back to my childhood when I lay sprawled in my bed, with the electric fan turned on high, laughing and wishing I could be Tom Sawyer.<br />
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All the things I loved about the book came flooding back – how Tom Sawyer tricked his mates into whitewashing a fence for him; the bartering of dead cats; his outsider best friend Huckleberry Finn; Tom briskly trading tickets at Sunday School to undeservedly win a bible only to draw the attention of a visitor who asks him the names of the first two disciples (after much blushing and tugging at his buttonhole, Tom finally replies, "DAVID AND GOLIATH!") ...<br />
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But reading it now, as an adult who has experienced racism and intolerance, as someone whose world had expanded beyond Manila, I cringe at lines I had read without question as a child, especially the ones in which Injun Joe's vileness is attributed to his race. 'The Injun blood ain't in me for nothing,' Injun Joe says to justify his misdeeds.<br />
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Reading it again, there's no denying Twain's antipathy towards Native Americans. Twain's baddy is the conniving, betraying and murderous Injun Joe; Indians are referred to as vicious, devilish, savage; and Tom and his cohorts war whoop, pretend scalp each other then smoke peace pipes. Do read this <a href="https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2011/01/american-indian-perspective-on-changing.html" target="_blank">thorough review by Debbie Reese</a>.<br />
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Rereading <i>Tom Sawyer </i>also<i> </i>sparked a long ago memory: of wishing that girls too could have adventures like Tom Sawyer.<br />
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Girls didn't get to participate in all the antics and fun enjoyed by Tom and his pals. They were portrayed as pretty creatures, gullible (like Aunt Polly) to Tom's clever manipulations. When Tom is lost with his crush Becky in the caves, Becky is described as "frail" and cries so much that Tom's "encouragements were grown threadbare with use and sounded like sarcasms".<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6mePL9hCWcU/XK4djXHcgyI/AAAAAAAAozk/HJSThStkMrkb1FqaS3bPeNWTd53VxEUewCLcBGAs/s1600/20190409_201403.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1561" data-original-width="1600" height="624" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6mePL9hCWcU/XK4djXHcgyI/AAAAAAAAozk/HJSThStkMrkb1FqaS3bPeNWTd53VxEUewCLcBGAs/s640/20190409_201403.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The cave scene. A few coloured plates intersperse the pages, and inexplicably they are credited (to illustrator Edward F. Cortese) though the black and white illustrations have no credit.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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[I realised that I too had written a lost-in-a-cave scene in my novel <i>Bone Talk – </i>except my girl character, Luki, is just as feisty as the boy, Samkad –maybe even feistier – and constantly challenging the gendered expectations of her headhunting mountain village. Perhaps I had unconsciously written a homage to that unforgettable sequence from <i>Tom Sawyer</i>.]<br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">YOUR BELOVED BOOKS MIGHT BE RACIST</span></h4>
In a <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/realize-classic-books-childhood-racist" target="_blank">PBS video,</a> author Grace Lin (<i>Where the Mountain Meets the Moon</i>) says: "Do you have an old children's book you love? One of those classic books you read with your kids because your parents read it with you? Well. There's a good chance it might be racist."<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="400" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R5iwq4mENFw" width="600"></iframe><br />
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But how does that work? Wasn't Mark Twain simply representing the reality of 1800s? Wasn't that what made the book special in the first place? Does that mean all these classic books should be discarded because their old fashioned prejudices would not pass muster against our contemporary sensibilities?<br />
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Here's what Grace says in case you can't watch the video:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Sometimes, good people, people you love, aren't always right.</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-size: large;">And that is how I feel about these classic books. I'm not saying we should ban them. I'm saying we should treat them like out-of-touch relatives. We all have that aunt or uncle, or maybe even a parent, who believes in things you don't agree with.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-size: large;">You can still love that relative, and you can still let them be a part of your child's life. But because you know they might say something you don't like, don't you try to keep an extra ear open, in case they say something in front of your child? And then, don't you explain afterwards?</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-size: large;">That's what I'm saying about these classic children's books. Read them, share them, even love them, but make sure you talk to your kids about them, too.</span></i></blockquote>
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I love <i>Tom Sawyer</i> because I can still remember how it took me away from my boring, mundane life in Manila. I love <i>Tom Sawyer </i>because of Mark Twain's crackling storytelling voice. I love <i>Tom Sawyer</i> because it so vividly captures life in Missouri in another century.<br />
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I love the realism of Twain's style but I do not love the reality he was representing. <br />
<i><br />
</i> Yes, I believe that <i>Tom Sawyer</i> should be read by young people today – but I agree with Grace Lin, it cannot be read without context because it has the power to do harm.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">DOING HARM</span></h4>
I recently finished writing a children's biography of the explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who is credited with leading the first expedition to circumnavigate the world. The other thing he did though was participate in Portugal's conquest of the Indian Ocean.<br />
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Reading other biographies for children, the conquest is always skimmed over, and presented as a kind of glorious training ground for Magellan's future achievements (one of which was to "discover" the Philippines). But there was nothing glorious about the pillaging and genocide the Europeans committed in 16th century Africa and India.<br />
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I couldn't help wondering how an African or an Indian child would feel reading my story ... and found myself writing with extra care for those future readers.<br />
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Mark Twain is quoted as saying that he didn't write The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for children. Well, he didn't write it for black and Native American readers either.<br />
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I was once asked what literary figure from the past would I most like to have dinner with. Mark Twain was my immediate answer – because he would be a witty and funny dinner guest, I admired his writing, and I admired him (most of all) for being one of the few voices at the turn of the 21st century to speak out when the U.S. invaded the Philippines. Here's what he said:<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem ... It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.</i></span></blockquote>
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And yet I discover now that he while he could expound on the plight of faraway Filipinos, he didn't feel the same about the plight of Native Americans.<br />
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"He could denounce imperialism abroad while mostly ignoring it at home," writes <a href="http://www.twainweb.net/reviews/MTAmongIndians.html" target="_blank">Kerry Driscoll</a> in <i>Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples.</i><br />
<blockquote>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">While Twain's view on blacks . . . [demonstrate] unequivocal growth away from the racism of his origins in the antebellum South, his representations of Indians do not follow a similarly redemptive arc. They are instead vexingly erratic and paradoxical, commingling antipathy and sympathy, fascination and visceral repugnance ...</span></i></blockquote>
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Knowing this, it's hard to imagine myself trading witticisms with Samuel Clemens across a dining table.<br />
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Reflecting on <i>Tom Sawyer</i> today, and how reading hundreds of books in my childhood I accepted that the absence of people like me and the prejudice against African Americans and Native Americans was just "how books are" ... it is inspiring to know that bookish folk are pushing back with hashtags like <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/weneeddiversebooks" target="_blank">#WeNeedDiverseBooks</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/readtheonepercent" target="_blank">#ReadtheOnePercent</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RepresentationMatters" target="_blank">#Representation Matters</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReflectingRealities" target="_blank">#ReflectingRealities</a>.<br />
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Books – beloved or not – have been part of our systemic inequalities for so long, and it feels like change may be coming at last.<br />
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But at the same time, isn't it tragic that 144 years after the publication of <i>Tom Sawyer </i>we are still struggling?<br />
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Back in 2015, the Guardian invited me to share my favourite <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/aug/28/banned-burned-or-simply-life-changing-what-are-the-best-dangerous-books" target="_blank">Dangerous Book</a> as part of an author round-up. Here's what I said:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">When I think back, ALL the books I read as a child were dangerous. They took me out of the ordered rules of my cultural life and proposed that there were other choices out there.</span></i></blockquote>
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Yes. Books really are powerful. And that is why, in future, I will not mention <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer </i>without giving it its proper context.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-__qeX99Olmw/XK96gJyKQ1I/AAAAAAAAo0E/_-XH6ujaabARySjm-RsaKO6jNSVy7AaNgCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-11%2Bat%2B18.33.38.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="352" data-original-width="318" height="150" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-__qeX99Olmw/XK96gJyKQ1I/AAAAAAAAo0E/_-XH6ujaabARySjm-RsaKO6jNSVy7AaNgCLcBGAs/s200/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-04-11%2Bat%2B18.33.38.png" width="" /></a></div>
<i>I am currently the Writer in Residence at Booktrust. Do visit and see <a href="https://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-features/features/2019/april/how-books-build-empathy-and-help-children-see-other-points-of-view/">my latest post</a>, about some empathy epiphanies I had during my busy, busy March of book tours!</i><br />
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<a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-68501765000195168712019-03-20T14:20:00.000+00:002019-10-21T20:57:37.781+01:00The Carnegie 2019<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Greetings from the Philippines where I have been launching the Filipino editions of Is It a Mermaid (Sirena ba Yan?) and Bone Talk. It was incredibly busy and hectic ... then <i>this</i> happened:</div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P3sDh4xwKV8/XJJG4mOMw4I/AAAAAAAAoiM/sD4jxj6KLYwjVIB2JiSse6LOxBVm6TAKgCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-03-20%2Bat%2B21.57.00.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="1600" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P3sDh4xwKV8/XJJG4mOMw4I/AAAAAAAAoiM/sD4jxj6KLYwjVIB2JiSse6LOxBVm6TAKgCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-03-20%2Bat%2B21.57.00.png" width="700" /></a></div>
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When I was a little girl, the sight of that gold label on a book sent my heart racing. How incredible to be shortlisted! Thank you so much to librarians UK wide who nominated my book, and the judging panel who shortlisted it ... what an incredible honour!</div>
