Lets celebrate a new library extension!

Here's some bright news in all the doom and gloom!

We've heard a lot about library closures - both in schools and in the community.

Earlier this month the outgoing Children's Laureate Anthony Browne warned society "will pay the price in the long term" for closing school and public libraries.

In a letter to his successor, Browne urged them to campaign against their closure. Browne said: "Do everything you can to support libraries – God knows, they need every bit of help they can get nowadays. I find it incredible and outrageous that public and school libraries are being forced to close – we'll all pay the price in the long term."

And Philip Pullman has been telling Wales Online that it's all due to the death of "post-war altruism" and everything being "measured and assessed by cost". He said: "This approach is tearing apart the invisible bonds of duty and loyalty, belonging and togetherness in the name of an ideology that nothing is more important than money."

He's largely right - but there are always counter-examples, and here is one I love - not only a new library extension but an inspiring one. Although it's not in Wales, it's not too far away - Coventry!

Foleshill library was originally built in 1913 and sits in a residential suburb.

And it's been renovated! Not only does it now have improved access for disabled visitors, the extension has created a meeting room and an events and activity room which means it can host story time and reader group sessions for children and be a base for activities hosted by a youth worker who is based at the library.

But what I really like is its curved back wall, designed to demonstrate the library's core theme of ‘imagination’.

It uses multi-coloured glazed bricks that are vertically stack-bonded to simulate library books, and to represent the multicultural diversity of the community.



But the brilliant thing, which any kids interested in code will love, is that the bricks are positioned to spell a message in Morse code, with one white brick representing a dot and three coloured bricks representing a dash.

Can you work out what it is before I tell you?! Go on, have a go! The link above takes you to a page with Morse code spelled out! And if you click on the pics they will enlarge.

OK, here is comes...... See if you got it right!

The pattern of bricks repeatedly spells out the words ‘Supposing’, ‘I Wonder’ and ‘What If’!

Isn't that great? Isn't that how we all dream up our fictions, and what we hope we can inspire kids to do? Well, they do it automatically of course anyway!

Manfred Baker, a Partner at Rush Davis, the project's architect, told me: “It was important that the design of the building reflected the vibrancy of this multi-cultural area. By using coloured glazed bricks we were able to create a design that had real meaning and represented what the library was all about - imagination."

So remind me - why do we need libraries?

New book, blogs and appearances

• David will be reading and answering questions at a literature and storytelling night for children on Friday, 10 September, 6pm in Carad, East Street, Rhayader, LD6 5ER, mid-Wales. Tel. 01597 810192.


• New Captain Britain Hard Cover Omnibus out.


• Guest blog at The Ecologist magazine on the great British Refurbishment campaign and the new Coalition Government's Green Deal.


• Guest blog at Dragon Tongue about the influence of landscape in mid-Wales on writers.

The Drowning has begun

Earlier this year I won a grant [scroll down from this link to the item] from Powys' Chance to Create to write a novel for older children called The Drowning. One of the grant conditions was the production of a blog to document the writing of the novel. Now I have begun to write it this is a fine time to start.

What is The Drowning?

The story is set in Borth, Taliesin, and West Powys in the not-too-distant future when sea level rise threatens low-lying dwellings and the smooth running of society.

It is a mystery story - what happened when a boy died one stormy evening on the moors north of Nant-y-Moch?

It is a story of the love-hate relationship between two very different boys from contrasting backgrounds forced to get on together in order to survive, and how the arrival of a girl affects this.

It mixes in and updates Welsh legends - specifically the origin of Taliesin and a reinterpretation of his character and this story, and the story of Cantre'r Gwaelod which, besides having obvious resonance with climate change-related sea level rise and weather events, is situated in this same area.

There are other elements as well, and one challenge of writing a blog about a work in progress is to not reveal the plot and spoil it for future readers!

Progress

I have so far:

• researched all of the mythological elements I wish to use
• walked in most of the areas where the story is set - but will need to revisit some during the writing
• done some research on the flora and fauna - need to do a little more
• conducted most of the research on the science of climate change and sea level rise; sources include articles in the New Scientist; Ranyl Rhydwen, a lecturer on climate science at CAT; a study of the Dyfi Valley coastline (near Borth) by a German researcher/Ceredigion Council; and Bill Thompson of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
• need to in particular find out more about the Eastern Greenland coast and the behaviour of melting ice sheets there
• I have worked on the characters, learnt some Welsh, and plotted the novel out on scene (index) cards)
• begun to write it (a week ago) - 2000 words completed. Projected length: 40,000 words, maybe less, mixed media format

More to follow. Offers of help (research information) welcome.

