What I have been up to....

Hello there

Boy, August was full on. I became involved in a special project involving half a dozen full day visits to a South Auckland school teaching creative writing and a love of books and reading. I had my first visits in the last week of July and did the remaining visits over August. It has been a wonderful experience visiting at Panama Road School. The students are enthusiastic, affectionate and keen. I hope my love of books and writing has infected them.

I headed down to Wellington in the second week for the NZ Children's and Young Adults Book Awards. We announced and celebrated the wonderful winners on a wild, wet and windy Wellington Night at the Circa Theatre. Ten days later a host of international delegates descended on Auckland for the 2016 IBBY congress and for four days we discussed, celebrated and examined children's literature from around the world and it's crucial role in bridging cultural divides and bringing us all closer together. I got so much out of it. I attended sessions with the wonderful Australian Children's laureate Leigh Hobbes, and amazing novelist Markus Zusak. I chatted with writery friends from round the country and the world. I loved hearing about initiatives from other countries, about writers and illustrators I had not come across before, about the desire for more diversity in our children's literature

I was comforted by the fact we are all looking for solutions to the same issues. I loved the passion for the potential children's literature has to heal rifts, and to unite us globally. It was exciting to see aspects of our own country through the eyes of others. The whole thing was very thought provoking....and inspiring. And I found myself thinking about the possibility of attending future IBBY Congresses in other countries. On Sunday the IBBY Congress segued into the Storylines Festival and I got to take part in the Auckland Family Day. I met some lovely fans, made origami butterflies with lots of children and talked about turning ideas into books.

I imagined 2016 was going to be a quiet year with few engagements. I thought I would be twiddling my thumbs but the year just keeps on surprising me. In a few weeks I'm heading down to Christchurch to take part in a few events organised around our What Lies Beneath Exhibition of Children's Books by New Zealand authors themed around World War 1 and 2. This exhibition has been touring around New Zealand libraries and is spending the month of September in Christchurch. I'll post up more details soon. In November I am giving another workshop on Writing Picture Books with Selwyn Community Education. The days inbetween are slowly filling up too. Who knows what might happen next?

On display...

Oi competition judging is haaarrrrdddddddddddd. There was nothing to pick between the entries. Like really. Everyone was inspired and moved by the books they chose. Yay!! But there can be only one. The entry that seemed to most suggest some kind of personal transformation was Dawn Grant talking about 'I Am David' by Anne Holm which gave her the sense that she too could write stories like this. Dawn, you are my winner. I will be in touch to discuss your prize.

In other news, my book While You Are Sleeping features in my exhibit as part of the What Lies Beneath Exhibition at the National Library in Parnell, Auckland. My display will be there from now until February 20th with an accompanying teacher resource (available on this blog - see below the blog title). My exhibit looks like this:

Sweet, huh?

There are four other exhibits along with mine, covering picture books, non-fiction, junior fiction and YA (mine is for poetry). You can go and see them at the National Library (8 Stanley Street, Parnell) or have a sneak peek here at the What Lies Beneath Exhibition blog. You can also download all available teaching resources there as well. There will be five new exhibits every month till April 20th. You should check them out.

A competition - make me a better person

My preparations for Dunedin so far? I am breaking my Docs in. I am (mentally) putting aside DVDs and books I want to take with me. It is going well.

Recently I passed my 700th post (I think this is post 702). I fancy having another competition. More on that later.

Meantime I am working on a few other more imminent things - principally an exhibit about my book While You Are Sleeping for the What Lies Beneath Exhibition at the National Library in Parnell, Auckland starting next Monday January 20th.

And thinking, always, about how I can raise the reputation of children's literature. Folk sometimes recognize the importance of children's books and probably do understand the value in switching children on to being readers. But there is a persistent refusal to believe that a children's book might be literary, like an adult book can be literary. That it might be clever, challenging, thought provoking and capable of making you a better person. This article has been doing the rounds on facebook. It is interesting. I have read a few of the books. I'm not sure they all changed me. I have read other books not on the list that 'have' changed me. But that's always the way with lists. I never agree with everything included, or not included - they are subjective entities. That's okay. But this isn't okay. The one children's book on the list of 50 life changing books is introduced by way of an apology. Sorry for including a children's book. I hope it doesn't offend you reader. Ya know its a children's book, but it somehow actually manages to still have a message that might be of interest/be beneficial to an adult. Maybe it was an accident. Okay - I apologise for my sarcastic tone (lowest form of wit, yada yada, yada), but the tone they have adopted encourages the continued subordination of children's literature to adult literature. This is the common consensus. And if it is never challenged it will never change. Children's books can be transformative for both child readers and adult readers.

