How's Your Word Count?

Everyone knows November is National Novel Writing Month. (How are your words?). But did you know that it's also National Non Fiction November?  'the whole month now celebrates all those readers that have a passion for information and facts and attempts to bring non fiction celebration in line with those of fiction.' To join in with the Federation of Children's Book Groups' 'annual celebration of all things factual' we have some posts on a non-fiction theme.

If all goes to plan our first will be tomorrow. I have a terrible feeling I agreed this for last week  but I had a laptop meltdown just before the conference and emails I was sure I had have disappeared - another #mysteryoftheInternet.

Isn't Nancy doing a great job?  I'm so grateful for her stepping up. Here's her last week's editorial in case you missed it. Nancy is looking for thoughts on year three's monthly themes - if you have any thoughts about what you'd like to see in W&P please do get in touch at editor@britishscbwi.org.

I'm so looking forward to our Advent Calendar this year. Paul has a beautiful collection of seasonal illustrations - thank you illustrators!  After this month of many words, get your microfiction brains in gear for tweetable stories  to go with them. As last year, we'll be inviting these in the December post comments and then tweeting them!

This week Candy celebrated Piers Torday's Guardian Children's Fiction Prize win - thank you Candy and again congratulations to you for being among such a select list of nominees!

Last week we celebrated Anne-Marie's SCBWI Outstanding Contribution Award and today I'm so pleased  to be able to share the video of Anne Marie receiving it!



Here are the other highlights from last week you may have missed:

• More conferency blog breaking from Nick
• Celia's brilliant interview with Mairi Kidd of Barrington Stoke. There's so much insightful content in this post from Mairi and Celia
• Network News from the South West - if you need any ideas for what to get up to in your network, check this post from Lesley Moss - the SW have done them all!
• An illustrator's conference round up from John - just see what fun things you non-illustrators may have missed at the conference.

Coming soon:

• Some non-fiction thoughts from me 
• An interview with Melvin Burgess from Philippa
• A report on the Conference Non-Fiction Panel from Anita
• A conference report on the Writing for Reluctant Readers session from Janet
• A new ProCatsination from Jion

It's week three, Wrimos! In theory this should be the home stretch but more likely the quagmire of the muddled middle - head up and keep going!

I'm 8000 words behind.

Hey ho, hope it's a great week anyway,

Jan Carr

---

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.

Celebrating the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Best Young Critics Competition

By Candy Gourlay

PIERS TORDAY. Photo: Quercus

I am the keeper of the SCBWI British Isles Brag Book. Right now, it's a bit out of date because I've been extremely busy (to be rectified soon!).

I mention this because this was how I became aware that Piers Torday was getting shortlisted for all the major children's book prizes.



On Thursday, Piers won yet another one: the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for his middle grade novel The Dark Wild, a sequel to The Last Wild, in which a boy discovers he can understand animals in a world where animals are fast becoming extinct.

I've tweeted with Piers a few times but the Guardian awards evening was my first time to meet him in person (this being the age of social media, every event in real time is like a blind date).

Katherine Rundell, whose gorgeous Rooftoppers won the 2013 Guardian Children's Book Award, introduced the list of nominees, of which I am a proud member.

I only belatedly realised that the whole presentation would make a good video, so my film below is shaky and blurry and all kinds of wrong. But still - it captures the generous spirit and enthusiasm of the evening:

(Hear Piers' message at 9:20 on the video) 

Piers used his speech to criticise Education Secretary Nicky Morgan for declaring that the arts limited the choices of children, calling it a collective "slur on the value of the humanities".

"When you are writing for children, you are writing for the adults of tomorrow. They will make the decisions that inform and shape our society," he said.

"Reading a wide range of stories and studying them does not hold you back in life. It CHANGES your life. The very least we can do is give the children of today a literature that is worth reading and worth studying to make them wonderful human beings with opportunities and a life ahead of them, rather than just a kind of functional literacy which gives them tools and skills to become productive units. If we don't do the former, none of us deserve any prizes at all."

I was thrilled and hopeful when I heard that my book Shine was among the nominees (especially because the Guardian prize comes with CASH). I quickly downloaded the books I had not yet read and immediately realised it was going to be a tough fight. There are some absolutely stunning books on this list. So I didn't have to practise my gracious loser face -- I was just grateful to be introduced to such wonderful reads.