Calling all childrens writers in Wales

All other regions of the UK have local branches of the Society of Childrens Book Writers and illustrators, who meet regularly fdor crit groups and socialising, except for Wales.

See the website britishscbwi.jimdo.com/networks/

I've taken on the job of being the Wales coordinator. Ideally we'll be mid-Wales, meeting in Aberystwyth, and I'd like to see people come forward to coordinate in NBorth and South Wales.

Academi is the Welsh agency supporting writers. I have posted an appeal for any writers - published or not - to join the Welsh branch of SCBWI at
academi.org/opportunities/i/133697/

They can also contact me directly.

The Academi website is also worth a browse for competitions etc.

Evidence that the recession is biting publishers

Evidence that the recession is biting publishers: a new rejection letter today for my latest novel We Can Improve On You, begins, as always, by praising it - "a really interesting and provocative idea, and very clever", then goes on to say "We are being quite careful about what we acquire at the moment, as we are to put more effort and financial investment behind fewer books", which the editor admits is "depressing to hear, I know, but essential in the current trading conditions".

Anecdotal evidence from other writers suggests a similar trend is occurring elsewhere.

Rejection letters come in many forms, but few as bizare as another I received this week - from an agent, who wrote that despite thinking "both these books could well be published" ... "I just feel that your connection with cyberspace would fall on ignorant and rather unreceptive ears!"

This means that an agent for children's literature is admitting she feels unqualified to market material the content of which is key to the experience of many kids today - social networking sites and the like. This is also, alas, not uncommon - many agents of maturing years began their career in a former time when publishing was a more genteel profession.

One feels that the publishing world is moving so fast that agents are struggling and most writers have a diminishing chance. The pyramid of the 'pyramid model', whereby only a few authors receive most of the marketing, is becoming narrower at the base: you either write fully commercial best-sellers that will ship by the barrel-load in Tesco's or don't get published at all.

Campaign for the book Charter 2008

A few days ago i mentioned this campaign, described by Alan Gibbons at the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group of the Society of Authors conference last month. It is about to be formally launched and already has 245 signatories including Michael Rosen, Philip Pullman, Anne Fine, Sue Palmer, Beverley Naidoo. Malorie Blackman and David Almond.

But why have such a campaign? The 2008 Year of Reading has been a great success. There have been many exciting initiatives such as the Boys into Books campaign. In many ways, reading has never been more popular. Millions of books are bought and devoured by a huge reading public. Many authors are major figures in public life.

These successes can disguise very serious problems, however which are undermining the place of the book and reading for pleasure in national life. Here are some of the challenges we face:

• public library closures- sixty last year and more planned
• a loss of professional library staff- down 13% between 1995 and 2005
• more untrained volunteers instead of qualified library staff
• fewer books in schools, (according to one report, a 15% reduction while there has been 28% rise in spending on education)
• a shift from books to computer services
• the closure of school libraries to make way for ICT suites
• the sacking or down grading of both public and school librarians
• the closure of school libraries
• the marginalisation of reading for pleasure and the reading of whole books in many schools as teaching to the test replaces the pleasure of acquiring knowledge for its own sake

Given the present economic difficulties, many of these challenges are likely to become more pressing.
We, the signatories of this Charter commit ourselves to campaigning for the following:

1. The central place of reading for pleasure in society
2. A proper balance of book provision and Information Technology in public and school libraries. We welcome the integration of new technologies but believe that they must not erode the key place of books and the need for a healthy and expanding book stock
3. The defence of public libraries and librarians from attempts to cut spending in a ‘soft’ area
4. An extension of the role of the school librarian and a recognition of the school library as a key engine of learning. All staff employed in school libraries to have access to appropriate and adequate support and training
5. The recruitment of more school librarians. It is a national scandal that less than a third of secondary schools has a trained librarian
6. The defence of the professional status of the public and school librarian. We oppose downgrading. In some places this has reduced librarians’ salaries by up to half
7. The promotion of reading whole books in school rather than excerpts
8. A higher profile for reading for pleasure in schools, including shadowing book awards, inviting authors and illustrators to visit, developing school creative writing magazines
9. To support the sustainability and future development of Schools Library Service provision nationally.