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Here is the Carnegie medal shortlist (alphabetical by author surname):</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">The Poet X</span> by Elizabeth Acevedo (Electric Monkey)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b> <b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Rebound</span> by Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile (Andersen Press)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b> <b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">The House with Chicken Legs</span> by Sophie Anderson, illustrated by Elisa Paganelli (Usborne Books)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b> <b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Bone Talk</span> by Candy Gourlay (David Fickling Books</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b> <b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">A Skinful of Shadows</span> by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children's Books)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b> <b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Things A Bright Girl Can Do</span> by Sally Nicholls (Andersen Press)</span></b><br />
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</span></b> <b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">Long Way Down</span> by Jason Reynolds, illustrated by Chris Priestley (Faber & Faber)</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span></b> <b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;">The Land of Neverendings</span> by Kate Saunders (Faber & Faber)</span></b><br />
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And here is the Kate Greenaway Award shortlist:</div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #a64d79;">The Day War Came</span> illustrated by Rebecca Cobb, written by Nicola Davies (Walker Books)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #a64d79;">Ocean Meets Sky </span>illustrated and written by Eric Fan and Terry Fan (Lincoln Children’s Books)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #a64d79;">Beyond the Fence</span> illustrated and written by Maria Gulemetova (Child's Play Library)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #a64d79;">The Wolf, the Duck and the Mouse</span> illustrated by Jon Klassen, written by Mac Barnett (Walker Books)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #a64d79;">Julian is a Mermaid</span> illustrated and written by Jessica Love (Walker Books)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #a64d79;">You're Safe With Me</span> illustrated by Poonam Mistry, written by Chitra Soundar (Lantana Publishing)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #a64d79;">The Lost Words</span> illustrated by Jackie Morris, written by Robert Macfarlane (Hamish Hamilton)</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #a64d79;">Suffragette: The Battle for Equality</span> illustrated and written by David Roberts (Two Hoots)</b></span><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-76ryKnF8vkE/XJJCEvhFg7I/AAAAAAAAoiA/0LXTtmjLz1s5_P42xBXGiXiC5-_boT_XwCLcBGAs/s1600/Carnegie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="967" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-76ryKnF8vkE/XJJCEvhFg7I/AAAAAAAAoiA/0LXTtmjLz1s5_P42xBXGiXiC5-_boT_XwCLcBGAs/s1600/Carnegie.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-13299864559904684542019-03-19T20:55:00.000+00:002019-10-21T20:56:13.827+01:00Bone Talk on the Carnegie Shortlist!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Back in November, I was so pleasedwhen I found out that Bone Talk got a nomination for the Carnegie Medal and Francesca Chessa, who illustrated Is It a Mermaid, was nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal. How amazing to be on these two of the most highly regarded awards lists in the world!</div>
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In February, they announced the longlists. Bone Talk was still hanging on.</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JFp48SvZ2Vs/Xa4GJUcxJjI/AAAAAAAArW8/SyuQ5md0fSA8TTUhO091Sk3FemMjpWjsQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-21%2Bat%2B20.21.54.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="1464" height="96" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JFp48SvZ2Vs/Xa4GJUcxJjI/AAAAAAAArW8/SyuQ5md0fSA8TTUhO091Sk3FemMjpWjsQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-21%2Bat%2B20.21.54.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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The shortlists were announced four months later. Wonderful news for Bone Talk! So grateful to all the hard working librarians behind the award. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GiaJQqcNCIw/Xa4F4cgIosI/AAAAAAAArWs/MpO2A5HI2coaDl44eKZXruKKohadZPT8ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-21%2Bat%2B20.21.43.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="984" data-original-width="1476" height="422" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GiaJQqcNCIw/Xa4F4cgIosI/AAAAAAAArWs/MpO2A5HI2coaDl44eKZXruKKohadZPT8ACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-10-21%2Bat%2B20.21.43.png" width="640" /></a><br />
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I was on the other side of the world, in the Philippines, launching the Philippine edition of Bone Talk! The time zones didn't quite match but I managed this tweet:<br />
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We announced the Carnegie shortlisting at my Manila book launch and there was much celebration!<br />
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Here's a screenshot from the <a href="https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/328421/filipino-writer-candy-gourlays-book-is-shortlisted-for-prestigious-uk-literary-prize-carnegie-medal/" target="_blank">Philippine Daily Inquirer's article</a>:<br />
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... and then followed an amazing avalanche of praise and kind messages that had me up into the wee hours, Philippine time, reading and replying!<br />
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Thank you to all the people who celebrated with me. I'd known about the Carnegie Medal since I was a kid growing up in the Philippines. This really means a lot to me.<br />
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "merriweather" , serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit;">This piece might look familiar, if you follow me on Twitter. I am slowly reproducing Twitter threads on my blog in the name of keeping a proper record. </span><br />
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-14414801078578382072019-03-13T18:06:00.000+00:002019-10-21T20:59:27.459+01:00The Hong Kong Young Readers Literary Festival<div>
I have been through Hong Kong many times but always on the way to somewhere else or stopping quickly for a meeting. I've never really spent any proper time there so I was pleased to accept an invitation to appear in the schools programme of the Hong Kong Young Readers Festival.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cH9aU5ioZBU/XJnlAt5GWpI/AAAAAAAAos4/uvgB_y2F9hMMe3lc9tB5SzhS6ZcTOWIHwCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-03-26%2Bat%2B08.38.04.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="901" data-original-width="1600" height="" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cH9aU5ioZBU/XJnlAt5GWpI/AAAAAAAAos4/uvgB_y2F9hMMe3lc9tB5SzhS6ZcTOWIHwCLcBGAs/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-03-26%2Bat%2B08.38.04.png" width="900" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: HK Young Readers Festival (Michael Perini)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Here is my Twitter diary of the festival, compiled in a Twitter Moment (if you can't see it below, visit it <a href="https://twitter.com/i/moments/1108519569251926016" target="_blank">here</a>)!</div>
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<a class="twitter-moment" href="https://twitter.com/i/moments/1108519569251926016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Candy Gourlay at the Hong Kong Young Readers Festival</a><br />
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-37098468534292490032019-03-04T00:50:00.000+00:002019-03-04T00:55:31.089+00:00The Bone Talk Book Tour<b>By Candy Gourlay</b><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qALeOyk3wOY/XHwoCFvTtoI/AAAAAAAAoYk/b3BRvL4PIs8HxlNOhUXls_MkCKRlXDbkwCLcBGAs/s1600/DSCF2858.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1304" data-original-width="1600" height="520" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qALeOyk3wOY/XHwoCFvTtoI/AAAAAAAAoYk/b3BRvL4PIs8HxlNOhUXls_MkCKRlXDbkwCLcBGAs/s640/DSCF2858.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With children from Telford Priory School in Telford. Thanks to the TPS photographer.</span></div>
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Last week, I went on my first-ever book tour to promote Bone Talk. Over the years I have watched with envy as author friends go off on their book tours, so I was thrilled when my publisher <a href="http://www.davidficklingbooks.com/" target="_blank">David Fickling Books</a> organised one via <a href="https://authorsalouduk.co.uk/what-we-offer/" target="_blank">Authors Aloud</a>, an organisation that facilitates author visits to schools.<br />
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The numbers were pretty daunting for a first timer:<br />
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<b style="font-size: xx-large;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1 author</span></b></div>
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<b style="font-size: xx-large;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2 presentations a day</span></b><br />
<b style="font-size: xx-large;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3,525 children</span></b><br />
<b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-large;">22 schools</b></div>
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<b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-large;">9 venues</b></div>
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<b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-large;">8 towns</b></div>
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<b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-large;">5 days</b><br />
<b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-large;">8 trains</b><br />
<b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-large;">9 taxis</b><br />
<b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-large;">6 lifts</b><br />
<b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-large;">5 Premier Inn hotels</b></div>
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Of course I wanted to keep a record so I tweeted a diary-thread everyday. I've embedded it below if you'd like to to check it out later, or <a href="https://twitter.com/i/moments/1102264677575344129" target="_blank">click here</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0mVFTacHJiY/XHxntopAfxI/AAAAAAAAoY4/CDC1exUyQVQsDaZcstfhg-ekajnaAihDgCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-03-03%2Bat%2B23.47.35.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="1600" height="" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0mVFTacHJiY/XHxntopAfxI/AAAAAAAAoY4/CDC1exUyQVQsDaZcstfhg-ekajnaAihDgCLcBGAs/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-03-03%2Bat%2B23.47.35.png" width="900" /></a><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Meeting children from (clockwise from top left) Kent, Hertfordshire, Sussex, Worcester. Thanks to the schools who tweeted these photos.</span></div>
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I performed in a breathtaking variety of schools – grand, ancient, worn, new, private, state, huge, small, diverse, middle class, every class – many rainbows of hope and aspiration. In the signing queues after every presentation, the children were always a little bit excited, a little bit shy, their eyes sliding everywhere, not knowing where to look, delighted with every tiny sign of interest from me. The names I dedicated the books to were a gamut! So many Madisons in Kent, Harrys, many spellings of Natasha, Sophies, a Wojtek, and many others of far away provenances.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VvVWcYcFcjY/XHxxoWutmcI/AAAAAAAAoZE/MVMwv-ieDdYy6lcsxZTneTJw9wpNaYxzQCLcBGAs/s1600/DSCF2958.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="1600" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VvVWcYcFcjY/XHxxoWutmcI/AAAAAAAAoZE/MVMwv-ieDdYy6lcsxZTneTJw9wpNaYxzQCLcBGAs/s1600/DSCF2958.jpg" width="900" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Speaking to 500 Year 7s and 8s at Weald of Kent Grammar School in Tonbridge. Photo: Sophie Quinnell</span></div>
