Christine Bongers's Blog, page 13

Good things come in threes

What is it about the power of three?
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Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub
Hewie, Dewie and Louie
The three little pigs
The Three Musketeers
And now, Henry Hoey Hobson.

Three ordinary little words that, slung together, have somehow made a whole, greater than the sum of its parts.

Twelve months after being launched into the world, Henry Hoey Hobson has  made his third literary shortlist.

I will be forever grateful to the good folk in at the Children's Book Council of Australia and the WA Premier's Book Awards, but it was today's announcement by the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards that made me cry.

Queensland is my home state. As an unpublished author, I have sent unpublishable manuscripts into the Qld Premier's Literary Awards and dreamed impossible dreams – one of which, today, actually came true.

In the spirit of Henry Hoey Hobson and the Rule of Three (whatever energy a person puts out into the world, be it positive or negative, will be returned three-fold), I'd like to celebrate all writers who face the blank page and aren't cowed by it with this wonderful post by the author of Six Impossible Things, Fiona Wood.

Please click here – and Congratulations for turning up at the page.

And the winner is…..

The third Friday in August is a red-letter day for every Aussie kids' writer.

It is the day the Children's Book Council of Australia announces its Book of the Year Awards across five categories covering toddlers to teens.

The CBCA awards are arguably the most prestigious children's literature awards in this country. School libraries snap up its shortlisted titles. International networks promoting and celebrating literature for children and young adults bring the books to international attention.  Authors, like me, are honoured to even make the shortlist.

I'm happy to see some of my favourite books and authors honoured this year, so with no further ado, the winners are…

Book of the Year for Older Readers – The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett. Honour books are Cath Crowley's Graffit Moon and The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher by Doug MacLeod.

Book of the Year for Younger Readers is The Red Wind by Isobelle Carmody. Honour books are Michael Gerard Bauer's Just a Dog and Violet Mackerel's Brilliant Plot by Anna Branford.

For a full list of all the 2011 CBCA Book of the Year Awards, click here. And congratulations to all winners, honour books and others who made the shortlist. The world of books is richer for your presence.

Tucking into the blogosphere

The first time I googled myself (oh, go on, we all do it, just admit it and move on), I discovered Chris Bongers, the drummer (and seriously, how good is that name for a drummer?)

I also discovered a nineteen year old wannabe model from California, but unfortunately she wasn't me either.

Even more unfortunately, the real me rated only two entries: a seminar paper on dispute resolution dating back to the nineties, and a current tuckshop roster for my kids' primary school.

Hoo boy.

I had my first novel Dust coming out in a matter of months, and I was a non-event, nonpareil, in the blogosphere. Fortunately, the all-knowing, all-wise Queensland Writers Centre came to my rescue with a handy little workshop on developing an online presence.

Two-and-a-years later, I have cluttered the blogosphere so successfully that I can't even find that damn tuckshop roster.

So, sorry about that no-show last term, ladies. Just letting you know that I'm good for the 16th. But wait, isn't that the day of the sports carnival? Guess tuckshop's been cancelled, huh? Might schedule some special time with my poor neglected blog instead (heh heh).

A slice of heaven(ly feedback)

 
Pinetrees Lodge
Lord Howe Island

Dear Dani and Luke

Sorry for not returning the guest feedback form I so diligently filled in while the kids played with a giant lobster that washed up on Ned's Beach.

I must have packed it away with my snorkel and the wetsuit that made me look like a "tank" (in a good way, the kids assured me.)

Giant Nana step-ins aside, the snorkeling was a highlight.  (I'm sure that was one of your questions, as I seem to recall everyone spontaneously yelling "The food!" before giving it proper consideration).

Thanks to you, our kids' culinary vocabulary has expanded. Words like Bavarois, roulade, navarin, osso bucco, and caponata now slide off their tongues like beurre blanc sauce. Though since arriving home, I've had to re-educate them in basic terminology like sausage, mashed potato and just cut off the burnt bits.

Any suggestions for improvement?

That's a tough one….Perhaps you could rein in your chef's enthusiasm for portion size and train the staff to just say NO when overfed mainlanders beg for more duck broth or just one more fluffy white bread…?

Perhaps you could also ask yourself if assorted fresh pastries are really necessary for breakfasts that already include the full gamut of hot and cold options?

And as for that succulent melt-in-your-mouth beer-battered kingfish and the handmade sushi … perhaps they should have stayed your little secret rather than torturing your guests with the knowledge that such pleasures are now a 1 hour 35 minute flight away from both Sydney and Brisbane.

On the plus side, my netball-induced cankle has improved enormously under the Lord Howe walking and cycling regime. Getting down (and back up) all those steps to Middle Beach was an achievement (which I would have relished more if I hadn't been beaten there by a nanna with a walking stick).

