Andy Griffiths on Roald Dahl

Sitting at home I have had time to listen to the Radio National Book Show, Yesterday (Tues 16th) there was a discussion by Andy Griffiths about Roald Dahl. The podcast is now up and you can listen to the recording of the  session. This is the 20th anniversary of the death of the wonderful English (Welsh) storyteller Roald Dahl and Andy Griffiths talks about the impact of Roald Dahl on his own life and work.

Andy Griffiths is well-loved by many, especially the boys at our school. He quirky humour, that appeals to all children, especially to boys,  is not always loved by adults, who seem not to remember their inner child. He has however won many awards and recently was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Award for children’s fiction for Just Macbeth, his adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. This was a great way to introduce the Macbeth story to younger children and was a lot of fun.

The latest book by Andy we bought into the library this year was The very bad book. When the first one (The bad book ) came out a few years ago there were again adults selling the young people short and wanting to prevent it being sold let alone put into school, due to some of the impossible storylines. Talking about the stories with the kids just brought home how silly it is for adults to assume that the young cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is just fun and silly and totally not real. Some of this is discussed in the podcast and related to Roald Dahl’s writing as well.

Also on The Book Show site is a link to a podcast where  Donald Sturrock and Ophelia Dahl discuss Roald Dahl.

Roald Dahl left instructions nominating his daughter Ophelia to write his biography or to choose a suitable person to do so. Ophelia is a trustee of the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre and has archived much of his work. She chose Donald Sturrock , a former BBC documentary maker, biographer and director, to write the biography. As a young man Donald had made a documentary on Roald Dahl and has also written five opera libretti including one based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  At the recent Times Cheltenham Literary Festival Dahl’s daughter Ophelia and biographer Donald Sturrock discussed the life and times of the great English storyteller.

YA literature – Printz award winners and a podcast

Thanks to a post on the Fiction Focus (CMIS) site, I found out about  a collection of book trailers. These have been created for many of the Printz Award winners and Honor Books and go back as far as 2000. They were created by students at the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Women’s University.

The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. It is named for a Topeka, Kansas school librarian who was a long-time active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association. The award is sponsored by Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association.

There are some Australian books also on the list of trailers. Melina Marchetta’s On the Jellico Road, Printz winner in 2009, has been included as has Sonya Hartnett’s Surrender, a Printz Honor Book in 2007 and Margo Lanagan’s Black Juice, a 2006 Honor Book.

Speaking of using the film media to promote books – here is another interesting item.

Since the movie came out we have had a great rush on John Marsden’s books. There has always been a steady readership but, invariably, after a movie adaptation there is a rush back to the book. We are fortunate that we have mini class sets of the Tomorrow series books and we have been able to accommodate all those who have come to the library keen to read the books

There was a great interview from the RN Book Show has John Marsden discussing the film adaptation of his very popular Tomorrow when the war began book.  and some of the compromises he has had to accept.

The first book in the Tomorrow series was published in 1993 but there is a renewed surge of interest in the novel because it is now ‘a major motion picture’. The film version of Tomorrow When the War Began was released in cinemas during the September school holidays in Australia, and as a tie-in Pan MacMillan have re-published the novel, and its numerous sequels, with new cover designs made up of stills from the film.

Any author would be happy to have their novel back at the front of the book store but the translation from page to screen inevitably involves compromise and that can sometimes be less comfortable.

John Marsden was as articulate as ever and he gave thoughtful answers. He discusses the changes/differences between his story (the characterisations, the portrayal of violence, the way the enemies are less faceless to name three) and the new medium of film. The podcast is 17 minutes long but very easy to listen to and many of our boys would have opinions on the issues discussed.

 

Stephen Sewell (Animal Kingdom) podcast

Another interesting podcast from the Radio National BookShow. This is a discussion with writer Stephen Sewell. 

