Finding books that are just the right fit

Choosing the right books to nurture a love of reading is vital and this week’s guest author taps into personal and professional knowledge gained as a bookseller and a parent. Read on for some great insights and suggested titles to whet the reading appetite for different aged readers.

As a bookseller and a parent I thought I’d share with you what my kids have been reading over summer and our families journey in reading so far.

 

My husband grew up in a bookshop and whilst his bookselling parents read to him often and shared books, he regards himself as a reluctant reader until he found the ‘Tomorrow When the War Began’ book series by John Marsden as a teen.  So my message here is, “don’t panic if your kid isn’t a reader yet,” maybe they just haven’t found what they love.

 

I was a voracious reader who happily accompanied my grandparents on their weekly library trip as well as made great use of my school libraries as a child and teen.  Yes, I’ve tried to make my kids love the books I loved growing up.  Sadly, nothing captured them quite like it did me, but we’ve found that letting them discover what interests them is more likely to keep them reading.

 

We have three boys and whilst two are now independent readers and in high school, the third Mr6 is still emerging and we continue to grow his confidence in learning to read.  So lets starts with what’s been working to engage my smallest (I’d rather be outdoors) child in reading.

 

We’ve been loving Sally Rippin’s School of Monster series, we started with me reading the majority of the words and him just reading the coloured word at the end of each sentence (this took the pressure off and made it easy for him at the end of a long day as we usually read before bed).  He’s now following the stories and adding in extra words as he recognises them and particularly likes the green/yellow/red new word breakdown at the end of each story in the bind-up sets.

 

I also like to have a novel we’re reading together that’s just for the joy of sharing a story, a recent read we enjoyed was Bravepaw and the Heartstone of Alluria by L M Wilkinson. And on those nights where we just need a quick read to share we still return to picture books, a recent favourite is When the Lights Went Out by Lian Tanner. 

 

My middle child Mr12 while now a fully independent reader, found the move from illustrated chapter books to chapter books harder as he loved the easy read and dislikes change.  He struggled to find what he liked on offer in upper primary reads.  After many try’s and fail’s we figured out he likes a puzzle or a mystery to solve and interpersonal dynamics at play. Some titles that have worked for him in the last year are:

 

*  Escape Room by Christopher Edge was the book that helped me find what he liked.

* We loved Stewart Foster’s Books, Check Mates and All the Way Down being two popular titles.

* The Spy Academy series by Jack Heath have been a great quick action packed read for him.

* The Cherub series by Robert Muchamore kept him busy for a while thanks to the number of titles on offer.

*  His most recent read was The Bletchley Riddle by Ruth Sepetys & Steve Sheinkin.

My eldest Mr14 has always been a book lover, he just reads and reads and reads. His upper primary years had him bent over the pages of both fiction and non-fiction war stories which then progressed to the dystopian offerings of The Maze Runner, The Divergent series and the Gone series. He loved Tomorrow when the War Began by John Marsden and The Cherub series by Robert Muchamore just to name a few.

 

These were some of his summer reads (I’m jealous of all the time he has to dive into a great book);

 

*  The Outsiders by S E Hinton

*  The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku 

*  The Last Reality series by Jason Segel 

*  The Jack West Jnr series  and the Scarecrow series and everything else he could get his hands on by Matthew Reilly.

Andy Durkin

Bookseller at Petrarch’s Bookshop

W: https://www.petrarchs.com.au/ 

FB: https://www.facebook.com/petrarchs/#

I: https://www.instagram.com/petrarchs/ 

Editor’s note: It is wonderful to see such an exciting list of titles that will appeal to boys! Just a note of caution that as the main characters in the Cherub series age and mature, so too do some of the themes.

Jolabokaflod

Our final post for 2022 comes from Maureen Mann, and she wraps up the year by introducing a wonderful tradition for Iceland. Have you heard of Jolabokaflod? Read on and be inspired to start a new tradition on Christmas eve.  

Merry Christmas 2022 everyone – or Happy Holidays for those who don’t follow Christian beliefs.

What are your family’s Christmas or holiday traditions? We all have them, even if they are not different from many others.