Hubba hubby was of course in his element, thanks to that nice man at Wilson's lending him a leg-rope for his sufboard and to Tim for handing over the keys to his windsurfing shed on the lagoon.

The only wrinkle in an otherwise flawless week was our kids' most unfortunate experience jumping off the jetty.

On the first day, they almost landed on a two-metre stingray – an experience so scary they were forced to jump off the jetty repeatedly every day thereafter.

They must have frightened the life out of poor old Stumpy the Stingray because they never did see him again.

As I said, most unfortunate.

Trusting this feedback proves useful (though after a century in business, I suspect Pinetrees Lodge might have already perfected the formula for heavenly holidays).

love and kisses

Chris Bongers and the fam bam.

The enemy within

All writers have voices in their heads.

The ringing tones of heroes and heroines. The dastardly hiss of villains. The droll asides of sidekicks, and the ever-hopeful clamor of extras auditioning for the support cast and the chance to play even a minor role in a story.

These are the voices that shape our stories, calling to us from our dreamscapes, invading our waking hours, and refusing to be silenced until we bend to their will and commit their story to the page.

These are the voices that we writers should listen to.

Instead our ears prick up at the insidious purr of the nay-sayer. The enemy within. The dreadfully plausible, insinuating voice that stalks our writing hours. filling our heads with thoughts that poison the creative well.

This is the voice of the inner critic. The voice that tells us we're not good enough, not smart enough, not imaginative enough.

The voice that stops we writers from writing, or condemns us to Groundhog Day, endlessly rewriting the same passage, seeking perfection. Meanwhile the voices we should listen to grow fainter and eventually disappear altogether, taking their unwritten stories with them.

There is only one way to deal with the inner critic. Gag him during the first draft. Stuff a sock in her gob. Gaffer tape the creep and shove him in the deepest darkest recess of your mind. Lock and bolt the door, ignore her screams, and write away.

If you fear that inspiration won't come, go to your writing spot, take a word for a walk and follow where it leads.

Inspiration comes after you start writing. Or at least, that's what the voices in my head keep telling me.

"You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work"  William Gibson.

Discuss.

'

Library Geek

Libraries

1. have more cardholders than Visa

2. more outlets than McDonalds and

3. move more items than FedEx.

4. In 48 BC, Julius Ceasar accidentally burnt down the greatest library in the ancient world, the Royal Library of Alexandria. When he set fire to his own ships in a battle, the resultant firestorm swept from the docks to the Royal Library destroying its priceless 400,000 scrolls. Cleopatra by all accounts, was not amused.

5. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest library in the world is the US Library of Congress with an estimated 30 million books.

6. The National Library of Australia holds over 2.7 million books including the largest collection of Australian printed material in the world.

7. Giacomo Casanova, legendary lover and author, spent the latter part of his life as a librarian. Employed to catalogue Count Waldstein of Bohemia's collection, he apparently did nothing but write books and attend to his own correspondence (bad librarian, very bad librarian).

8. The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for the book most often stolen from public libraries.

9. The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public library are Patience and Fortitude.

10. It's Library Week (in Australia at any rate), so get thee to a bibliotheca to celebrate.

Making reading dangerous

When parents ask me how to get reluctant readers into books, I tell them to stop making it safe.

Reading should take kids to places they've never been before. It should crack open the world and expose its heart.

I still remember the thrill I felt as a child when reading books that were beyond my years.

One of my most vivid reading experiences came as an eleven year old with Reach for the Sky, the biography of legless World War Two fighter pilot, Douglas Bader. It was the biggest book I had ever read – 782 pages of tiny print – and to this day I can recall that book in more detail than many of the thousands I have read since.

Children are aspirational. They enjoy the challenge of reaching for things that are denied to them because of their years.

I say let them make choices that push the outer edge of the envelope.

When my youngest was 8 or 9 years old, he refused to read anything except Captain Underpants books. He had nearly a dozen of them up on his shelf and would read and reread them until I despaired that one of our brains was going to implode. (Mine actually did when he told me that he only liked books where he knew what happened next… )

I offered him all sorts of titles, hoping to whet his appetite for something more challenging. Nothing worked until the reverse psychology fairy came to my rescue.

In a moment of inspired desperation, I pointed at a random book passed on from an older sibling, and said, 'Whatever you do, don't read that till you're 11, it's too old for you.'

Naturally, he ate it up.

The next day, I walked up to his school and asked the librarian to open up the Grade Seven shelves to him. 'Let him read anything he wants,' I said. 'If it's genuinely too old for him, it will defeat him or go over his head.'

He's never looked back.