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I met four Filipino children only though I am told there were plenty more in the Catholic school I was visiting. I wondered how they felt to hear stories about children like them, to see an author wrapped in the same skin as theirs, and to hear me talk about the Philippines, the faraway home that they have not spent much time in. My heart beat faster when one girl confided that she too was writing novels.<br />
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It was a week full of librarians – indeed my first two days were spent in the care of Authors Aloud co-founder and librarian Annie Everall, who put together my itinerary. The librarians were all juggling many balls at once, meeting and greeting (sometimes also feeding) me, sorting out my tech, making sure the bookseller had arrived, inviting neighbouring schools to join the audience, and herding, always, herding. During the pauses, there were many good conversations – about the transformation a child goes through between Year 7 and Year 8, about reading for pleasure, about library resources or the lack of it, and yes, deliciously, inevitably, about beloved books. Librarians can't help talking about books (and neither can we authors).<br />
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A big thank you to my booky hosts: Howard Aukland and Jo Davies (Telford), Gareth Davies (Wolverhampton), Annabel Jeffery (Worcester), Rebecca Darbyshire (St Albans), Clare Woollard (Ware), Katy Day and Megan Silver (Sittingbourne), Sophie Quinnell (Tonbridge), Simon Homer (Burgess Hill) and Emily Holland (Hove).<br />
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Then there were the booksellers. There were booksellers with premises – <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Booknookhove/?fref=ts" target="_blank">The Book Nook</a> in Hove, <a href="http://www.pengwernbooks.co.uk/" target="_blank">Pengwern Books</a> in Shrewsbury, <a href="http://spaldingbooks.co.uk/contact-us/" target="_blank">H&H Spalding Books</a> in Barton under Needwood, <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/bookshops/worcester" target="_blank">Watersones</a> in Worcester, <a href="http://nickelbooks.co.uk/" target="_blank">Nickel Books</a> in Sittingbourne ... and then there are booksellers without shopfronts, who supply directly to schools and events, like Elaine Penrose in Ware, Brenda Parkhouse in Herfordshire and Caroline Anderson in Kent.<br />
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At the beginning I wondered how effective a book tour was as a marketing tool. What was all this about, really? Was this about numbers – selling books, big audiences, number of schools? Some of the schools regularly invited authors to speak, some had to wait for tours like mine for the opportunity.<br />
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I was moved by the enthusiasm and generosity of the teachers and librarians. Over and over again, they thanked me for coming.<br />
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But at the end of the day, it seemed to me that I was the person who benefited most from the tour. In coming face to face with the young people I write my books for, I have seen all the things that my books can be, <i>should</i> be – a way to escape, to seek the truth, a reason to hope, a reason to dream, a bridge to take them over gaps, a door to other worlds.<br />
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It is such a huge responsibility. And such a huge blessing.<br />
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Thank you, all, for having me.<br />
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<a class="twitter-moment" href="https://twitter.com/i/moments/1102264677575344129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">The Bone Talk Book Tour</a> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <br />
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-50129098347484902812019-01-09T16:05:00.000+00:002019-01-11T12:56:44.952+00:00A Video for Readers of the Filipino Edition of Bone TalkBy <a href="https://candygourlaybooks.wixsite.com/library">Candy Gourlay</a><br />
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The Pinoy edition of Bone Talk is out in the Philippines, published by Anvil Publishing! My artist-editor-writer friend <a href="https://www.instagram.com/jdwatford/" target="_blank">Joy Watford</a> and I made this video in our native Taglish, for all who are discovering the book back home. If you've already read the book and have a lot of questions, this video might have the answers. If you're a teacher or a parent wondering how talk about the book with your children, you might get a lot of valuable insight from this video.<br />
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If there's anything else about the book you're curious about, do leave questions in the comments and I'll try to respond in a future video!<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eqbujQABYsM" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-57049416060035949422018-12-31T15:54:00.002+00:002018-12-31T16:49:12.480+00:00Goodbye, Facebook. Am I Ready?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TaHY7fehrgU/XCo5a6mZZWI/AAAAAAAAoFA/_24WFvKK6eUQ8nDukkOenOHgS7nT2h3kACLcBGAs/s1600/Candy-Gourlay-FB.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="1600" height="" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TaHY7fehrgU/XCo5a6mZZWI/AAAAAAAAoFA/_24WFvKK6eUQ8nDukkOenOHgS7nT2h3kACLcBGAs/s640/Candy-Gourlay-FB.png" width="820" /></a></div>
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By Candy Gourlay<br />
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<a href="https://www.notesfromtheslushpile.com/2018/12/is-it-time-to-face-truth-about-facebook.html" target="_blank">I am leaving Facebook</a>. I have decided. I have said it out loud. I have begun the process.<br />
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There's a lot to do before I close shop and so I am still seeing my Facebook feed, and I'm already missing all the buzz, all my friends, knowing what's going on.<br />
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And yes, I am hesitating.<br />
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Marketing guru Seth Godin, in the first episode of his podcast Akimbo, describes the constant 'pressure to hesitate, to hold back, not to launch ... (because) if you can't have a home run, you probably shouldn't even try.'<br />
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Seth cites some examples of people who committed to their dreams, despite unfavourable conditions.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;">Gutenberg, pioneer of movable type, launched the book when there were no bookstores, and when no one knew how to read, and when reading glasses were required but hadn't been invented yet ... </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://overcast.fm/+L0YX1At2I" target="_blank">The Grand Opening</a>, Akimbo by Seth Godin</b></span><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;"> </span></blockquote>
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If I had invented moveable type in an age when nobody knew how to read, would I plunge on?<br />
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Seth also cited the example of Carl Benz, who launched a car in a Germany where it was against the law to drive a car, there were no passable roads, and there were no gas stations.<br />
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It feels a little bit like that at the moment.<br />
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I am abandoning a successful Facebook profile, with almost 3,000 friends, and an author page that gets thousands of hits a day. And I'm scared. How can I replace all that? Especially in a world where everybody wants instant access to people in the public sphere, even children's authors like me.<br />
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But even apart from <a href="https://www.notesfromtheslushpile.com/2018/12/is-it-time-to-face-truth-about-facebook.html" target="_blank">the ethical concerns I outlined in my recent blog post</a> I was beginning to question the value of what I was doing on Facebook.<br />
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So much time spent in multiple, micro-performances, for a huge, amorphous audience. And so little time spent doing the things I enjoy – writing, drawing, making ...<br />
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By forcing myself to leave Facebook, I hope I can make more time to be of real value to my readers. I can do this in my own space, on my website. I will have more time to create useful content for librarians and teachers who would like to share my book with their students. I will have more time to answer the questions of young people reading my book. And most importantly of all, make real time for real friends in real spaces. (Do stay in touch by <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&amp;id=44150a98cb" target="_blank">subscribing to my updates</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/candygourlay" target="_blank">following me on Twitter</a>).<br />
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But of course it's hard, and of course I'm hesitating. Can I really commit to a Facebook-less life?<br />
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Then it occurs to me that I do this everyday. I hesitate before I commit.<br />
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I have a chronic skin condition that only improves if I go through a tedious routine of applying moisturisers and ointments and protective bandages everyday. And everyday, I hesitate. Do I really have to? And then I commit. I do it. And at the end of the day, I feel better for it.<br />
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Everyday, I need to walk up a steep hill near my home. It's exercise before spending the rest of the day in front of my laptop. But that moment before I put on my coat and walk out my front door is the hardest. Do I really have to? And halfway there, when the hill is at its steepest, and I feel like jumping on a bus, the doubt becomes even more intense. But I do it. And I feel better for it.<br />
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Everyday, I have to write. Just enough words to get my novel closer to The End. But it's hard. There are so many other things I would rather do. But everyday I sigh and open my laptop. And then months, sometimes years later, it's done. I've written a novel. And I feel better for it.<br />
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I hesitate, then I commit, and I'm always glad I did.<br />
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I know I will be glad I left Facebook. I am excited about the change of routine but most of all about the creative challenge of finding other ways to achieve what I have previously been reliant on Facebook to deliver.<br />
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Seth says the alternative to a huge platform is to engage with people who want to hear you.<br />
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Says Seth:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">"You put an idea in the world. Not to everyone in the world, just to people who want to hear it. And then maybe it spreads. And if it spreads it grows. And if it grows you get to do it again ... The goal is to go the people who care. To invite them in and to tell them something they didn't know before ... Not with a grand opening but with a whisper. Here, I made this. That's our work."</span></blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kBJh-amu_p8/XCo7OUzNNEI/AAAAAAAAoFQ/s2UyV52b19s4jZlM60ZgPGfm_lJ6sj7GgCLcBGAs/s1600/20181222_113259.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kBJh-amu_p8/XCo7OUzNNEI/AAAAAAAAoFQ/s2UyV52b19s4jZlM60ZgPGfm_lJ6sj7GgCLcBGAs/s1600/20181222_113259.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here I am at Adarna Books in Manila. Adarna has just published a Filipino translation of my first picture book, Is It a Mermaid, which in Filipino is SIRENA BA YAN?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Help me live without Facebook by sharing this. You can stay in touch by <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">subscribing to my email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-90728115805867555002018-12-03T16:10:00.001+00:002018-12-03T21:52:52.999+00:00A video to celebrate Bone Talk's shortlisting for the Costa Children's Book AwardBy Candy Gourlay<br />
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I am so pleased and proud to let you know that Bone Talk has been shortlisted for the <a href="https://www.costa.co.uk/media/513661/full-book-awards.pdf">Costa Book Award</a> in the Children's Category. My friend, <a href="http://sarahtowle.com/">Sarah Towle</a>, and I made this video to celebrate!<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3671lNLy_4A" width="560"></iframe><br />
