Tag: c. AUTHOR INTERVIEWS

VICTORY IS OURS!

11/11/200929/12/2011 · 5 Comments ·

David & Sheryl 1 crop vig1 — Aussie children's books rule!

Just like no one likes a sore loser, no one likes a cocky winner! But, allow me the relief a good shout of victory brings.

We have won our battle against Parallel Importation of Books in a resounding victory – this morning the ALP Cabinet and Caucus decided not to follow the Productivity Commission’s recommendations to scrap them.

Many in the publishing industry have been part of this battle, and we at the SAVING AUSSIE BOOKS blog campaign have been bouyed by the support we’ve received from Australian book lovers, including teachers, librarians, parents and grandparents.

The SAVING AUSSIE BOOKS campaign began last June in reaction to the pro-Parallel Imports push by some booksellers and the Productivity Commission.

We were mainly children’s authors in the SAVING AUSSIE BOOKS blog group and our main concern was the future threat to the integrity of Australian children’s books and their authors and illustrators. See previous blogs on this site.

So, we celebrate our victory for young Australian readers of the future, and hopefully also those from other countries who will have the chance to read authentic Australian books.

Authors can breathe easier, for a while at least, until the next push comes from those who want to change the status quo. There are still many issues the Australian publishing industry must face in the future – like e-bo0ks, and further globalisation. Hopefully, sense will prevail as the industry tackles those challenges.

We long for the day when authors, artists and musicians are valued in this country and we don’t have to rely on royalties of 10% per book (if we’re lucky). Maybe we need what the French are doing?

Now we at Saving Aussie Books campaign can return to stories that need to be written … those indignant manuscripts that sat in files while the battle raged.

NOTE: I’ve talked to lots of people outside the publishing industry about this issue over the past year, and do you know what outraged them the most about the parallel import threat? It was the threat of Australian children’s books being sold in this country from overseas publishers where Mum had been changed to Mom .

Treasure-house … the American Children’s Rare Books Collection

07/11/200929/12/2011 · 4 Comments ·

Thanks to a SCBWI (Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators) bulletin advising their American members to contact the librarians at the Library of Congress Children’s Rare Books Collection in Washington DC and arrange a tour, I did so too – well, I was there and I’m a member of SCBWI’s Australian branch.

Two days earlier in that city and I could’ve joined a group of American children’s authors on their tour of the collection. As that was not to be, the librarians organised for me to have my own personal look a week later.

Library of Congress_the reading room — The Reading Room of the Children's Books Collection

The librarian, Jackie shows me some of their treasures housed inside that magnificent Jefferson Building – like the smallest book … a copy of “Old King Cole.” It’s about the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence. The pages can be turned only with the aid of a needle.

Just as intriguing are the New England Primers from the late 1700s. These fascinating little textbooks were how children learned to read: small enough to fit in their hands, full of moral and historical lessons as they learned the ABC.

Library of Congress_New England Primer1 — New England Primer circa 1790

The pictures are tiny block prints; they were updated every decade or so to ‘modernise’; but the most intriguing thing is the story of ‘The Burning of Mr JOHN ROGERS‘ contained within the Primer’s pages. This was a era when the Americans still hurt from their war with Britain.

Regarded as a martyr Mr Rogers was burnt at the stake in 1554 by the Catholic Queen, Mary. The Primer’s words relate how his wife and nine children watched him burn. Every time the Primers were updated, this story remained word perfect, and the pictures always have the nine little faces peering out at their burning father. Moral story indeed.

Library of Congress_New England Primer2 — The burning of Mr John Rogers

Library of Congress_Pinocchio — In the whale's belly - Pinocchio

I could also tell you more about a very early Pop-up version of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi and the fact that this first ever edition by a publisher who latched on to a goldmine in this book format, has no mention of Collodi’s authorship at all. I’ll just show you the pictures.

Oh, and another thing, I gave Jackie copy of my junior fiction, Secrets of Eromanga to pass on to a school library she might know – but she’s putting it in the Foreign section of the Children’s collection instead. They are sent the shortlist of the Australian CBC Awards apparently … seems as though I’ve snuck in through the back door. 🙂

: Jacqueline Coleburn from the Children’s Rare books collection – enthusiastic and willing to share her knowledge to an Aussie visitor.