He is eleven now and is eight-hundred-and-something pages into Lord of the Rings (I suspect he's skipping the poetry, but I can live with that).

Karma

When life comes full circle, it does love to bite you on the bum.

Once I was the naughty girl up the back of the bus, now for my sins, I'm the bus driver.

I recently spent six days ferrying a busload of excited thirteen year old girls around Canberra for Waterpolo Club Nationals.

My daughter says it was the best week of her life. I say it's great material for a novel.

I couldn't swim 50m without a winch and a cable, and my only trophy in high school was for debating, but even I couldn't help being drawn into the high drama that played itself out, in and out of the water.

Ghastly coaches channeling Damir Dokic, losing to inspirational coaches (like ours) who carried their charges' best interests in their hearts.

Parents who couldn't bear to watch pacing the walkways, while others screamed themselves hoarse from the bleachers.

Boys teams boot-stomping the metal grandstands, cheering the girls on to victory. Bubbly teenagers thrilled to be competing at their first Nationals, cartwheeling past calm and confident Olympians-in-waiting.

And then there was the biggest cliche of them all – the worst sport of the comp.

She of the long, blonde hair, and the speed and ruthlessness of a shark. Good enough to be noticed in the preliminary games, bad enough to be excluded from her final game in the play-offs after fouling one time too many.

Well team, what goes round, comes round.

She glowered from the sidelines as a five-all draw went to extra-time, then lost it big time when the golden goal went to Queensland…

I consider myself a wordsmith, but I can't remember the last time I heard vocabulary like that from a fourteen year old.

She refused to shake hands with the winning team as they filed past the pool, and stormed off, trailing invective in her wake.

It was so out of keeping with the spirit of the week that our girls are still talking about it.

For five nights they had slept like puppies, piled on top of each other, then bounded through each day, leap-frogging every pole at the Australian Institute of Sport.

Best week of their lives, they say.

I say true character is revealed under pressure – in fiction, as in life.

I feel a story bubbling its way to the surface – watch this space.

If the shoe fits…

I've had a fall and have gone in the fetlock.

If I were a horse, they'd have me put down.

Even more alarming was the discovery that I couldn't fit into any of my (sob) shoes.

Now normally, this wouldn't faze me. I work at home, in dacks of track, and shoes are an optional extra.

But May and Mother's Day bring invitations that require more than the usual gussying up.

This year it was an address to my favourite mums from St Ambrose's School at the trendy Iceworks Restaurant in Paddington. Dead sexy heels or glamorous boots were de rigueur for the occasion.

Unfortunately, my fankle and the purple blow-up foot at the end of it, just couldn't handle the stress of heels.

I could walk, or at least hobble, but the only shoe I could squeeze into were my birkencrocs.

Now, I do love my Birkis – I have three pairs and sent my Mum some for Mother's Day to her great delight – but they're not what I reach for when I want to frock up.

Amongst more than a hundred lovely ladies sashaying around in edgy boots, teetering platforms, peep toes and stilettos, I stood out like the proverbial, with an elephantine ankle, bandaged and stuffed into a nana croc.

Looking down at my great swelling cankle, the compression bandage showing through my stockings, I had a vision of my future. I could hear the wise words of a dear friend's 101-year-old grandmother: 'Look after your feet, dear. They have to hold you up for a very long time.'

So it is with great sadness that I bid adieu to my budding indoor netball career. It's been fun girls, but now I have to bow out.

In one of life's touching ironies, my little guy gave me a glass slipper for Mother's Day that gives me hope.

After the swelling subsides, I plan to be good to my feet … and hopefully will continue to show off a neatly turned ankle until well into my dotage.

My Clayton's Shortlist

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I take my hat off to the real judges of the CBCA Book of the Year Awards.

Not just because they short-listed my Henry Hoey Hobson For Book of the Year for Younger Readers (though, let's be honest, I LOVE them for that), but because they do such a difficult job, for little pay or thanks.

As a Qld Clayton's judge, I managed to read less than half of the 95 books entered in the Older Readers category of this year's Children's Book Council Awards.

(Though in my own defence, I was given less than a month to do the job – thank the high heavens I'd already read ten before they asked me!)

The real judges read more than 400 books across four categories and then had to nut out Notables and Shortlists in each.

I enjoyed picking my Clayton's Notable Books for Older Readers (the twenty-plus books that I thought were just terrific last year), but really struggled to decide the final six.

In the end it was a teenager's plea that swayed me: "Pick some books that we might love, instead of the ones that oldies like you love."

He had a point; I'm not 15 anymore. So in trying to be true to both myself and the intended audience, I went with the following six books because I loved them AND I couldn't wait to press them into the hands of teenage readers.