One of the traditions I really respect is from Iceland. It’s called Jolabokaflod (Jólabókaflóð in Icelandic), which translates as Christmas Book Flood. It’s a tradition which started in the 1930s and 1940s to encourage literacy and reading in their long dark winters and help the Icelandic book trade. It’s become such a success that Iceland is now recognised as the first country to have full literacy. The idea is to give and receive new books to and from family and friends, on December 24, and the evening is to be spent immersed in those books. And chocolate I believe! Wouldn’t it be wonderful for Australia to start a similar tradition!

So, what would you choose to give to your family? Here are some of my top picks from the year.

Jason Cockcroft’s Running with Horses is a gritty and realistic sequel to his previous We Were Wolves. Best for older readers, who will appreciate Rabbit's traumas as well as the stunning monochrome illustrations.

Old Fellow by Christopher Cheng and Liz Anelli. A gentle story about an old man and his old dog as they spend their day in their multicultural community. It’s a picture book which will be appreciated by a wide age range, not just the youngest readers.

My Deadly Boots by Hakea Hustler, Carl Merrison and Samantha Campbell. This fun story, with its colloquial language and rhythms, celebrates the confidence of finding oneself, but the reader may not need such a vibrantly colourful pair of footwear to do so.

Rita’s Revenge by Lian Tanner returns to the world of A Clue for Clara, where animals must learn to communicate with each other at the same time as solving a crime. A great fun story with subtle complexities.

Maybe: A Story About the Endless Potential in Us All by Kobi Yamada and Gabriella Barouch is a beautiful picture book about following life's journey through the good times and the harder ones and achieving one's potential. The illustrations are wonderful.

The Bookseller's Apprentice by Amelia Mellor. This is a prequel to The Grandest Bookshop in the World and is sure to delight fans of that story.

Fans of Katrina Nannestad's Travelling Bookshop series will be delighted that there was another title published this year: #3 Mim and the Anxious Artist. There's another scheduled for 2023 too -- #4 Mim and the Disastrous Dog Show. If you haven't met Mim and her wider family as they travel the world, you've got a treat in store!

For adults, I’ve enjoyed Chris Hammer’s crime thrillers this year. Try The Tilt, published 2022, or start with his first, Scrublands.

If you missed Lyndon’s blog last week, promoting the delights of e-books and audiobooks through the library, please go back and read it. He shows how easy it is for us all to join in to reading, without the expenses. Enjoy whatever books you receive – and I hope there are lots of them over the summer.

And again, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone.

Maureen Mann

Retired teacher librarian and avid reader

Editor’s note: What a wonderful idea and what great suggestions to help you find ‘the perfect book’ to give on Christmas eve. Thank you Maureen, and all of the contributors to our blog in 2022. You have kept us entertained, challenged our thinking, provided windows into the amazing work of book creators and provided a wealth of story ideas to keep us, and our children reading.

Happy Jolabokaflod and a Merry Christmas to you all.

How Libraries Tasmania Helped Me Double the Books I Read in 2022

Have you discovered audiobooks yet? Lyndon Riggall shares his discovery of the wonders of audio reading with an extensive range of books at your fingertips via your public library. 

Whenever I think of Arthur, the delightfully charming educational PBS television series based on Marc Brown’s popular book series of the same name, which recently ended after 25 seasons and 253 episodes, there is a rap song that comes immediately to mind. I’m thinking of the track featured in the episode, “Arthur’s Almost Live Not Real Music Festival”, which includes the repeated refrain, “Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card,” as the characters of the series proceed to describe all of the types of books and worlds, fiction and non-fiction, that can be found in your local library.

This maxim has become especially pronounced for me in recent months as I have discovered some of the resources that are available through the online services of Libraries Tasmania. While I have always favoured my Kindle when it comes to e-reading, and rarely read on my phone where so many other distractions are rife, I have been a huge fan of audiobooks and have often used them to fill in all of those quiet parts of life when I am walking, driving, cooking or exercising. This has always worked well, but it has by no means been particularly affordable. The library offers so many reading experiences for free that it has always seemed a shame that my life hasn’t really ever suited the audiobooks in the collection that can be found on CD… sadly, my car doesn’t even have a CD player!

I was explaining this situation to a friend one day earlier in the year, who quickly announced, “But what about Libby and BorrowBox?” Phones hastily came out of pockets to show me what they meant, while I instigated a couple of downloads and began scrolling and borrowing… within seconds I had a story calling out to me from my phone’s tinny speaker. Suddenly—I was shocked and amazed to discover—I was quite literally up to my ears in audiobooks. It was that easy.