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Here is the incredible shortlist, from more than a hundred entries.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sDlAxnZ6E-c/XAVU50rOQjI/AAAAAAAAoAw/HXRbsFEef8ohgO6cbkjPoW0oyJvm53QywCLcBGAs/s1600/Screenshot%2B2018-12-03%2Bat%2B16.00.58.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="828" data-original-width="1156" height="459" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sDlAxnZ6E-c/XAVU50rOQjI/AAAAAAAAoAw/HXRbsFEef8ohgO6cbkjPoW0oyJvm53QywCLcBGAs/s640/Screenshot%2B2018-12-03%2Bat%2B16.00.58.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ccl0O8Hd1mY/XAVU57shgoI/AAAAAAAAoAs/dL9Rc-o0Oa05kBm63EZCk0OG8QnPy9n5ACLcBGAs/s1600/Screenshot%2B2018-12-03%2Bat%2B16.01.15.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="826" data-original-width="1150" height="459" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ccl0O8Hd1mY/XAVU57shgoI/AAAAAAAAoAs/dL9Rc-o0Oa05kBm63EZCk0OG8QnPy9n5ACLcBGAs/s640/Screenshot%2B2018-12-03%2Bat%2B16.01.15.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kj3rqi1_S4U/XAVU5jkVbPI/AAAAAAAAoAo/nujl4t7SDt4iaaYifrDu5mzIPYpHbhCMQCLcBGAs/s1600/Screenshot%2B2018-12-03%2Bat%2B16.01.32.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="826" data-original-width="1144" height="462" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kj3rqi1_S4U/XAVU5jkVbPI/AAAAAAAAoAo/nujl4t7SDt4iaaYifrDu5mzIPYpHbhCMQCLcBGAs/s640/Screenshot%2B2018-12-03%2Bat%2B16.01.32.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--U-kz9GCA6s/XAVU6oxox-I/AAAAAAAAoA0/MhW6ZFR3lnwlYoWceBAdUKzHMhUAqeDRQCLcBGAs/s1600/Screenshot%2B2018-12-03%2Bat%2B16.01.46.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="826" data-original-width="1146" height="460" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--U-kz9GCA6s/XAVU6oxox-I/AAAAAAAAoA0/MhW6ZFR3lnwlYoWceBAdUKzHMhUAqeDRQCLcBGAs/s640/Screenshot%2B2018-12-03%2Bat%2B16.01.46.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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The shortlist was chosen by broadcaster <a href="https://twitter.com/rickoshea">Rick O'Shea</a>, bookseller <a href="https://twitter.com/fleursinclair?lang=en">Fleur Sinclair</a> and children's book critic <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/imogenrussellwilliams">Imogen Russell Williams</a>.<br />
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The winner will be announced on 7 January 2019. Wish me luck!<br />
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-80129203842857028192018-08-02T03:00:00.000+01:002018-08-05T08:34:05.769+01:00Born Today! Meet BONE TALKBy <a href="http://candygourlay.com/" target="_blank">Candy Gourlay</a><br />
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My third novel, <b>Bone Talk</b>, hits the shops today! Copies have been spotted in Japan and some bookstores have already shipped books out, though Amazon Kindle has been steadfast in refusing to allow downloads until today.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5auID6blY9I/W2JPROjBmuI/AAAAAAAAnxQ/Le54meaEs_wE4QWBtAWMu8edj38w1v6IACLcBGAs/s1600/20180713_093309.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5auID6blY9I/W2JPROjBmuI/AAAAAAAAnxQ/Le54meaEs_wE4QWBtAWMu8edj38w1v6IACLcBGAs/s1600/20180713_093309.jpg" /></a></div>
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Me, I'm just glad it's out in the wild at last. I am so grateful for the relentless support of friends and strangers who've been talking up a storm about Bone Talk these past few days. Thank you, guys! And thank you, David Fickling Books, for publishing it!<br />
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A few weeks ago, I made this video to introduce the book ...<br />
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It might not have escaped your notice that for most of the video, I talked about the book I <u>didn't</u> write! Here's me in WRD Magazine talking about the book that I actually wrote:<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4wDowewTBkM/W2JLhZeFlgI/AAAAAAAAnxE/-73h5XhF0bM54xwT_yMfXsD2gKWmxvLpwCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-02%2Bat%2B01.08.13.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1262" data-original-width="948" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4wDowewTBkM/W2JLhZeFlgI/AAAAAAAAnxE/-73h5XhF0bM54xwT_yMfXsD2gKWmxvLpwCLcBGAs/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-02%2Bat%2B01.08.13.png" width="480" /></a></div>
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On this auspicious day, here are some fun facts about the book and its making!<br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>1 The Cover</b></span><br />
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... is illustrated by a Filipino artist named <a href="https://kerbyrosanes.com/" target="_blank">Kerby Rosanes</a>. I first heard about Kerby Rosanes when <a href="https://www.candygourlay.com/2017/03/a-letter-to-dubailitfest-2017.html" target="_blank">I appeared at the Emirates Literary Festival in Dubai</a>. His sketchbooks look like this ...<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dx3r90FAT5g/W2HrhsVfYTI/AAAAAAAAnvE/wzukYwbZh20-zES30tP982JcyArRu8WswCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B18.18.06.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1144" data-original-width="1466" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dx3r90FAT5g/W2HrhsVfYTI/AAAAAAAAnvE/wzukYwbZh20-zES30tP982JcyArRu8WswCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B18.18.06.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A page from Kerby Rosanes' <a href="https://kerbyrosanes.com/sketchbook-illustrations-iii" target="_blank">sketchbook</a>. View more at <a href="https://kerbyrosanes.com/" target="_blank">Kerby's website</a></td></tr>
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... and his <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kerby-Rosanes/e/B00VOUPDL6" target="_blank">glorious colouring books</a> have made it to the New York Times bestselling lists!<br />
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I emailed the team at my publisher DFB, hinting strongly that Bone Talk should be fully illustrated by Kerby. When it turned out that they'd commissioned Kerby to do the cover, I was over the moon!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-stDQ6ed8vNs/W2HwFyvyAFI/AAAAAAAAnvQ/htMb3UeMWxAhQ0YC-znCcIzTFgachZKUwCLcBGAs/s1600/bone-talk-rough-final.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="800" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-stDQ6ed8vNs/W2HwFyvyAFI/AAAAAAAAnvQ/htMb3UeMWxAhQ0YC-znCcIzTFgachZKUwCLcBGAs/s1600/bone-talk-rough-final.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The first I knew that Kerby was doing the cover was when my editors sent me the rough on the left! The final version is on the right.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"> <b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2 The Title</b></span><br />
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For a long time, the working title of the book was <b>The Tree of Bones</b>, which somehow didn't feel right. I was relieved and happy when my agent and I thought up <b>Bone Talk</b>. It makes sense in terms of the narrative, but it's also a secret joke for Filipinos.<br />
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The setting of my story is a village in a place called Bontoc, in the highlands of the Philippines. Bontoc is not an easy word for the Western tongue to wrap around and invading Americans pronounced it "Bone Talk" !<br />
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When I announced the title on social media, my fellow Filipinos got the joke immediately! Librarian Matt Imrie smelled the rat too. You can't hide things from a good librarian!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ISjzG2fBIWM/W2H04Rc2CnI/AAAAAAAAnvc/BJWBFYzy7vE0_eBaDz6Ugs6ssNc5ozZVgCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B18.58.30.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1148" data-original-width="1216" height="604" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ISjzG2fBIWM/W2H04Rc2CnI/AAAAAAAAnvc/BJWBFYzy7vE0_eBaDz6Ugs6ssNc5ozZVgCLcBGAs/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B18.58.30.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3 The Dedication</b></span><br />
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When my children first opened early proofs of the book, they exclaimed, "You dedicated it to YOUR DOG???"<br />
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Well ... yeah ... but FYI, I also dedicated it to my dad, and Dad's name came first!<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jDN6-u4dNFM/W2H17kC-0HI/AAAAAAAAnvo/c8dFQ7raTGkVdwOUz9uk-Co7sEdmpOkvQCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B19.03.08.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="832" height="287" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jDN6-u4dNFM/W2H17kC-0HI/AAAAAAAAnvo/c8dFQ7raTGkVdwOUz9uk-Co7sEdmpOkvQCLcBGAs/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B19.03.08.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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( I dedicated my picture book <b>Is It a Mermaid</b>, which was published in April, to my children so they really shouldn't complain!) </div>
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In Bone Talk, the dog character named Chuka was inspired by three dogs:</div>
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• the real Chuka - who was the soppiest dog alive but became a growling, teeth baring monster when she met the man who became my husband. She knew he was going to take me away forever. </div>
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• Harvey, bookshop dog at Jo De Guia's Victoria Park Books, sadly now closed. We borrowed him for a few days one Christmas and it seriously hurt so much when we had to hand him back. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TQk2yuWHpGM/W2H32uVCxlI/AAAAAAAAnv0/3vWho-Rfgjc3SbjfKFoLOKhWmwbyri_PwCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B19.11.15.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="856" data-original-width="1242" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TQk2yuWHpGM/W2H32uVCxlI/AAAAAAAAnv0/3vWho-Rfgjc3SbjfKFoLOKhWmwbyri_PwCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B19.11.15.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Harvey. Photo by Mia Gourlay.</td></tr>
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• Kunig (who gets a mention in the Acknowledgements), a mountain dog I met in Bontoc while researching the book. Kunig had a herding instinct and herded us along the narrow trails of the paddy fields.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kP8XksUiSuw/W2H4Ws0OrvI/AAAAAAAAnv8/DNWEwYl0SJUsC_BybWEBDCD3sqBcAjPzQCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B19.13.18.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="1298" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kP8XksUiSuw/W2H4Ws0OrvI/AAAAAAAAnv8/DNWEwYl0SJUsC_BybWEBDCD3sqBcAjPzQCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B19.13.18.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kunig the mountain dog, herding my husband on the trails of the rice terraces. Photo: Candy Gourlay</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4 The Setting</b></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KtORxwjgQbo/W2H-y_g64mI/AAAAAAAAnwI/06l2jibebtoUwr7zwqdYLbWiGZRwpa82wCLcBGAs/s1600/12605387_10154470230347678_7718531774751178401_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="986" data-original-width="1600" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KtORxwjgQbo/W2H-y_g64mI/AAAAAAAAnwI/06l2jibebtoUwr7zwqdYLbWiGZRwpa82wCLcBGAs/s1600/12605387_10154470230347678_7718531774751178401_o.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me posing next to a sacred tree at the Maligcong Rice Terraces. Photo: Richard Gourlay</td></tr>
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From faraway London, I used Google Earth, old maps and the diaries of turn of the century travellers to research the place. I also read a lot of Filipino travel blogs to see if I could get a more vivid picture of how the region looked now.<br />
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I noticed that two travel blogs kept mentioning Maligcong, a quiet village off the tourist trail. It sounded like the perfect location for my story. The blogs were <a href="http://lagalog.com/" target="_blank"><b>Lagalog</b></a> by Oggie Ramos and <a href="https://www.ironwulf.net/" target="_blank"><b>Ironwulf</b></a> by Ferdz Decena.<br />
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Soon after I finished a first draft, I finally visited Maligcong and ... surprise! Oggie and Ferdz were staying at my homestay! Turned out the reason they were constantly mentioning Maligcong was because they had a real passion for the place.<br />