City of light and enlightenment…

06/11/200929/12/2011 · Leave a comment ·

Ross is better at maths than me, but it goes something like this…. Melbourne has 600 people per sq km; Washington DC has 30,000 per sq km. Try getting your head around these figures:
Melbourne, Australia Area: 8,806 sq klms Pop: 4 million
Washington DC’s metro Area: 177 sq klms Pop: 5.3 million

So why does Washington seem so uncrowded, clean and filled with space and light?

washington1 — The Capitol Building_centre of American government

It could be the peaceful, wide streets with their autumnal trees, or the monumental, beautiful and well-preserved historical buildings in the city’s centre (trust the Americans to do things right) or the fabulous, easy-to-follow subway system taking away the need for masses of cars, or the height restrictions to all buildings – no skyscrapers here, unless you count the needle of the Washington Monument.

It also could be the fact that many people live in apartments and condos. But it’s more likely to be that we don’t go into the ‘suburbs’ where the overcrowding and poverty are – this city has the highest crime rate in the US. While we’re there a friend of my sister is held up by a couple of teenagers with a gun as she walks along the street near her home – it was a ‘transitional’ area though, not quite gentrified enough. They took money and that was all.

Library of Congress_ross and me2 — Up on my sister's apartment's roof.

There are many beautiful things to see in Washington DC. Buildings… imagine Canberra on ‘history-steroids’, with an unlimited amount of money since the 1790s to devote to the architecture. And boy, didn’t those city fathers (no mothers?) get it right.

Library of Congress_inside — Entrance hall_the Library of Congress_Jefferson Building

My favourite is the Jefferson Building – a tribute to Thomas Jefferson. It houses the Library of Congress and it’s here I meet the librarian of the American Children’s Rare Books Collection, Jacqueline Coleburn. But I’ll follow up on that little story in the next blog.

Washington DC is a most lucky place if you are enthused about science, art, music, literature, space travel, flight, photography, journalism, history, people … what else is there? Oh, yes, sport, but I can include that as well.

For it is in this city, in a splendid, tree-lined boulevard where you’ll find most of the famous Smithsonian Institution – and the treasures contained within them all.

The National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of Natural History, the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the list goes on.

Library of Congress_dinosaurs — Best collection of dinosaur fossils I've ever seen

Sorry, New York, these galleries and museums beat yours hands down. The mind and the sense boggle – there’s Amelia Earhart’s plane, and the authentic Wright brothers’ one as well; beaten gold masks stolen by the Spanish from ancient Indians; the best collection of dinosaur bones I’ve ever seen; and sticking with the BIG theme, a massive, red and blue Alexander Calder mobile hanging from the ceiling of the National Art Gallery.

But the very best thing of all about these Smithsonian Institutions is that they are all FREE and open to all who walk through their doors. Why? Because of an enlightened scientist from Britain.

In 1826, James Smithson, a British scientist drew up his last will and testament and named his nephew as beneficiary, but should the nephew die without heirs (as he would in 1835), the estate should go “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”

James Smithson never visited America, never corresponded with anyone in that country. Did he do it, as some think, out of revenge against ‘the rigidities of British society, which had denied Smithson, who was illegitimate, the right to use his father’s name’.

Or was this a man who believed in the Enlightenment ideals of democracy and universal education?

After visiting most of the Smithsonian collections over 10 days, and before my feet went on strike, I’m believing he was truely an enlightened man.

Thank you very much, Mr Smithson.

New York … where the wild things are!

04/11/200909/05/2012 · 4 Comments ·

You’ve heard of how All roads lead to Rome – in the U.S. it’s a bit like that, except … All roads lead to New York. New York City on Manhattan Island.

And what an island it is – nothing prepares you for the noise of a multitude of people; the architecture – immense, classical, modern and every style inbetween. The stink wafting from the sewers beneath the roads; brilliantly design and efficient subway system; honking, impatient drivers; some of the world’s best art galleries. Gotta love this city!

Our hotel, the Comfort Inn on Central Park West is comfortable, quiet, cheap for NY, in a leafy street in a block opposite Central Park and around the corner from where John Lennon was shot. It’s also close to most of the galleries and museums I want to see.