Supporters of the Campaign for the Book do not see themselves as competitors with professional associations, trade unions and existing library or school campaigns. We seek to create a national network to help coordinate the efforts of all who want to protect the status of the book and reading for pleasure. We will offer our support to local campaigns and initiatives.

It is time to stand up for reading.

It is time to campaign for the book.

For further information contact Alan Gibbons at: aagibbons@blueyonder.co.uk.
Alan took paprt in a debate on the writers' and publishers' podcast show Litopia. You can listen to it by accessing: http://podcast.litopia.com/?p=212.

A gathering of authors

I don't know if there is a collective noun for a gathering of authors, but last weekend I went to the Society of Authors conference for children's writers and illustrators in Cambridge. There were certainly a lot of them.

I enjoyed meeting a lot of people I had only either read or chatted to online, as well as some old friends.

Highlights were:

- William Nicholson's extremely funny account of his life and writing career -- how he started off wanting to be Proust, and ended up writing Gladiators and Shadowlands

- Philip Pullman's tub thumping, a barnstorming speech against age banding in which he said that if we allow it to go ahead all of civilisation will grind to a halt and the earth will turn to a desert. This won riotous applause. We all then felt terribly sorry for the publisher from Scholastic who had to get up and follow him and speak in defence of age banding. At the end of it most of us were still against age banding, and the publisher apologised that they never consulted all the writers before going ahead with it, and promised that no writers will have to suffer age banding on their book covers without consultation. Of course this does not necessarily mean that it will not go ahead....

- Alan Gibbons launched his campaign in support of reading, as lots of libraries are being closed by local authorities and schools seeking cutbacks, and they are also not appointing qualified chartered librarians to fill vacancies. Writers who sign up to the campaign -- and I will post the website later -- as well as teachers, local authority staff, librarians themselves, and anybody else, will be asked to sign petitions against specific closures that we find out about, and perhaps speak at a public meetings.

- Michael Rosen, who lamented the fact that kids nowadays can go through the whole of their school years without reading a whole book, just extracts, and are not taught to enjoy reading for pleasure merely reading functionally and to help them fit into the job-centred world.

- Malorie Blackman, who is lovely and immensely approachable.

- David Almond, ditto. He spoke with Polly Dunbar about his collaboration with her on My Dad's a Birdman

Thank you to everybody who organised it, in particular Enid Stephenson.

The kids are alright, Hail Lewisham, publish Hybrids 2, and stop age banding!

There's such a lot of great work going on to encourage children to read widely.

I was down in Lewisham and Forest Hill School last Thursday where they presented me with a lovely trophy for winning the Lewisham Book Award.

Then they got me asking questions at their annual books quiz. There were teams of three or four Year 9 children from each of seven schools in the area. There were seven rounds of 10 questions each, along the lines of who wrote what book, which book does this character belong in, and which book is this the first sentence of? There was a very wide range of books covered, and not all children's literature or contemporary. I would say Roald Dahl was the most frequently cited author.

There was even a section on So You Think You Know Shakespeare, which was one of the highest scoring rounds - they do know him alright. I'm not going to say who the winner was, because all the kids did extremely well and I was really impressed with how widely they read and their enthusiasm.

The campaign to persuade HarperCollins to publish Hybrids 2

Oh, yes, and that the kids, teachers and librarians in Lewisham all like Hybrids so much, that they are writing to Gillie Russell, the head of children's books for older readers at HarperCollins, to ask her to commission the next books in the series.

If any of you want to see this happen too, far be it from me to suggest that you write to Gillie Russell yourself as well... It wouldn't be such an awful mistake for them, as the first book's so popular, would it?

No one can understand why they're so far refusing to publish it.

No To Age Banding

I've also added my name to Philip Pullman's campaign No To Age Banding, to stop publishers age banding books. Books choose their readers and readers choose their books, they don't need marketing people telling them what to read or not to read.

It's patronising and condescending and doesn't help anybody, in my humble opinion. If you agree, sign up yourself on that web site.

Hybrids wins the Lewisham Schools Book Award

When I blogged last month that the winner of the presentations competition of the Lewisham Book Award was a team from Prendergast and Knight’s Academy, what I didn’t say was that they were presenting my book Hybrids.

