Lots of Brilliant Stuff

Well I've had an exciting week, hobnobbing with publishers and Rowena House (celebrated for the publication of  her War Girls  story only yesterday) recording more Ask a Publisher podcasts. So indebted to Sara O' Connor who introduced us to some of the major players in children's publishing.
We have a summer ( and then some) of enlightening listening for you. The next podcast is up a week on monday. Come back next Sunday to find out who...

All 29 entries for The Chalkface Challenge have been posted to Sparsholt C of E Primary School and there's an extra bonus for this year's entrants - second school has come on board to review the opening excerpts. I'm very grateful to Ben Illis, one of our shadow judges who introduced us to Chewstoke Primary Academy eight miles south of Bristol - where his nieces attend. Schools and uncles are officially wonderful!

The Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medals will be announced in London tomorrow at lunchtime and according to carnegiegreenaway.org.uk the event is being live streamed.  These prestigious awards are judged by librarians and shadow judged by young people. They were part of the inspiration for the Chalkface. I'd love to add a children's librarian to our panel of shadow judges - if any are reading and fancy joining Ben Illis, Karen Ball, Jasmine Richards and Amber Caraveo do get in touch or leave me a comment.

Do you like our new banner? I have to say I've loved every one and Paul Morton's stunning blue whale  is no different - his colours are fabulous. Check out Paul's featured illustrator post for pencil recommendations and his gallery for more brilliant colour and cute penguins.

Philippa's inspiration on Monday featured my Willy Wonka - the wonderful Gene Wilder and something I didn't know - Roald Dahl, the inventor. Of course he invented marvellous stories, characters and a whole vocabulary of delicious new words but, as well a valve for draining fluid from the brain - just brilliant. Creativity, and I imagine that most if not all W&P readers have a good supply, can't help oozing out in all kinds of directions.

Many thanks to Jodie Hodges for being our Agent Confidential this week and answering readers questions and to Nick for taking me to John's lovely post about his dad's paintings - what a lovely way to celebrate father's day. I wish I'd thought of that -  my dad was an inventor, only unofficially, but he did have a Caractacus Potts shed and an impressive collection of spanners.

Next week...
For the midsummer solstice we have a new Creature Feature from folklorist, Ken Lymer on Unicorns,
Americanisms from Catriona Tippin
and Heather Chapman is featuring the illustrator and national treasure I and probably everyone most associates with Dahl, the Brilliant Quentin Blake.

Hope it's a great week!

Jan Carr

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Jan Carr is the editor of Words & Pictures. Her fiction is all over the place, she blogs occasionally and loves to write in magenta. You can contact her at editor@britishscbwi.org.

Who's it all for anyway?

If you're reading this on Sunday morning and you're a SCBWI British Isles member you'll still have time to send us the opening 750 words of your middle-grade novel for our first Chalkface Challenge. Do you have one tucked in a forgotten file in some dark and cobwebby corner of your hard disk?

On Wednesday there'll be much excitement when The Kate Greenaway Award and the Carnegie Medal winners are announced. Bridget's overview of The Kate Greenaway reminded me how children and young people are involved in the judging process. For the Chalkface Challenge, which is of course no comparison to these prestigious awards, we've handed it all over to the kids with one judging criterium - which story do you want to hear more of?

There are so many people we create stories for and for so many reasons - agents for representation, publishing professionals for publication, other writers and illustrators for approval, ourselves for our own fulfilment... so many people and so many reasons that sometimes it's easy to forget who we are really writing and illustrating for.

We are the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators after all.

Wanton use of disguised children to illustrate a point.

A year or so back, I drew up a list  of what I thought we give children when we give them a book. The list would be the same if it were what we have the potential to give them when we write or illustrate a book.

Hopefully, as well as the wonderful gift of entertainment, we also give:

• The reassurance that other children feel the same way – they’ll have access to children’s secret thoughts, the ones that aren’t shared in the playground  the thoughts that make children feel they’re the only one. A book can show them they’re not.
• A way to live their lives – not by being told but shown how other people live and the freedom to come to their own conclusions about how to live their way. 
• A hiding place – who hasn’t slouched over their desk behind a text book wall?
• The opportunity to be read to – a bedtime or anytime story is one of those priceless relationship-building times.
• An escape hatch – when everything gets too much.
• A wardrobe door – a gateway to possibilities of the imagination for the real and the made-up worlds.
• Inspiration – kick starts to their own imagination
• The chance to meet extraordinary people up close and personal – often, unexpectedly extraordinary people, who might appear ordinary on the outside but because they’re in a book, the reader will know what’s really going on.

and...

• Hope – bad things will always happen in real life and in a good story you have to have trouble. Books can help children find a way through their own.

The original list is here.

I really like the idea of keeping children at the centre of what we do.

Last Monday would have been Maurice Sendak's 85th birthday, this year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Where the Wild Things Are. I  hope you caught the marvellous Google Doodle on Monday.

I spotted this on my timeline yesterday...

With the Greenaway overview, we had other goodies this week too  –  an interview with the prolific and award winning Sophie Mckenzie,  Candy Gourlay and Teri Terry's 'perks and pitfalls' of appearing at festivals, brilliant blogs for coffee breaks, Network News, a report of Apps Night at the London Professional Series and we celebrated Paula Rawsthorne's new book.

Next week with breaking for blogs, news and celebrations, we have Ask a Publisher with Sara O'Connor and Hot Key, Nicky Schmidt with Marketing Part 2: 'Brands' and on Friday a new Featured Illustrator.