Screen shot from Libby library

And yes, all you need is a library card. By inputting your Libraries Tasmania information into each app you can very quickly gain access to thousands of ebooks and audiobooks. The genius of these two eLibrary services is that they make reading as easy as opening Facebook or Twitter, and they are much more pleasant for your wellbeing. Just opening them now I can see Ash Barty’s Memoir My Dream Time (read by Miranda Tapsell, no less), Dostoyesvsky’s Crime and Punishment read by the actor Will Poulter, and entire sections of other titles dedicated to recommended reads from #BookTok, the Tasmanian Literary Awards and the Booker Prize longlist. For kids, I managed to dig up some Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Wings of Fire, Lian Tanner, Roald Dahl, David Walliams, Ahn Do, Babysitters Club and Aaron Blabey. Between the two services you can have up to fifteen digital loans out from the library, which of course is in addition to any physical books you might have already borrowed… plenty to fill the summer holidays.  

Screen shot from BorrowBox library

Thanks to GoodReads and its tracking I can be very clear about the effect that this discovery and new habit has had on my reading life: in 2022, I have doubled the number of books that I have read from fifty-two, to what I expect will be more than a hundred by the time the new year rolls around. I am lucky, I know, that I have the kind of life where moments of quiet are available to me: an audiobook ticking away through my headphones as I drive or do the dishes. I am also a fiend that listens to books on double speed which is definitely not to everyone’s tastes and can be prone to send people fleeing from the room in horror if they happen to overhear it. Nevertheless, I suspect that most of us have little pockets of time available to us where a story could keep us company. In cases where mundanity strikes, life is better with a book. 

Of course, there are still some small bumps in the road with these two apps. Firstly, both BorrowBox and Libby continue in their persistence of ensuring that only limited “copies” of texts are available to users… which has never made sense to me as a method of operation, dragging one of the key flaws of the physical library kicking and screaming into the digital world. There is also the fact that the existence of the two different sets of books can make it hard, at times, to actually find where something is, often sending you back to the library catalogue just to get some clear answers. These minor quibbles aside, however, I think it’s fair to say that in my experience both BorrowBox and Libby are not only exciting new additions to the offerings of a library in the 21^st Century, they are—quite literally—life-changing. 

It’s true. Having fun isn’
t hard when you’ve got a library card.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s a beautiful day and I’ve got reading to do. 

Lyndon Riggall
Lyndon is an English teacher at Launceston College, as well as the author of the picture books Becoming Ellie and Tamar the Thief. Along with Georgie Todman, he has recently been named Co-President of the Tamar Valley Writers Festival.

Screenshot of Jennie's latest uLibrary reads

Editor’s note: I wholeheartedly agree with Lyndon as per a long-ago post from me Audiobooks – They Speak for Themselves. There is another app that broadens the scope of titles available from Libraries Tasmania. Visit https://libraries.tas.gov.au/elibrary/elibrary-books-and-audiobooks/ to find out about uLibrary and other apps discussed today. For our readers from further afield than Tasmania, I urge you to investigate the public library ebook and audiobook offerings in your own location.

The Butterfly Effect – social flutterings at the 14th national CBCA Conference

Tasmanian author, Nicole Gill, brings us Snapshot 2 of the recent 2022 CBCA Conference – enjoy these social highlights – don’t you wish you were there?

“A butterfly can flap its wings in Peking, and in Central Park, you get rain instead of sunshine…. The shorthand is ‘the butterfly effect.’”  

Jeff Goldblum man-splains chaos theory to Laura Dern in Jurassic Park.

“Dreaming With Eyes Open” is the Book Week 2022 theme, and the enamel pins minted to mark this event are monarch butterflies.  Monarchs are also known as wanderers and are famed for their long migrations in their native lands.

The social butterflies of the children’s book-loving world migrated to Canberra for the 14^th national CBCA conference from 10-12 June 2022.  Needless to say, chaos ensued.

Many CBCA attendees hadn’t been to an in-person conference before The Disease That Dare Not Speak Its Name ruined everything back in early 2020.  Which suited many authors just fine, as they nestled into their writing cocoons to develop their latest manuscripts. 