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Being physically there was wonderful. I realised that I had been exclusively visual in describing the setting. In fact, at the Maligcong rice terraces there is a constant rushing noise of water around the rice paddies, the farmers tilling the terraces chat and banter, the water buffalos snort in the mud and there are small fishes and crabs in the paddy water.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5 The Igorots</b></span><br />
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My characters are a headhunting people that lived high up in the Philippine Cordillera. They are called Igorots, a name coined by Spanish settlers who came to colonise the Philippines in the 16th century. But I do not use the word Igorot in <i>Bone Talk</i>, which might initially surprise or even disappoint Igorots, who take great pride in their heritage.<br />
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In 1899, the year of my story, Igorot would have been a word used by outsiders, not by the mountain people themselves.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FlKY8XaWm40/W2IZ9yK-HhI/AAAAAAAAnwU/cNlVgfEECF0rpUa_ZPB-V2MlcFDaHw6AwCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B21.36.33.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="882" data-original-width="1600" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FlKY8XaWm40/W2IZ9yK-HhI/AAAAAAAAnwU/cNlVgfEECF0rpUa_ZPB-V2MlcFDaHw6AwCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B21.36.33.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">London-based Igorots proudly display their banner in front of the School of Oriental and Asian Studies during the recent Cordillera Conference, where I launched Bone Talk. Photo: Candy Gourlay</td></tr>
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The word 'Igorot' has a fraught history. In the early 16th and 17th centuries, it was simply a general term to refer to mountain dwellers, whatever their cultural group – of which there were many, many diverse communities up and down the Cordilleras, each with their own languages, belief systems and cultural practices.<br />
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Spanish colonisers soon exerted dominion over most of the Philippines – but they failed to conquer the people of the Cordillera mountains, who resisted their every effort to conquer them.<br />
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There would be brief interludes when a small community might pay tribute to Spain and allow a garrison to be built amongst them. But such times did not last long. The mountain people soon pulled up stakes, melting deep into the mountain jungles. The Spanish never grew their own food so they dared not give chase and stray too far from supply lines from the lowlands.<br />
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The Spanish become frustrated and embittered by the failure to conquer the mountain people. Their dispatches to Madrid disparaged the Igorot with more and more vehemence, and soon the word 'Igorot' became derogatory, with connotations of impurity, savagery and backwardness.<br />
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Sadly, Spanish badmouthing was absorbed by other Filipinos and Igorots have for years endured discrimination from their compatriots in the lowlands.<br />
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In the past few decades however, Cordillerans have chosen to appropriate the word and proudly identify themselves as Igorot – though a few groups still resist the word.<br />
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There is a myth that the Spanish failed to conquer the Cordilleras because of the terrain and isolation of its peoples. But historical records reveal a lively interaction and trade between mountain folk and the lowlands.<br />
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The truth is: the Spanish failed to conquer the Cordilleras because the people of the mountain didn't allow themselves to be conquered.<br />
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My book launch was part of a two day conference on the Cordilleras at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) – I took this video of UK-based Igorots in native dress performing at the conference.<br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e1qkD5i_iFw" width="560"></iframe><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">6 Headhunting</b></span><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uGToPh-oRoY/W2Ij6ArGiVI/AAAAAAAAnwg/jYdBqWVPaHIW0OshNyNgSWdjQcpVVHN_wCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B22.17.42.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1338" data-original-width="874" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uGToPh-oRoY/W2Ij6ArGiVI/AAAAAAAAnwg/jYdBqWVPaHIW0OshNyNgSWdjQcpVVHN_wCLcBGAs/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-01%2Bat%2B22.17.42.png" width="261" /></a></div>
So yeah, my characters are a headhunting people. Fact. But would this be off-putting to my readers?<br />
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Worse, would it be offensive to the people of the Cordillera themselves who, during my research trips, gave me the impression that they wanted to put headhunting firmly into the distant past.<br />
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Whenever I tried to ask anyone about headhunting in the Cordillera, I was gently reminded that headhunting had been outlawed back in the American occupation. When I visited the Bontoc Museum in search of headhunting artifacts, I found them displayed in the bottom shelf of a glass cabinet in a remote corner of the museum.<br />
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The message I got was this: headhunting is something that savages do, and we are not savages - understandable when you consider that Igorots have endured being belittled as primitives for centuries.<br />
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But I needed to understand what the practice meant so that I could find a truthful yet sympathetic way of representing it in my story.<br />
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When I read <b>Severed</b> by Frances Larson, I heaved a sigh of relief.<br />
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Turns out, unshoed corners of the world do not have a monopoly on head chopping.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ElI9rvoimm0/W2K7odMhHII/AAAAAAAAnxc/NTFprOgwFfYvEmR6tA2t5Y2_sVvQBjojwCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-02%2Bat%2B08.30.14.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="770" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ElI9rvoimm0/W2K7odMhHII/AAAAAAAAnxc/NTFprOgwFfYvEmR6tA2t5Y2_sVvQBjojwCLcBGAs/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-02%2Bat%2B08.30.14.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Britain, the book reminded me, has had a long tradition of severing heads. One famous head, Oliver Cromwell's, became an attraction at small freak shows. It deteriorated down the centuries, losing an ear here and the tip of its nose there, before ending up in private hands. It wasn't until 1960 that it occurred to someone to give Cromwell's head a break. It was buried in Cambridge.<br />
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During World War II, Allied soldiers in the Pacific arena made a sport of taking the heads of Japanese dead, causing a scandal. According to Larson's book, 60 per cent of Japanese dead repatriated from the Mariana Islands in 1984 were missing their heads.<br />
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Headhunting and headhunters conjure notions of savagery and "the moral limitations of 'savage society'".<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">"The vision of headhunting informed a much deeper dichotomy that flourished in the late nineteenth century, between 'wild' people and the more 'refined' viewing public who gazed upon them. A profound and derogatory prejudice has shaped the display of foreign cultures in Europe and America for centuries, and it allowed those who visited fairs and museums to define themselves in opposition to those people they came to see." </span><b>SEVERED by Frances Larson</b></blockquote>
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I realised that if I were to represent headhunters fairly, it would be important to dig deep and understand the logic of headhunting culture. <br />
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And yes, there is logic to it. The more I explored the belief systems of the pre-Christian Igorots, the more it became clear to me that headhunting was not the act of an unthinking savage, but a deeply moral and rational practice.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">7 America the Invader</b></span><br />
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<b>Bone Talk</b> is set in late 1899, when American troops were rampaging across the Philippines to secure it as part of a package of entitlements after the United States won the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War" target="_blank">Spanish American War</a>. That victory – and the end of the Spanish empire – was sealed by the sinking of the Spanish Pacific Squadron by Commodore George Dewey in the Manila Bay.<br />
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Growing up in the Philippines, we were taught the facts of history in isolation. There was no wider context. It was all about memorising dates and titles which I just about managed. But it felt like nothing to do with me, apart from the grade I had to achieve. <br />
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Researching this story, for the first I woke up to the context of America's imperial ambitions. It felt like a giant OMG suddenly appeared above my head and stayed there, hovering for the duration of my research. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N1YbhSEF1js/W2JEwRGha1I/AAAAAAAAnws/3UsOasaKe38S0VvrKcCM55rkKLsd2UMQQCLcBGAs/s1600/The_duty_of_the_hour%253B_-_to_save_her_not_only_from_Spain%252C_but_from_a_worse_fate_-_Dalrymple._LCCN2012647563.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1024" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N1YbhSEF1js/W2JEwRGha1I/AAAAAAAAnws/3UsOasaKe38S0VvrKcCM55rkKLsd2UMQQCLcBGAs/s1600/The_duty_of_the_hour%253B_-_to_save_her_not_only_from_Spain%252C_but_from_a_worse_fate_-_Dalrymple._LCCN2012647563.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How the Spanish American War was sold to Americans. Illustrator: Louis Dalrymple. Public Domain image.</td></tr>
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The big picture: when Spain lost the Spanish-American war, it handed over its colonies: Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. The United States designated these countries "unincorporated territories". The Philippines became a republic after the second world war ... but Puerto Rico continues to be unincorporated territory of the United States. One empire crumbled and a new one rose to take its place.<br />
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The small picture: Inconveniently for the United States, the Filipinos were still in fighting mode and despite all their arrangements with Spain, America found itself fighting another war which, despite the fact that their Filipino enemy lagged behind in fighting know how and firepower, lasted until 1902 (with serious pockets of resistance continuing through till 1905). It is said that almost a quarter of the population was killed – something that should be examined and remembered.<br />
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My use of the word "invasion" to describe this period may rattle some people. Our history books don’t tend to talk about America’s incursion as an invasion. But that is what it was. And it changed us, as a people, forever.<br />
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Last year, I was invited to appear at the Pune International Literary Festival in Pune, India. My British husband came along and we had a wonderful time hanging out with Indian authors at the festival. At one point, sitting around the table, the conversation turned to the unsavory history of British colonialism in India.<br />
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Our Indian friends knew the story of their colonial relationship with Britain, every cruel twist and turn of it ... and were not shy to recount details to my husband.<br />
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'What should I do?' my husband asked them. 'How do I react?'<br />
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'There is nothing you can do, really.' our Indian friends said. 'Except be aware.'<br />