Stephen Sewell is best known as a prolific Australian playwright and screenwriter. He has recently had a novel published by Pan Macmillan. It is based on the film, of the same name, Animal Kingdom directed by David Michod. Stephen Sewell briefly touches on his entry into the playwriting field and then goes on to discuss the reasons for his change of  writing direction and why he decided to write this novel. It is an interesting discussion about the setting and the characters and how he recognised them and the approach to writing about them. 

It’s unusual in the Australian scene for a novel to follow the film but not unknown elsewhere, particularly in the US. Stephen Sewell’s Animal Kingdom is the story of revenge in a criminal family, the Codys, and it’s told through the character of 17-year-old Jay Cody, appalled by the family violence but inevitably affected by it and finally trapped by it. Stephen Sewell’s second novel, Babylon, is due out later this year.

Many boys at our school watched the movie as well as being fans of the Underbelly Tv series. There has been a lot of discussion and criticism about the glamourization of criminals and the underworld they live in. Stephen Sewell, who has often portrayed a grittier side of life, is articulate and thoughtful in his discourse.

 

Podcast: Melina Marchetta and David Levithan

I started to read Melina Marchetta’s latest novel, The Piper’s son, but got caught up with other things at school and other books. Last week, while I was in a country city bookshop, I saw that Bolinda Books had an audio version available so I thought that this was a way I could finally “read the book”. I have quite a few 3+ hour trips to the country and I like to listen to audio or podcasts during this time.

A few days ago I caught up with the Radio National Book Show podcasts and  listened to a recording of a session from the 2010 Sydney Writer’s festival. It involved Melina Marchetta and David Leviathan, another author of YA fiction, the latest being Will Grayson, Will Grayson, talking about writing YA literature and their novels.

The description on the site is as follows:

Anger and age: how do you handle the angry young and how do you write characters mature enough to be engaging but not distancing for younger readers? They’re issues that writers David Levithan and Melina Marchetta have been dealing with in their books for more than a decade now.

Melina and David were guests at the recent Sydney Writers’ Festival in a session on the challenges of creating authentic teen characters. An edited version of the session, chaired by Judith Ridge. who is a critic and teacher of Children’s writing”

It was an interesting discussion that ranged from their respective approaches to writing to censorship issues and collaboration with other writer.

If you want to know more about Melina Marchetta and the Piper’s son there is an interesting interview (March 2nd) you can read on Persnickety Snark blog as well as a review of the book written a day before the interview.

Bookshow review of Footnotes in Gaza

 

Another great interview to listen to from Radio National’s Bookshow. In this program, aired on The Radio National’s Book Show on Wednesday 21st April, had a review of Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco. This is interview was conducted by Chris Flynn,  reviewer and editor of Torpedo literary magazine.

When Joe Sacco left America in the 80s for his birthplace Malta he had given up on the journalism he’d studied at university. In Malta he wrote a comic book romance and after this new beginning, alternative comic books. Returning to journalism and to America and building on his love of drawing cartoons Joe Sacco forged his own distinctive style of visual reportage. They were serious cartoons, in the same vein as Art Spiegelman’s famous comic book biography called Maus, about his parents’ experience of the Holocaust. In 1996 Joe Sacco’s comic book Palestine won the American Book Award.His latest foray into visual journalism is Footnotes in Gaza. For this, he interviewed people about a 1956 massacre in southern Gaza. A fan of graphic novels, Book Show reviewer Chris Flynn read Footnotes in Gaza, which is a very different comic book.

Sacco has been described as a graphic journalist. This is an amazing book about two long-forgotten mass killings of Palestinians when the Israeli Army swept into the Gaza Strip in 1956.  The events in the book invoked little international attention and were soon forgotten outside those directly associated to the victims.

Gaza has changed  a lot since Sacco conducted his research for the book. In 2005, Israel unilaterally dismantled Jewish settlements and withdrew its military forces, although it remained in tight control of Gaza’s borders.

It is another example of just how powerful graphic novels can be in telling serious stories.