Cath Crowley – Graffiti Moon

A lyrical, beautifully-crafted novel told seamlessly through three voices: Ed, a functionally illiterate high-school drop-out who moonlights as the mysterious graffiti artist Shadow; Lucy Dervish, the smitten teenager who is determined to track Shadow down; and Poet, the edgy wordsmith who is Shadow's partner-in-crime.

The action unfolds over a single night at the end of Year Twelve, bringing to life the street art of Melbourne and illuminating the lives of its teenage protagonists.  An invigorating read that proves art and poetry are definitely not too cool for school.

Anthony Eaton – Daywards.

This final instalment in Eaton's Darklands Trilogy completes a landmark undertaking in Australian speculative fiction writing.

The landscape is evocatively Australian, a thousand years into a dystopian future, where the only hope for a dying world lies in the bloodlines of the few surviving descendants of its oldest inhabitants.

Dara, her brother Jaran, and cousin Eyna are 'viable" members of their hunter-gatherer clan. With clan elder Ma Saria,  the children flee the invading Nightpeople, by walking Daywards, into the deadly sunlight.

In their fight for survival, the children's spiritual connection to the land is their only defence and greatest weapon against the technologically-driven survivors of the doomed Sky Cities.

This is political writing in the best tradition of science fiction, pitting a spiritual affinity with the land against the transgressions of technology and the contamination of nature.

While Daywards can be read as a stand-alone novel, this trilogy has been ten years in the making and cries out to be introduced to a new generation of readers.

AJ Betts – Wavelength

Oliver's world has shrunk to the point where he can't see past the 80 percent he needs to get into Uni with his mates.

But the study break he takes away from the noise and distraction of his Mum's crunchy muffin business turns sour 300 kilometres from home.

He lands at the Sunny Haven Old People's home without text books, clothes, phone, or money. The only person anywhere near his age hates him, nobody is on his wavelength, and his chances of achieving the all-important 80 percent seem to have disappeared with his luggage.

But somehow, between the incorrigible elderly and the girl he can't impress, he learns what no text book can teach: life is long, choices are infinite, and there is always time to change your mind….

A must-read for teens stressing out over OPs and HSCs.

Cassandra Golds – The Three Loves of Persimmon

The shy and solitary Persimmon Polidori is an unlikely rebel.

Cast out by her family for favouring the frivolity of flowers over a more respectable career in vegetables, she labours alone, dreaming of love, in her heart-shaped florist shop on the top level of a vast underground railway station.

Five levels below, under the railway line to Platform One, a tiny mouse called Epiphany dreams of a world free of the rattle and screech of trains arriving and departing at six minute intervals.

They embark on their separate quests,  not knowing that they are destined to meet in a life-changing encounter that will win them their hearts' desires.

An exquisitely layered tale that will appeal to girls who appreciate the magical in life and reading.

Fiona Wood – Six Impossible Things

Fourteen-year-old nerd-boy Dan Cereill (pronounced surreal) has lost everything.

His family is bankrupt, his dad gay, his Mum is sabotaging her own wedding cake business by talking potential customers out of getting married, the new house is freezing, the new school a living hell, and then there's the impossible crush on Estelle, the girl next door.

Dan sorts the whole unspeakable mess into something quantifiable; to make his life better he needs to achieve just six impossible things.

Fortunately, Dan Cereill is an anagram for Cinderella…And yes, there is a climactic dance scene, a midnight curfew, and unexpected helpers who come out of the woodwork to save Dan's adorable dorky hide.

This fresh and funny reversal-of-fortune story about love and loneliness in Year 10 is perfect for early-to-mid secondary schoolers with undeniable appeal for older readers as well.

Melina Marchetta – The Piper's Son

This stunning stand-alone book picks up the lives of a group of friends from Saving Francesca. It's five years down the track, and this time it's Tom Mackee who needs saving.

Tom has lost his way, seeking oblivion through drink and drugs. Trying to forget the London bombing that claimed his uncle's life, trying to survive without the friends he has pushed away and a family torn apart by grief, alcoholism and loss.

His journey back from the edge is a heart-wrenching read, leavened with a warm humour and lovingly crafted by an author who understands the flaws and strengths of family and friendship, and how they weave a safety net capable of saving us all.  Powerful and unforgettable, for mature readers.

And that's my six. No doubt they will differ from your six in various important ways – and so they should. As Kate Grenville once wrote "Each of us brings our own experiences, memories and prejudices to a work of art and looks at it through that unique lens. We all read the same words…but we all see different things.'

[This is an abridged version of the talk I gave to celebrate the Qld CBCA Shortlist announcement at St Aiden's College on April 12. Please click here for a full list of CBCA Notable and Short Listed Books in the 2011 Book of the Year Awards.]