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<b>Bone Talk</b> is fiction, but its historical backdrop is something we Filipinos will always share with our American friends. It is what it is. We cannot change what happened but we must be aware of what happened and how it changed us.<br />
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I like to tell audiences that books do not provide answers but help us ask questions. I hope <b>Bone Talk</b><i> </i>will awaken a questioning in all of us. There are still many things about that era we need to be curious about.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">PRAISE</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week, Nicolette Jones</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rich in the customs of the Bontok culture, with its paddy fields, sacrifices to ancestral spirits, and hunting and fighting with spears and axes, this fully imagines a way of life for which the records are sketchy. It also shows us a moment of change, as two worlds meet, and that it takes more than a ceremony to make a man.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Young Adult Books of the Month, The Observer, Fiona Noble</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The culture and the landscape are vividly drawn, a mesmerising world of soulful ritual and community, rendering the impact of the American invasion all the more devastating.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Books for Keeps, Ferelith Hordon</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gourlay is an accomplished novelist who looks to explore different challenges in every book, all springing from her own background. Here she boldly takes her readers into a very different world, a past that is both specific yet universal. This is a book to recommend – accessible, exciting and challenging. </span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">B</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ooktrust Books We Love, Emily Drabble</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Samkad’s story is told so sensitively, so lightly and so truthfully that you are completely transported (heart in mouth) to another time and world – until Samkad’s concerns are your concerns and you’re with him every step of the way. An exciting, fascinating and beautifully written book.”</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My Book Corner, Sarah Broadley</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Candy Gourlay's prose takes the reader by the hand beckoning them on Samkad's journey. They will feel every stone under their feet, every whisper from the trees and every laughter and tear shed as they delve deeper and deeper into the book. Only once the last page has been read will they come up for air, wondering how they will ever read anything quite like it again.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Bookbag, Jill Murphy</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A writer in the full flow of their talent. Highly recommended.</span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sita Brahmachari</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Utterly engrossing. This sumptuously realised, age-old story of colonisation transports in time, culture, landscape and history. It will lodge deep in the bone long after these pages have been turned.</span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Elizabeth Laird</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">A wonderful novel that brings to life with passionate clarity the moment when an ancient culture comes head to head with a brutal colonial invasion. Samkad and Luki are characters who leap from the page, and will stay with me for a long time.</span></div>
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Catherine Johnson</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A wonderful read. </span></div>
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Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-52961802627878447012018-05-29T19:13:00.000+01:002018-05-30T09:41:14.138+01:00Bare Lit 2018 - Speaking of Morality in Young FictionBy <a href="https://candygourlay.com/" target="_blank">Candy Gourlay</a><br />
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I was so looking forward to sharing the stage with debut author <a href="https://twitter.com/rtavengerwei?lang=en" target="_blank">Rutendo Tavengerwei</a> (<i>Hope is Our Only Wing</i>) and the excellent <a href="http://www.balirai.co.uk/home" target="_blank">Bali Rai</a> (<i>The Harder They Fall</i>) at the <a href="http://barelitfestival.com/" target="_blank">Bare Lit Festival</a> last Sunday. Our theme – Morality in YA and Children's Fiction – was a corker!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I1EdI9Dii10/Wwr1bP0g_tI/AAAAAAAAnkw/Nx3FPBRZYF4pGRZxIX4FHjqd6IBQijC5ACLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-05-27%2Bat%2B19.13.41.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="950" data-original-width="1508" height="403" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I1EdI9Dii10/Wwr1bP0g_tI/AAAAAAAAnkw/Nx3FPBRZYF4pGRZxIX4FHjqd6IBQijC5ACLcBGAs/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-05-27%2Bat%2B19.13.41.png" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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But it wasn't to be.<br />
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<h4><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My vanishing panel</span></h4>The first shocker was a message early in the morning that Rutendo would not be able to come, through no fault of her own. I don't think it's my place to explain what happened – suffice to say I was gutted I would not be able to meet her.<br />
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I frantically messaged lovely author friend <a href="https://patricelawrence.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Patrice Lawrence</a> to find out if she was free to stand in. She wasn't.<br />
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Then, another message: Bali's train had been delayed and then now it was too late to get to London. He wasn't coming either.<br />
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I was having visions of sitting alone on a stage babbling nonsense for an hour and a half ... when festival director and co founder Mend Mariwany suddenly appeared with a relieved grin.<br />
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He'd managed to persuade <a href="https://www.instagram.com/thisisbooklove_/" target="_blank">Samantha Williams</a>, inspirational multicultural bookseller, to become my fellow panellist, and writer and educator <a href="https://twitter.com/rapclassroom" target="_blank">Darren Chetty</a> (who had come along to attend our talk) to become chair.<br />
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Here's a doodle of the three of us from illustrator Sarah McIntyre:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g3cUiHi_iFg/WwwyjNr3jgI/AAAAAAAAnlM/ViwMgc14tYU43TckdBtHnHf2Z-BKMW4SACLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-05-28%2Bat%2B17.45.29.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Darren Chetty, Candy Gourlay, Samantha Williams at Bare Lit 2018. Sketch by Sarah McIntyre" border="0" data-original-height="1071" data-original-width="1600" height="428" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g3cUiHi_iFg/WwwyjNr3jgI/AAAAAAAAnlM/ViwMgc14tYU43TckdBtHnHf2Z-BKMW4SACLcBGAs/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-05-28%2Bat%2B17.45.29.png" title="Darren Chetty, Candy Gourlay, Samantha Williams at Bare Lit 2018. Sketch by Sarah McIntyre" width="640" /></a></div><br />
Phew!<br />
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We had a quicky FIVE minutes to chat and prepare, and then we were on the stage!<br />
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I have to say my two new colleagues were superb. Samantha calls books "weapons of mass destruction" and earnestly believes that reading is key to a child's future wellbeing. Dismayed by the whiteness of books available to her own children, she has thrown herself into <a href="http://www.thisisbooklove.com/" target="_blank">bookselling</a> – with the aim to "source, sell, encourage, self-publish and promote beautiful British multicultural children's books that celebrate diversity particularly children and families of Caribbean/African descent". <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oKlul5BJ8XM/WwxFUXNQtbI/AAAAAAAAnlY/pX1FXb5D6los10hFPH0xDY_JqYELVsEKACLcBGAs/s1600/samantha-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1020" data-original-width="1522" height="428" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oKlul5BJ8XM/WwxFUXNQtbI/AAAAAAAAnlY/pX1FXb5D6los10hFPH0xDY_JqYELVsEKACLcBGAs/s640/samantha-1.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Samantha and her display of children's books at the Bare Lit Festival</td></tr>
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Darren co-wrote this feature <a href="http://rapclassroom.blogspot.com/2017/01/tes-feature-written-with-karen-sands.html" target="_blank">Why Diversity Should Start at Storytime</a> with Karen Sands O'Connor, He and Karen also co-wrote this fascinating <a href="http://content.yudu.com/web/1mjdv/0A1mjdx/BfK230May2018/html/index.html?page=12&origin=reader" target="_blank">piece looking at the representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic voices in British chldren's fiction</a> – read it!<br />
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This article is not a proper report of the event, though I do repeat some things that were said. It's more like my own take on the themes we explored.<br />
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Here is Darren's first question:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: large;">British kids lit grew out of a desire to educate and moralise. How do these factors impact your writing?</span></blockquote><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QSaUdvoKOQM/Ww05Ujqjc2I/AAAAAAAAnlw/3c1z7t7MpNcnzAvWEe8o4r6sw_DHNvqYwCLcBGAs/s1600/barelit%25E2%2580%2593photoheathermarks.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="902" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QSaUdvoKOQM/Ww05Ujqjc2I/AAAAAAAAnlw/3c1z7t7MpNcnzAvWEe8o4r6sw_DHNvqYwCLcBGAs/s640/barelit%25E2%2580%2593photoheathermarks.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Darren and Samantha, with me in the middle (in full cultural appropriation mode wearing an Indian kurta and shoes in an African print). Photo by Heather Marks</td></tr>
</tbody></table><h4><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Writing with an agenda</span></h4><br />
There is no doubt in my mind that any author writing a book would have an agenda.<br />
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Certainly, having once been a book-loving child <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/apr/10/diversity-in-childrens-books-candy-gourlay-philippines" target="_blank">who never saw herself in the books she devoured</a>, inclusion is number one on my author agenda.<br />
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They say children's fictions should be like mirrors and windows, well for me, all the mirrors were broken or, worse, distorted like a carnival hall of mirrors.<br />
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This is the story I tell over and over again to white audiences at the diversity panels that have become a regular gig for me as a "diverse" writer.<br />
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Gazing across the majority brown faces in the Bare Lit audience, I realised it was not a story I needed to tell <i>this</i> audience. They already lived it.<br />
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Long ago I attended an Arvon Writing for Teenagers week with Melvin Burgess and Malorie Blackman. Tbh I was nervous about meeting Melvin, whose every book (<i>Junk</i>, about heroin use ... <i>Doing It</i>, about boys and sex) seemed to spark controversy. But meeting Melvin, I realised that his agenda was as sincere as mine – like me, he was holding up a mirror. To teenagers who didn't recognise the sanitised versions of themselves in books written for them.<br />
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"I realised nobody was writing stuff for real teenagers," Burgess said in a Guardian interview, about the seventies and eighties when he was one of a few authors who began to write for the demographic. "It's such a seminal part of your life, the point when you become who you are, and yet nobody made stuff for them."<br />
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It is said that the teenager was invented in the 1940s when American film-makers realised that teenagers had money to spend – I wrote about it over on my writing blog, Notes from the Slushpile, headlined <a href="https://www.notesfromtheslushpile.com/2014/02/the-invention-of-teenager.html" target="_blank">The Invention of the Teenager</a>. Two decades after Burgess first shocked with his books, I can't help the feeling that there has been the same commercial awakening to the spending power of younger demographics. Even though every other movie or TV series seems to be a superhero blockbuster, there are many impressive books published today that marshal the same awareness, respect and sensitivity with which Burgess writes for his young readers.<br />