And our luck holds true – this year is the 400th anniversary of Dutch explorer, Henry Hudson’s journey from Amsterdam and in 1609 ended up on a small island, known locally by the Lenni Lanape natives as Mannahatta. So this year, the Dutch Government lent one of their most famous paintings to the Metropolitan Art Gallery for the occasion – Johannes (Jan) Vermeer’s The Milkmaid.

I’ve seen images of The Milkmaid, in art books, but paper images never do justice to the real paintings. This is no exception – it’s another heart-stopping moment in art for me. (Yes, I know, get a life, Sheryl!)

We join the reverent group staring at the work in a room dimmed to protect the assembled Dutch masters. It even has its own security guard standing next to it – a stern-faced, black American dressed in black … no one gets too close to the work, no photographs even without flash.

The canvas is small, intimate and beautiful – only 45.5 x 41cm – but it’s obvious why this painting looms so large in the imagination. Vermeer was 25 years old when he painted it in 1657-58 in his home-town of Delft. As an artist he was fascinated with light and with direct observation of his subject.

The Milkmaid

That excellent movie, The Girl with the Pearl Earring with Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson gives a good insight into Vermeer’s obsession with light, and setting up the scene, and mixing his own colours. He was ahead of his time and his work even has its own art term now, the Delft School.

I can’t tell you about every wonderful, amazing, beautiful, stunning art work we viewed in New York – you’d run out of patience with my blog! Any art lovers out there? Guess what lined the walls of the twisting Guggenheim Museum? All of Kandinsky’s works! In glorious technicolour. Ahhhh.

But for lovers of children’s books reading this blog – here’s a treat. And yes, it was another serendipitous moment.

We happened across The Morgan Library & Museum in Madison Ave – a collection put together by another dead, wealthy, magnate, Pierpont Morgan. (Think pages from William Blake, Jane Austen, Bob Dylan, Beethoven and Mozart scores, Oscar Wilde letters to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, Hemmingway, and paintings by Picasso, Rembrandt, to name a few.)

New York2

In a special room are the original working pencil sketches and drafts of Maurice Sendak‘s Where the Wild Things Are – a story familiar to millions of readers. The drafts show scribbles of a story filtering in his head, ‘Where the wild horses are’ and a wild boy who searches for them. They also show the appearance of Max in his wolf suit.

At the bottom of the paper, Sendak gives up in disgust . “Drop this story for time being—I’m forcing it, and it won’t be forced.” After another try at a verse story about Max and the wild things Sendak scrawls ALL BAD!!!

Even the best of them have self-doubts.

The latest on Parallel Imports of Books…

01/07/200929/12/2011 · 4 Comments ·

Yesterday, June 30, the Productivity Commission took their findings to the Australian Parliament on whether Australian authors and illustrators will lost Territorial Copyright. Over the past decade this protection has ensured a phenomenal increase of quality Australian-authored books and the emergence of a battalion of award-winning authors. More significantly is the fact it has given the world an insight into our country through the eyes and words of Australian authors.

But we, the general public will have to wait until 14th July to find out what is about to befall the book publishing industry in Australia.

Do I have a sense of the Productivity Commission‘s findings? No. I just hope the PC’s commissioners have listened to the voices of thousands of authors and their supporters.

Bob Carr, one of the mouths who lobby to open up the Australian publishing industry to the ‘free-market’ has been on the air-waves constantly, bleating about how he came from a poor family with no books and now he wants poor Australian families to have access to cheaper books.

He says nothing of the fact that the Productivity Commission itself says there is no guarantee books will be cheaper; no does he mention that poorer families have access to free public libraries and free school libraries when their children want to read; nor does he tell anyone about the threat to the Australian publishing industry and the flow-on effect to thousands of people who work in this field, from authors to printers to distributors, and to independent booksellers.

Bob, we know what you try to hide with your shadow dancing and your dominating, loud voice – the desire of higher profits for the large, retail booksellers like Dymocks, Woolworths and Coles.

We can only hope that all sides of politics in the Federal Government will listen to us.

Just imagine a world where our Australian authored books have returned to colonial status; where Australian children’s books feature American spelling and values, and with less Australian content; where Australian authors struggle to be accepted by publishers in the US and the UK. A world where, as Tim Winton says, ‘to be Australian is to be second rate’.

Sheryl Gwyther

Australian children's author