I have just found out that also Hybrids has won the Lewisham Book Award, which is a joint event between Lewisham Secondary Schools and Lewisham Public Libraries celebrating the National Year of Reading 2008. This is wonderful news, and my thanks to them.

Below are slides from the wnning team’s presentation, as presented by: Kate Deedman & Rukshana Uddin Yr8 - Prendergast School and Alexandra Truong & Nicole Akano Yr8 - Knight’s Academy.





Each team was told that they represented a publisher who wanted a bookseller, represented by guest author, Sam Enthoven, to buy their book. They had to persuade him to buy whatever title they were allocated, from the six shortlisted books, even if it was not their favourite. They were given approximately an hour and a half to make notes and to transfer these to a five slide Powerpoint presentation.

The other books on the shortlist were:
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
The Black Tattoo - by Sam Enthoven
The Wave Runners - by Kai Meyer
The Book of Everything - by Guus Kuijer
The Outlaw Varjak Paw - by S.F. Said

My thanks also to Natalie & Michael Powell Davies Yr9 & Yr7 & Judy Burnett Yr8 – Sedgehill School who also presented Hybrids very well, and to the organisers of the event and competition Chris Sivajnanam, Sedgehill School Librarian and Joanne Moulton – Children’s and Young People’s advisor - (Public Libraries), and to the judge Sam Enthoven, plus all the other school librarians.

It’s great to see so much enthusiasm into getting kids reading.

Fingers crossed now for the Sefton Super Reads award (Liverpool) where Hybrids is also shortlisted.

Now, come on HarperCollins, commission books two and three!

Well done kids!

The picture above shows a team of students from Habershers’ Aske's Knights Academy secondary school. in Lewisham. They are involved in voting for the best book in a shortlist of 6, one of which is mine, in all the secondary schools in Lewisham, south London.

I met them a month ago when I was invited to the school, and their presentation has been judged the best in a competition run at a local library.

I’m not surprised. I was totally impresesd by this school. Run by a charity that took over a failing state school, it has been turned around, keeping the same students and teachers, in just two years, to achieve outstanding results.

The new school building, while seeming corporate, is conducive to focussed learning. Boys and girls are taught separately. There is a fantastic sports hall also available to the people on the surrounding council estate.

When I asked the English teacher who was my contact there what the secret of its success was, she said it was the fact that the new headmistress was always available, always popping in and out of classrooms, and not tucked away in an office.

The staff felt there was always back-up when they needed it and the kids seemed to have a very positive attitude that I know only comes when they are taken seriously. The head’s philosophy is that ALL children inately want to learn and the staff’s job is to facilitate this.

Why can’t all schools be like this? Good luck to them all!

Hybrids shortlisted for regional award

Hybrids has been shortlisted for theSefton Super Reads award – secondary schools in the Sefton borough of Merseyside.

School librarians have chosen books, and groups of pupils will read them all, and meet regularly to discuss and review them.

At the end of May each group votes for their 1st, 2nd and 3rd favourites (from 6 titles) and from this vote an overall winner is chosen.

"It is the government’s pandering to mass fear ... of which we should be afraid"

A pleasing new review by Donal Cumiskey in Inis - the Childrens Books Ireland magazine:

Hybrids is a thought-provoking novel that delivers a fast-paced plot, good dialogue and engaging characters.

As the story progresses it becomes evident that it is not just another 'live and let live' moral tale of inclusion and social harmomy, but a warning to readers of the danger of public panic and misuse of technology.

The Machiavellian actions of the corporations and government agencies and the differing responses from volunteer groups, freedom fighters, the media and the international community are all too real to people growing up in the modern political climate.

Thorpe injects a seriously Orwellian feel to the book, illustrating how it is the government's pandering to mass fear and not the victims of the disease of which we should be afraid.

Readers aged 13+ should enjoy an exciting read with substance from this great debut.