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<h4><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mirrors and windows</span></h4><br />
I couldn't take notes during the panel (because speaker 😳), so I cannot reproduce the words of my co-panellist Samantha Williams, who spoke passionately about the urgent need to put brown faces on the covers of books, about customers begging her for help because their children were desperate to become white and fair like the characters they saw in media.<br />
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Darren, as a primary school teacher, told a story that I can reproduce here courtesy of his <a href="http://rapclassroom.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/tes-feature-written-with-karen-sands.html" target="_blank">blog</a>:<br />
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<blockquote><span style="font-size: large;">A few years ago, I was teaching a Year 2 class in East London. We had been working on writing stories. When it came to sharing what they had written, one boy, who had recently arrived from Nigeria, was eager to read his work to the class.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As he read out his protagonist's name - I had suggested that children might use the names of people in their family - another boy, who was born in Britain and identified as Congolese, interrupted him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"You can't do that! Stories have to be about white people," he said. This is not an isolated incident.</span></blockquote><br />
It is easy, attending a festival like Bare Lit, to rant on about books as mirrors and inclusion and representation. But as a child saved by books that didn't represent me, I want to put in a word for books as windows – because windows are incredibly important to help a child imagine a bigger, better world in which to live in.<br />
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When I visit schools in the posh parts of London and tell the children that I am from the Philippines, the children become animated and tell me that their cook/nanny/cleaner is from the Philippines.<br />
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There was a ripple of indignation when I mentioned this anecdote, the audience were offended on my behalf. But why be offended by the truth? Eleven per cent of the Philippine population leave the country to work overseas, mostly in menial jobs. But by meeting me, the children see something outside their <a href="https://www.notesfromtheslushpile.com/2016/01/ordinary-world.html" target="_blank">ordinary worlds</a>. They realise that Filipinos are as diverse as they are. And hopefully, they will learn to give us permission to be whoever we want to be. Windows.<br />
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In 2015, I was invited to contribute to a round-up in the Guardian headlined <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/aug/28/banned-burned-or-simply-life-changing-what-are-the-best-dangerous-books" target="_blank">Banned, burned, or simply life changing: what are the best dangerous books?</a> where children's authors "share the books they probably weren't meant to read that either rocked their world or rocked the world".<br />
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My colleagues listed books such as <i>The Color Purple</i> by Alice Walker, <i>Where the Wild Things Are </i>by Maurice Sendak, <i>The Bell Jar </i>by Sylvia Plath ... here was my response:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: large;">When I was growing up in the Philippines, there were very few locally published books for children and so everything I read was imported from America and the United Kingdom. When I think back, ALL the books I read as a child were dangerous. They took me out of the ordered rules of my cultural life and proposed that there were other choices out there.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-size: large;">I explored worlds that bore no resemblance to my own in my native Philippines. They made me disgruntled, discontented with my lot. Western characters seemed to travel everywhere, and as a little girl in Manila, I could not imagine ever being wealthy enough to even travel to any of the nearby countries in Southeast Asia. I puzzled over how characters spoke their minds. In my ordinary world, there were complex, unwritten ways of communicating, saying yes even if you mean no is an art embedded in many Asian cultures. </span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: large;">It was not just culture clash either. Here were child characters who had eye-popping adventures, who ignored boundaries, who took their fates in their own hands. It was terrifying and unimaginable. And oh so delicious.</span></blockquote><br />
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<h4><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Whose morality?</span></h4><br />
So perhaps under the umbrella theme of 'Morality in Children's Fiction', we also need to ask <i>whose</i> morality? Morality, after all is in the eye of the beholder.<br />
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In the olden days when infant mortality was high, adults published books designed to save their souls. If you read Victorian fiction, there are plenty of idealised portraits of young orphans like Oliver Twist who are ultimately saved by discovering that they are wealthy after all – which kind of makes sense when you take into account the materialism of the Industrial Revolution.<br />
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Growing up in the Philippines, colonised first by Spain then by America, I grew up with folk tales that I realised later had been repurposed with a racist colonial intent – like the story of the crow whose feathers used to be beautiful and white until he committed some misdemeanor for which his feathers turned black!<br />
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One of the first Filipino characters I encountered as a child was Juan Tamad (Lazy Johnny), who rather than climb the guava tree would lie under it, mouth open, waiting for the fruit to drop into his mouth. Again, here are the voices of our colonial masters calling from the past, reinforcing the lazy servant stereotype one can still hear still parroted today by the entitled classes.<br />
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Sadly, in the Philippines, one continues to witness toe-curling racism and racial self disgust. Skin whitening is big business and the silver screen is peopled only by fair-skinned actors. In our nonchalant celebration of whiteness, I can hear those colonial voices shouting down the centuries, reinforcing our staunch belief in our racial ugliness.<br />
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So yeah, we artists always seem to be engaged in correcting the imbalances of the societies we live in. In my book <i>Tall Story</i>, my loveable hero, Bernardo, has a thick accent because I have always hated the power politics behind accents in the Philippines. As a schoolgirl, I used to be one of the most robust and taller girls. Everyone else was petite – and I had to endure endless Hulk and Baby Huey barbs. So in <i>Tall Story</i>, Bernardo becomes a giant and I write him inside out so that people see who he is before they actually meet him.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--5Y3Vtc-C6g/Umf1xaQI-BI/AAAAAAAAIWM/N6hJNml3YSMZmX0InQvPMdRD0U9eHZuvQCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/tallstory-coveronly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--5Y3Vtc-C6g/Umf1xaQI-BI/AAAAAAAAIWM/N6hJNml3YSMZmX0InQvPMdRD0U9eHZuvQCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/tallstory-coveronly.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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<h4><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Positive representation?</span></h4><br />
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Here is Darren's second question to the panel:<br />
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<blockquote><span style="font-size: large;">Given the history of erasure and distortion of people of colour in kids lit, there are strong calls for positive representations of POC. There is also the need to tell great stories with morally complex characters. How do you work with these pressures?</span></blockquote><br />
So ... imagine what it must have been like when people saw themselves for the first time reflected in a mirror.<br />
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Now imagine what it would be like to see one's self in books for the first time.<br />
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While we call for representation, it will not be easy to see one's self represented. What do we really want to see? Do we want to see a better version of ourselves or do we want to see ourselves, warts and all? And what about all our secret doubts and insecurities? What about the unbeautiful parts of us, do we want those on display too?<br />
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And what is <i>positive</i> representation?<br />
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Does it mean characters who are people of colour always have to be the goody and never the baddy?<br />
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Does it mean never portraying a Filipino as a cleaning lady or a nurse or a caregiver? Or an African American as a drug-taking rap artist? Or an Indian or Pakistani character as a shopkeeper?<br />
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It took me a long time to commit to writing my forthcoming novel, <i>Bone Talk</i>. Watch this video I made to introduce it and you'll see why.<br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3lQzQAByqFQ?rel=0" width="560"></iframe><br />
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There aren't any novels written about the Bontoc people who are the heroes of my story, which is set in 1899 when the United States invaded the Philippines. When I visited the area, there was a reluctance amongst people I approached to discuss the animist cultural practices I was researching. "We are Christians now," one man told me, resisting my questions about death practices.<br />
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I trawled history books and diaries of anthropologists – but they were all written by Americans, portraying the Bontoc people – who were head-hunters – in either racist or exotic terms. How do I represent them in an era that some of them would prefer not to remember?<br />
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Knowing that my readers are going to be children was another challenge. How do I write about a culture that so far removed from that of the modern child reader? How do I write in a way that would have my reader embrace my heroes instead of "othering" them?<br />
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The answer, I soon realised, was simple. Write well.<br />
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Writing well means writing characters in 3D – multidimensional, complex, with many shades of grey.<br />
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Writing well means allowing yourself the time it takes to discover the truth in your story.<br />
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Writing well means not settling for your first uncorrected first draft but taking the time to imagine and reimagine your story until it is at its best.<br />
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Writing well means your reader, whoever he may be, can see himself in your story.<br />
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Write well. It takes a lot of time. It hurts. But it's what we gotta do.<br />
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And then, of course, because of the lack of previous representation, we are pioneers. We have a LOT to make up, a LOT to say. All the issues, all the themes, all those things that had previously gone unsaid!<br />
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Which tbh would make for a boring read.<br />
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Children are true natives of this age of short attention spans and the florid author must be careful to observe the first commandment of writing for children: Thou shalt not be boring.<br />
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Sure, have an agenda. But story must always come first.<br />