But after literally years of avoiding going outside, even the most introverted creators were forced to admit that perhaps the conversational gambits of their cats, dogs and chickens were getting a little stale, and that it might be nice to get outside and talk to actual human beings.  As such, once we made it to Canberra, we were as excitable as drunken butterflies, flitting about and banging into things (with frequent breaks spent hiding in our rooms to recharge our batteries).

I was there as a presenter, lucky enough to appear on panels with kidlit nature writing legends Claire Saxby, Dr Stephanie Owen-Reeder, Dr Gina Newton and Sami Bayly, speaking about introducing younger readers to the wonders of the natural world.  But I also enjoyed the opportunity to flit about the conference’s social events like a nectar-addled invertebrate, after the daytime programs had concluded.

Panel: “Dreaming of sharing the Wonders of the Animal Kingdom”

– Dr Stephanie Owen-Reeder, Claire Saxby, Nic Gill, Dr Gina Newton

Friday night was the Welcome Reception, replete with drinks and nibbles. The butterflies flapped their wings.  Authors met teachers, and swapped numbers for visits.  Teacher librarians spilled the beans on what was hot in their school libraries. Publishers eyed potential new talent, and creators gossiped about who was writing what for whom.  Faces were put to names, and Zoom and Twitter friends materialized into IRL actual people.  

The reception rolled into the SCBWI Friday Night Book Fest, which fellow attendee Lian Tanner recently wrote about here. Each creator had three minutes, and three minutes only, to spruik their latest book to the crowd.  It was an exercise in tightly controlled chaos. Props were encouraged, and theatricality rewarded.

I’d prepared myself to talk about my new book, “Poo, Spew and Other Things Animals Do” by investing in some excellent puppets, one a border collie, the other a masked owl (“Tax deductible!”, I muttered to myself, as I frenziedly ordered one expensive fluffy toy after another from the interwebs, “Tax deductible!”).  Not only did the puppets help me to explain how owls digest their food, and how dogs can be used to find where owls might be hiding, but they also answered questions on my behalf when I was too nervous to speak to people directly.

I wasn’t the only person using fluffy toys to promote their latest creation.  Lian Tanner brought along her friend Rita the Duck to promote “Rita’s Revenge”, and Ali Stegart used a bush-stone curlew puppet to dance the story of “Boogie Woogie Bird”.  There was performance poetry, character cosplay and even the occasional erratically thrown puppet (sorry if I hit any of you).

The following night was the official CBCA conference dinner.  Once inside the venue, the butterflies emerged from their puffer-jacket cocoons, and made a bee-line to the bar, where a selection of delicious nectars had been prepared for their delectation.  There was much flitting about, fluttering of hands, sipping of bubbles and coveting of other people’s shiny dresses. 

Picture of the dinner from Claire Saxby’s table POV (thanks for the photo, Claire!)

Each dinner table was hosted by a creator, and decorated with their books and associated objects.  My lovely publisher, Briana Melideo from CSIRO Publishing, made showbags for our table, full of books and shiny CSIRO swag, and had selflessly stolen her son’s poo emoji soft toy to add to the table’s general scatological vibes.   My table was largely dedicated to my new book, “Poo, Spew and Other Gross Things Animals Do”, which I wrote with koala poo PhD Dr Romane Cristescu, and is illustrated by Rachel Tribout.  I’d previously warned people that conversation at my table was unlikely to be considered polite by conventional standards. Fortunately, my co-diners were more than happy to talk about revolting animal science, owl pellets, and the terrible exploits of their household pets.

CSIRO Publisher Briana Melideo and author Nic Gill flaunt their soft toy collection at the CBCA dinner

After the main course had been scoffed down, special guests fluttered onto the stage. The Australian Mint introducing their new, Diary of a Wombat-themed one dollar coin, with Jackie French making a guest appearance, and Margaret Wild was honored with the CBCA Lifetime Achievement Award.

After the final day of the conference, a dozen or so SCBWI members got together at the Civic Hotel – a great chance for us interstate interlopers to chat to the locals, and to congratulate them on the great work they’d done pulling together some really fun conference events.

The morning after the conference, we bunched together in dribs and drabs in the hotel lobby, preparing to fly back to our respective territories.  I looked down at my shirt – a rather loud number covered in a chaotic print – and noticed a flock of monarch butterflies flitting across the busy patterns.  Perhaps there was some order in the chaos after all.