More Hybrids reviews

These have just come in:

• "When our teenage reviewer took this into a school as part of a lesson showing what you read at home, the book drew an appreciative crowd and was the star of the show. Not a bad reaction for a first novel! David Thorpe has cleverly tapped into the teenage psyche with awesome precision. The main characters are totally reliant on the gadgets that teens now take for granted and this book takes that obsession to a different, almost believable level. Oh, this is clever stuff and you will just love it! Bring it on!" - From Bump to Grump


• "Seriously spooky" - CY ezine, which made it Book of the Month, as did Collins Educational


• "An inventive, dystopian world whicvh plays with the role of technology in our lives and as part of our humanness. The plot hurtles along ... a rattling adventure" - Books for Keeps


• "The writing in Thorpe's debut is tight, and the dialogue convincing..... It would serve as a good jumping off point for debate about ethnic cleansing and human nature with young teenagers, as, like all good science-fiction, it's parallels can be clearly seen in the real world." Write Away (Featured title)

Full list on Del.ic.ious

The Next Big Thing: Who will be the next JK Rowling?

A Texan journalist, Kevin Garcia, had the neat idea to write a piece about authors who've been labelled "the next JK Rowling".

They include Michelle Paver, author of the amazing "Wolf Brother" series (I saw her speak at this year's Hay Festival and she was fascinating), Emma Maree Urquhart, of "Dragon Tamers" fame, and Louise Arnold, whose story "The Invisible Friend," won a contest by BBC Online - as well as myself.

We all agreed that there can be no next JK Rowling.

As Paver says "we don't actually need the next JK Rowling" and Arnold: "I don't see it as a void waiting to be filled."

Urquhart "loathes" the title.

And I'm quoted as saying "There's never going to be a next JK Rowling. That's not the kind of thing that you can manufacture.

"It's a very, very competitive field. In the end, it's the kids who decide who's big and who isn't," Thorpe said. "The only thing you can do as a writer is write what you want to write about and tell a damn good story."

> Read the whole piece - The Next Big Thing: Who will be the next JK Rowling?

Doodling fun

There's a remarkable web business dedicated to selling first editions of books. Their gimmick is they get authors to sign the books and doodle in them.

Needless to say, it's called Doodled Books.

Its manager, Claire Main, asked me to doodle in 20 copies of Hybrids, which she put on the web site. They sold out in a week at £19.99 each.

Now Claire wants more of them. Very nicely, she says "I think you have huge potential" and all the ones I do in the future will go "on the Harry Potter pages as we are getting loads of hits due to the next book coming out and it would be a shame for you to miss out on the hype."

She's going to send me batches of 20, and each book will have a different doodle and slogan. I've promised her that as long as she keeps sending them, I'll keep defacing them!

You can view the sold out doodles here.

The Changes

I've just come across a tv series and novel trilogy from the '70s which I didn't know of before, with some similarities of theme to Hybrids. Does anyone remember it?

The Changes was a British children's science fiction television serial filmed in 1973 and first broadcast in 1975 by the BBC. In the first episode, ordinary people smashed ordinary objects in fits of seeming madness and this apparently made a great impact on its young audience.

The Changes posits a Britain in which the population have mysteriously rebelled against modern technology, destroyed all modern machinery and reverted back to a pre-industrial age.

The madness is triggered by a sound emitted from electricity pylons.

Even the words for modern inventions became taboo - 'car', 'tractor', 'electricity', 'toaster', 'pylon', etc. Just to mention them brings on the noise and the uncontrollable anger against machines again. These items of modern technology are described by people, including the central character Nicky, as cursed.

At one point the main character in the series, Nicky Gore, is asked whether it will induce the noise to start a blacksmith's forge. She asks, "where will you get the iron from?" On hearing there is plenty of scrap lying around the farm (obviously a sensible bit of recycling) she announces that the forge will probably not invoke the noise. So the forge goes ahead. But bicycles are sadly trashed.

Its theme echoes the adult drama series Survivors (1975) in which a small group of British people attempt to survive the decimation of the world's population by disease. This itself is reminiscent of 'The Memoirs of a Survivor' by Doris Lessing (1974), made into a film with Julie Christie. The preoccupation with this theme at the time may have been due to the oil shortage and other environmental and nuclear scares going on, with parallels to our own time.

The Changes was directed by John Prowse.

The TV series was freely adapted by Anne Home from a trilogy of novels by Peter Dickinson. The series took most of its material from The Weathermonger which, together with Heartsease and The Devil's Children has recently been reissued in a single volume in the UK.

You can read more and buy The Changes on Tony Gosling's web site - this is a private site. The BBC have not re-issued it for contractual reasons.