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So my advice to the Bare Lit audience (I could tell that there were many writers by the way they took copious notes), was to remind them that writing is about craft. Craft your agenda into the hidden seams of your story. Craft it to enable your reader, not to educate her. Whatever your message, sew it in carefully and invisibly to serve plot and character (I know aspiring writers are fed up with hearing it but <i>SHOW DON'T TELL!</i>).<br />
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For the sake of readers who might be bored by all this writing talk, may I direct writers to this article I wrote: <a href="https://www.notesfromtheslushpile.com/2016/09/exposition-its-about-emotion-not.html" target="_blank">Exposition: It's about Emotion not Information</a> – which tackles the nitty gritty of building a case without the actual case.<br />
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<h4><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anything goes?</span></h4>Here is Darren's final question:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: large;">What, if anything, can children NOT cope with in fiction? For example, must stories have a happy ending?</span></blockquote><br />
It is tempting to say that children of today can cope with anything. But that isn't true. I think for every child reader, there is a line that can be crossed. And so though I don't think authors should limit themselves in the themes they choose to write about, the books a child reads definitely benefits from the curation of an adult who knows them well. <br />
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The other day, I was asked on <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b39v9r" target="_blank">Woman's Hour</a> what I thought about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/04/booksforchildrenandteenagers.philippullman" target="_blank">age banding</a> (which hit the headlines back in 2008). I said I understood the commercial need for it but at the end of the day young readers need a curator, someone who understands how books are safe spaces for children to experience the life they have yet to live, someone who can identify the perfect book for the individual child. That curator – the librarian – is sadly fast becoming an endangered specie.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ha518u10ync/Ww2QRXVZv4I/AAAAAAAAnmo/_unycd5GDWIoAt2hkxHZ8Za7mlMR8yS4wCLcBGAs/s1600/41476253324_2345f2bce0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="344" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ha518u10ync/Ww2QRXVZv4I/AAAAAAAAnmo/_unycd5GDWIoAt2hkxHZ8Za7mlMR8yS4wCLcBGAs/s320/41476253324_2345f2bce0.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>It is interesting though to note the breadth of "tricky" subjects that books for young people dare to cover today: death, sexuality, violence, abuse, drugs, war ...<br />
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I have just finished reading the heartbreaking <i>Ghost Boys</i> by Jewell Parker Rhodes, which imagines the ghosts of black boys shot by American policemen roaming Chicago. Though it describes some of the deaths, these descriptions are sober, quietly painful, and never gratuitous.<br />
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On the other hand I've read Mal Peet's posthumous young adult novel, <i>Beck</i>, about a boy who is sexually abused in care homes. Another brilliant, Carnegie-nominated book from Peet, but I would certainly be very careful who I recommend it to as there is a grim hopelessness to the story.<br />
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Writing <i>Bone Talk</i>, I worked hard to keep my underlying themes of imperialism and identity covert. I just want readers to enjoy it as a ripping adventure.<br />
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The truth is young people have sensitive antennae to these underlying themes. Children are deeply moral creatures, with a strong sense of what's fair and unfair. Sit in any playground and inevitably you will hear the cry "That is so unfair!" <span style="font-size: x-small;">😄</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9mWXge1BwvE/Ww2CY5fu9gI/AAAAAAAAnmU/V8ejrGem0psk6-88yH2ob6xAk4tLAkibQCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-05-29%2Bat%2B17.39.03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1298" data-original-width="1154" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9mWXge1BwvE/Ww2CY5fu9gI/AAAAAAAAnmU/V8ejrGem0psk6-88yH2ob6xAk4tLAkibQCLcBGAs/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-05-29%2Bat%2B17.39.03.png" width="568" /></a></div><br />
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In fact, young people can be quite black and white about right and wrong. The beauty of novels for young people is that it allows us to show them all the shades of grey in between.<br />
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Books of earlier times regarded children as unthinking, empty vessels that needed to be instructed on the ways of the world.<br />
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But now we live in times inundated by a such a relentless gush of information that I don't think our children need further instruction. What they do need is the wherewithal to make sense of it all.<br />
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Books are a safe place to learn how to do just that.<br />
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In the past children may have been instructed to turn to books to find answers. My hope is that children will read my books and find, not answers, but questions that can set them on the path to understanding their world.<br />
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One of the things that differentiate children's books from books for adults is that no matter how dark the subject matter, books for young people will always offer hope.<br />
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Back in 2011, I attended a <a href="https://www.candygourlay.com/2011/03/hope.html" target="_blank">panel</a> to hear Morris Gleitzman talk about his searing Holocaust novel <i>Once.</i> Here is what he said about hope in children's books:<br />
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<blockquote><span style="font-size: large;">We are handing the world over to our children. The survival of the species depends on their capacity for optimism.</span></blockquote><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Gazing at the brown faces at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BareLit18?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BareLit18</a> I realised I didn't have to tell my story of not seeing myself in the books I loved. This audience was already living it. The <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/KidLit?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#KidLit</a> industry would do well to attend next year. And listen. <a href="https://t.co/2IWf039YY1">https://t.co/2IWf039YY1</a><br>Pic by <a href="https://twitter.com/iamheathermarks?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@iamheathermarks</a> <a href="https://t.co/WXeIU8TSK2">pic.twitter.com/WXeIU8TSK2</a></p>— Candy Gourlay (@candygourlay) <a href="https://twitter.com/candygourlay/status/1001744904236789762?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 30, 2018</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <br />
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<hr />1. With thanks to Bare Lit, and to my lovely friends at <a href="https://www.nativeprovince.com/" target="_blank">Native Province</a>, who recommended me to the organisers.<br />
2. Like what you see? <a href="http://candygourlay.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=15ca42fbd7e42356a21a8c572&id=44150a98cb">Click here to subscribe to email updates</a><br />
3. If you are an author trying to make heads or tails of self promotion, you might want to read my recent post on Notes from the Slushpile: <a href="https://www.notesfromtheslushpile.com/2018/05/my-year-of-launching-prodigiously.html" target="_blank">My Year of Launching Prodigiously</a><br />
4. Hey, I've got a new picture book in the shops and here it is!<br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LOWwcWMmuL4?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-669899134549891570.post-38059882630331178782018-05-18T10:07:00.000+01:002018-05-18T14:43:08.294+01:00Obligatory EUGDPR (EU General Data Protection Regulation) Statement Yes. This is about GDPR.<br />
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<iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/PzQvWAhgfUipW" width="480" height="480" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/photobucket-pictures-smith-PzQvWAhgfUipW">via GIPHY</a></p><br />
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I will try to make this as simple and painless as possible!<br />
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The air is kerchinging with the gnashing of teeth over the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules. Please save your dentistry – this is how my website (and I as an author) will comply with the rules.<br />
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-size: large;">Who should read this? </span><br />
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Anyone who has shared their email address with me. You might have done this in a multitude of ways including simply emailing me.<br />
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-size: large;">Why should you read this?</span><br />
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So that you know that I am not an evil data farmer who is stealing your data and selling it off to other evil entities who might evilly use it to serve Viagra advertising to your unwitting inbox.<br />
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<span style="color: #a64d79; font-size: large;">What do you need to know?</span><br />
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• You need to know that I might have your email address in my Gmail contacts list. You need to know that when you email me, Gmail automatically saves your email to my address book.<br />
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• You need to know that if you subscribe to my blog, I will have the details you sign up with in a database (which will probably be bloody Mailchimp, who conveniently deleted my account without letting me know).<br />
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• You need to know that if ever I set up the online shop that I'd always dreamed of but never had the time to research, or the money to afford, I might collect your email and postal address to deliver products to you. What products you say? Signed copies of my books and perhaps, once I've practiced enough, artwork.<br />
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• You need to know that I will not share the information with anyone without your permission.<br />
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• You need to know that I will delete your data if you request it. Subscribers to my blog will be able to unsubscribe themselves without contacting me personally and hurting my feelings.<br />
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• You need to know that sometimes children do email me and I may reply to them if I don't realise they are children. If I realise they are children, I try to respond publicly through my blog or Facebook page.<br />
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• You need to know that I am really good at password-protecting my computer, Google, Mailchimp and other accounts where your data may be stored, with individual passwords that I change regularly. If these entities are ever compromised, I will try not to panic and take their advice on how to protect your data.<br />
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• You need to know that I am just a lonely author, sitting in a cave, procrastinating on Facebook, and <u>there are no other people in the cave</u> who have access to your data ... so I have appointed myself my own Data Protection Officer, as prescribed by the GDPR ... I would give myself a massive salary too but sadly will have to do the job for free or go bust.<br />
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<a href='http://eepurl.com/bii8W9'>Subscribe to my blog!</a> ... and hey, did you know my very fist picture book just came out? Check it out!<br />
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<img alt='Is it a Mermaid by Candy Gourlay and Francesca Chessa' height='200' src='https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mf4mg8bVIg0/Wv6hrNoPG0I/AAAAAAAAnfU/cGHLGwDkEbsMRyZfKZQw-C2UgjXwHQneACLcBGAs/s320/COVER%2B%2BIs%2BIt%2Ba%2BMermaid.png' title='Is it a Mermaid by Candy Gourlay and Francesca Chessa'/><br />
Candy Gourlayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07802791643303335762noreply@blogger.com