And in keeping with the theme... Here are some fun butterfly facts!

• Although native to the Americas, monarch butterflies can now be found all over the world.  They were first recorded in Australia in the 1870’s, where they are considered to be an invasive species, albeit a relatively benign one.

• The world’s largest butterfly is the Queen Alexandra birdwing – with a wingspan of up to 30cm, this giant flapper can easily fly off with a small chihuahua*

• Butterflies can actually be quite disgusting.  More than one species has been observed gorging on animal poo!  

• For more information on the monarch butterfly in Australia, try this great article from Ann Jones, which also contains a link to an Off Track episode on these beautiful invaders. 

* Actually, no one has ever seen them do this.  But pretty sure they could take down a chihuahua if they wanted to.

Nicole Gill

Author

The crit group I didn’t know I needed

With Rita’s Revenge about to hit the bookshops, Lian Tanner shares her writing processes and the valuable insights provided by a team of fellow children’s book writers. What a wonderful process these outstanding children’s authors have engaged in to improve and develop their craft.

Halfway through 2020, that long first year of Covid, I received an email from fellow children's author Deborah Abela. The email also went to Tristan Bancks and Zanni Louise, and contained an invitation to form a small online critique group.

My reply was both enthusiastic and cautious. 'It's been such a confusing year that I'm not entirely sure what I'm working on,' I said. 'But it'd be good to talk to other writers about it.'

As it turned out, this was the crit group I didn't know I needed. And it's been going ever since, with the addition of Sarah Armstrong, who had previously written for adults and was now turning her hand to middle grade.

The book I ended up bringing to the group was Rita's Revenge, the sequel to A Clue for Clara.

Some authors work with their editors from the very beginning of an idea. I've always been the opposite. I never showed anyone what I was writing until I was reasonably satisfied with it, which was usually after at least four or five complete drafts. 

So sending those first chapters to the crit group presented a challenge. It also reinforced changes I had already started to make in the way I write.

With the fantasy trilogies (The Keepers, The Hidden and The Rogues), I plotted in great detail then wrote a first draft very quickly, not going back to correct anything or reread until I got as close to the end as possible. As a result, that first draft was always very rough and needed a lot of work to shape it into a story.

When I wrote Clara, I went about it differently. My plotting was looser, and I wrote the first draft much more slowly, allowing myself to go back and fix things so I didn't end up with nearly as many internal contradictions.

I found that I enjoyed it more. And at the end of that first draft, I had a coherent story.

This fitted well with joining the group. I didn't want to send them my rawest work; what was the point of that? I wanted them to find the problems I couldn't see; the ones I hadn't fixed.

So even though I was nowhere near finishing Rita’s Revenge, the extract I finally sent had been gone over several times, until I was reasonably happy with it. Still, I was terrified that my fellow authors wouldn't like it. 

To my relief, they loved it. 'So endearing,' they said. 'Hysterically funny.' ‘Love the rules about what a duck can and can't do ’. 

But as well as encouragement, they offered informed and intelligent criticism. 'Could you introduce the poetry sooner? It comes a bit too late.' 'It feels as if we don't really get into the story until the second chapter.' 'Can General Ya come in earlier, too?'

This mixture of encouragement and criticism has become the pattern for our zoom meetings. It provides us with a recharge of energy once a month – a valuable thing for a writer. It bolsters our strengths, and helps us shore up our weaknesses. It gives us trust, kindness and honesty, and we all agree that we have become better writers as a result.

We also agree that, although we all have very different writing styles, we love and appreciate each other's work. In fact, that's one of the great pleasures of the group – seeing each story develop and grow.

This year, we all have books out – the first ones since the group started. Sarah Armstrong's Big Magic was the first, published in May. Tristan Bancks' Cop & Robber is coming on July 5, the same date as Zanni Louise’s picture book Pigasus, and my own Rita's Revenge.

And Deborah Abela's The Book of Wondrous Possibilities will be out in August.

I heartily recommend them all. 

Lian Tanner
Author

http://liantanner.com
https://www.facebook.com/liantannerauthor
Instagram: liantannerbooks

Editor’s note: If you are in Hobart next weekend, head down to Hobart Bookshop for the launch of Rita’s Revenge. 11 am Sunday July 10^th.