Excitement all round!

Jan Carr

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Jan Carr is the editor of Words & Pictures. Her fiction is older middle grade, she blogs occasionally and loves to write in magenta.

The Kate Greenaway Award 2013

First established in 1955 and named in honour of the 19th Century illustrator, the annual Kate Greenaway Medal is the UK's most prestigious prize for children's book illustration. Presented by CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals), which also administers the Carnegie Medal, a list of past winners of the Greenaway is a pantheon of some of the most iconic names in British children's illustration. 
Bridget Strevens-Marzo considers this years shortlist.


The Kate Greenaway Award 2013 will be announced on June 19, 2013.

Jim Kay, winner of the 2012 CILIP Kate Greenaway Award, for his illustrations to A Monster Calls writes in his blog

"For me, illustration is all about making mistakes work for you. An illustration will never be ‘right’, but you do the best you can in the time you are given – a work of art is often a a continuous string of little accidents and problems that you fix as best you can. I beat myself up a lot about things going wrong while I’m working, it’s not necessarily an enjoyable process, but one that is still exciting because it is so unpredictable... Anyway, the important thing is to have a go, and not worry too much when things go wrong.” 

I think this is a great quote to set against the struggle we all have to ‘succeed’ at least in our own terms, if not in terms of a career, other people or a market. And talking of success, there’s the common quibble that the same names come up again and again in awards, and many haven’t had the recognition they deserved. I think it’s important to distinguish illustration contests (particularly where illustrators are asked to do unpaid on spec work), with awards for book illustration like the Kate Greenaway which selects one “book of outstanding artistic quality” rather than an illustrator or a style.

“The whole work should provide pleasure from a stimulating and satisfying visual experience.” 

See all the criteria here.

The judging process of both Carnegie and Kate Greenaway is a long serious business, explained in more detail in Nicki Schmidt’s informative W&P interview with Ferelith Hordon, Chair of the Carnegie Kate Greenaway (CKG) Judging Panel in 2011.  

What I hadn’t realize that the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway awards have some other important functions. They are getting kids all over the UK looking into the whole process of children’s books. This is thanks to its accompanying shadowing scheme, described by 2012's CILIP Carnegie Medal winner, Patrick Ness as:

"one of the very best things in the entire book world." 

Stanchester Community School Shadowing Group Fiesta en la Biblioteca Reading Club

Each year thousands of children and young people “shadow” the judging process, forming groups to read the shortlisted books, write reviews and debate which they think should win. In 2012 over 90,000 children took part. You can read reviews by kids of all ages across the UK here. A couple of kids' responses to illustrations caught my eye: 

“I thought the illustrations in this book were well worked on and all of the little details using paintbrushes were carefully drawn. Some frames were added by paint. The author made his pictures, the introduction and the conclusion stand out.” 

“the (younger) children thought that the book had been scribbled in, as the illustrations did not represent the animals...I didn't think that the drawing of the wolf was good as it represented a porcupine more than a wolf!" 

And there are illustrations too by children inspired by the books in the Greenaway Gallery. Giving troubled kids and reluctant readers the power to voice an opinion, away from the classroom and playground, is helping to get them into libraries, as these videos testify. 

Now to the Kate Greenaway 2013 shortlist itself:  If you’ve not had a chance to delve as deeply into the books as kids across the UK, you can cheat! Each shortlisted illustrator explains what their book is about here along with fascinating glimpses into their processes. Only Jon Klassen is missing, perhaps because he’s US based, but there's plenty about him on the internet. The “little string of accidents” is a common theme among them, as is the importance of drawing. 

Chris Haughton for example advises to keep drawing what you’re really interested in, and in his case it was “accidents”. That and the question ‘what if...’ is what led to Oh No George. 

In Emily Gravett’s case, she blew paint down a straw to create dragon flames, and burnt holes in paper as painting flames and holes didn’t work. 

Chris Mould prefers ball point pen to pencil, uses Tipp Ex pens and any cheap material at hand, even spray-paint for cars for get an even tone for example. 

Helen Oxenbury reverted to a style she’d used in the 1970s, watercolour and cross-hatching, says she uses different mediums – different styles – from one book to the next, as “it stops you getting bored”.  

Levi Pinfold starts off by making 10-30 thumbnails in a morning, say, which he’ll turn into a mini dummy. Only after he’s had proper feedback from his publisher , will he work on his final carefully-layered tempera paintings, and reminds himself when flagging that yes, all that work does matter because the final picture book might actually change somebody’s life in some way.  

Salvatore Rubbiano drew ducks from life in his sketchbook throughout the making of his book. Drawing he says helps to slow time – it’s visual food that feeds the imagination. Draw and ideas will happen. For the more complex compositions, he painted his watercolours over a lightbox with the layout in pencil underneath. Like Haughton and Gravett, he tweaked his final paintings on computer when necessary. 

All are worth looking at especially if you need reminding that you are not alone in your corner, struggling to convert your imagination into the materials and marks on paper. 


I’ll end with a comment from one of the judges in the CKG blog - yes, you can “peek inside the minds and musings of the Judges” themselves! 

“Apples and oranges there may be, but in the end we can still only pick one most outstanding apple or orange!” 

Let’s wish them luck! And if you want to make your own choice or have any author-illustorly comments about the shortlist, please fire away! 
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Bridget Strevens-Marzo  
www.bridgetstrevens.com