View the nominees for the Guardian Fiction Prize here

But the lovely company of authors and editors and publishers at the reception was not the best thing about the evening. The BEST thing was that the room was full of children -- alongside the Guardian Children's Fiction Award was the prize giving for the Best Young Critics Competition.

And here are the winners! Congratulations, you splendid young people!

Josephina Edwards, 12 who reviewed Shine by Candy Gourlay
Esme McNamara, 8, who reviewed Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
Ekaterina Rahr-Bohr, 13, who reviewed The Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby: Flora in Love
Charlotte Walden, 12, who reviewed Phoenix by SF Said
Ella Harrison Coggins, 11, who reviewed We Were Liars by E Lockhart
Eloise Schaw Miller, 10, who reviewed The Lost Gods by Francesca Simon
Sam Miller, 15, who reviewed She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick
Auden Chamberlain, 12, who reviewed She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick
Rosa Gatley, 12, who reviewed We Were Liars by E Lockhart
Maya Sales-Hyde, 13 who reviewed We Were Liars
Petros Bougheas, 10 years old, who reviewed The Dark Wild

Remember these names, everyone. You'll be begging them for their autographs someday!

The winners of the group category of the Young Critics are students from Nightingale Academy
Also highly commended: students from Ellen Wilkinson Academy (pictured in the video)

The Guardian laid out a feast of SWEETS for the winning young critics. It made my teeth ache to look at it.

Thank you to the judges (on my list of favourite authors!): Frank Cottrell Boyce, Katherine Rundell and Gillian Cross. And thank you to the Guardian for keeping the faith with children's books.

(And Piers, your SCBWI membership lapsed just the other day. Please come back ... all is forgiven!)

Hope & Persistence

Some interesting debate around the Carnegie Medal again this year. The Bunker Diary has been described as bleak and without hope, Room meets Lord of the Flies. It seems to be the lack of a happy ending that persuades some adults of its inappropriateness for children. Author,  Kevin Brooks says that children don't need to be 'cosseted with the artificial hope that there will always be a happy ending' because in real life often there isn't. Discuss.


I've yet to read The Bunker Diary and I should because my WIP is a Room meets…  but I have read Shine by our own SCBWI British Isles', Candy Gourlay which has not only won SCBWI's Crystal Kite Award for the The UK & Ireland, it's also been long listed for this year's Guardian's Children's Fiction Prize on quite a short longlist of eight!

Huge Guardian congratulations go to two other SCBWI members as well,  Piers Torday, also part of our British Isles' Chapter, for The Dark Wild and  the US' Kate Di Camillo for Flora and Ulysses who 'collected hundreds of rejection letters' before she was published.

Prompted by Kevin Brooks, I've been considering 'hope' and how 'a vain hope' did not become a cliché for no reason. Hope can often be as vain as real life endings are unhappy. Often, but not always and that's where the hope lies - in the tantalising possibility that all could be well, that someday someone could offer representation, buy your book, slap a medal wherever it is medals are slapped.  It's people like Kate Di Camillo who stabilise wavering hopes and widen the slimmest windows of possibility with attitudes like this…




…when so much is out of our control, I love that persistence is something we can control.  And this is why we have stories like yesterday's, of octogenarian José Patterson's success with The People's Prize and Janet Foxley whose experience as an older debut you can read about on Wednesday. Janet, in fact heralds a hopeful month - July is Debut month.

Last week we had a diversity (hurray) of Unicorns from Ken Lymer - they're often white but not always, the wonderful image of Nick Cross manning the school fête bookstall - just can't get Shirley Hughes' Dogger out of my head and some possibly plot enhancing Americanisms to watch out for 
from Catriona Tippin. To conclude our month of Dahl,  we also had an illustrator's discovery of the ecstatic art that is Quentin Blake's from Heather Chapman.

Next week, with Janet Foxley, we have our latest Podcast and that's TOMORROW with Sarah Odedina of Hot Key Books . What's the one thing Sarah wishes every author would do? Hmm… 'tune in' to find out. And Heather Chapman will be with us again, reporting on the recent Illustration Fair.

Hoping your hopes are ever widening and never wavering;  published, unpublished writers and illustrators I wish you another week of persistence...


...and pay offs. Congratulations again Candy, Piers and Kate,

Jan Carr

P.S. We had a lovely time with Sarah Lean in Southampton on Saturday - write up to follow!

---

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.