So for my competition, to win a copy of one of my books (your choice of any of my books except Clever Moo which are now like hen's teeth or any short story anthologies I am included in as I don't have copies of these), tell me the name of a children's book that changed you (you can comment here or on facebook or Goodreads). I will pick my favourite - judges decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. One winner only - competition closes this Sunday 19th at 8pm. Examples for me would be The Earthsea Trilogy, The Outsiders, The Little Prince, The Changeover, The Lion in the Meadow, Where the Wild Things Are (...'and it was still hot'), to name a few... So get cracking!!

What lay beneath...

It's New Zealand Book Month people. I hope you have plans to read a book by a New Zealand author during the month of March. I read them all the time (not because I am one but because we write such good books) so I'm feeling like I'm a little ahead of the pack on this one.

My book A Winter's Day in 1939 is now available in bookshops (whoop, whoop!!) and on Monday evening I got to talk a little about the book and the highs and lows of writing it at the Gala Opening of the What Lies Beneath Exhibition, now on at the National and Takapuna Libraries. I appreciate that I am probably biased about the event as I was one of the eight speakers (including Kyle Mewburn, Donovan Bixley, Maria Gill, Heather Arnold, David Elliot, Lindy Fisher and Fifi Colston) but I found it really interesting and had a great time.We were each invited by author and illustrator wrangler, Rosemary Tisdall, to share something positive, something negative and something interesting about the creation of our books. It was fascinating to me to hear some of the similarities in our experiences. All of us had put our hearts and souls into our work and it was clear that 'What Lies Beneath' was a true title for the exhibition as we talked about the passion we felt for our subjects, and the lengths we had gone to to give our books the depth, the layers and the meanings that are there for readers to tap into when they pick up our books.

For those of you who wanted to be there, but weren't able to make it, this is what I said.

Something positive - I was given the chance by the publishers Scholastic, to share my father's story with a wider audience. And the chance to share a lesser known part of World War 2, the experience of so many Polish people, with a wider audience.

Something negative - transforming a true experience into fiction, into a story that would be accessible to younger readers (the book is for those 9 or 10 and up) was challenging, especially a story that is so significant and personal for me. After completing the first draft, I rewrote the entire story twice to try and get it right. It wasn't easy. And it just occurred to me when I was preparing for this event, that the fact I wrote this story is a bit of a give-away about whether my father survived or not :)

Something interesting - I learned a lot of interesting and amazing things as I worked my way through the story - history, geography and much more but to me one of the most interesting was how people coped in the harshest of situations. I read this from my book:

When the screeching of braking wheels announced the train had finally stopped, there was no mistaking it. Along the length of the siding were nothing but closed-in cattle wagons.

Soldiers undid the bolted doors and slid them open to reveal cold, dark interiors. Looking through the open doorway of one wagon, I saw a black pot-belly stove in the centre.

“What’s that?” I pointed at a pipe sticking up through the floor to the left of the stove. Everyone stared. A small boy beside me crouched down and peered beneath the train.

“The pipe sticks out the bottom too,” he said.

“Maybe it’s for rubbish,” Zofia suggested. That sounded reasonable, I thought, but Father frowned and Mama pursed her lips. Whatever they were thinking, they kept it to themselves. When we boarded the wagon a few minutes later with two other families, the soldiers explained what the pipe was for and I understood their reactions. That pipe was our toilet; just a hole in the floor. It looked disgusting.

“I’m not using that,” one of the mothers said. I silently agreed. I could hold on for a long time if I had to. Maybe even a whole day. There was no way I was going to the toilet in front of everyone else. 

They weren't on the train for a whole day - they're journey took eleven days. And they had many other journeys on trains just like it throughout the time they spent in the USSR. My father's experience was much much more than interesting. And I am very proud I got the chance to turn his story into a novel.

New Zealand Book Month - are you ready?...

So apparently the year started without me and raced off to February before I could even blink. Jeepers. Before you know it, it'll be March and New Zealand Book Month will be upon us. I will be launching my historical novel A Winter's Day in 1939 (released March 1st -  launch March 24th - details to come) published by Scholastic. I have been thinking a lot about this book and how I approached the writing of it. When March rolls around I will be ready to tell you all about it. I think I'm doing something with an Auckland based library for Book Month as well, although arrangements haven't been pinned down yet. And last but by no means least I am part of a fabulous event thought up by the amazing Maria Gill, an exhibition to be hosted by the National Library and Takapuna Library, kicking off with a gala opening on the 4th, followed by a speed date of some of the participating authors and illustrators with school students on the 5th, and then maybe some school visits as well. The exhibition 'What Lies Beneath' will run all month long, shared across the two venues. I will be exhibiting the materials  that inspired and informed my new novel. There are lots of starry, fabulous people involved.

New Zealand Book month is a wonderful opportunity to trumpet the virtues of books in general and of New Zealand books in particular. If you have not read any local product recently, make March the month you do! And if you read one you REALLY enjoyed, March is the month to tell all your friends about it.