2013 Text Prize

The shortlist for the 2013 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing was announced this morning with four talented authors chosen from 350 submissions.  This all female line up at in competition for the $10,000 prize.

The winner is to be announced on Wednesday, 29th of May.

The shortlisted authors are:

• Waer by Meg Caddy
• Lost Vegas by Jo Hegerty
• Elizabeth and Zenobia by Jessica Miller
• Flood Damage by Diana Sweeney

Short synopsis of each of their titles can be found here.

Patrick Ness – Exclusive Melbourne Event

The Melbourne Writers Festival hosted the fantastic UK author extraordinaire Patrick Ness  for an event at the Athenaeum Theatre.

Why attend?  If you’re love a good book  this man is the guy to see.   Also, the entire Centre for Youth Literature team will be in attendance so you know it is worth the journey!

Ness  is the magnificent imagination behind the Chaos Walking trilogy which won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Carnegie Medal.  His latest release, The Crane Wife, is “… a wise and romantic story about the creative imagination and the redemptive power of love.”

More information can be found here.

Where: Athenaeum Theatre, 188 Collins St, Melbourne

When: Monday – May 20th, 6.45-7.45pm

Cost: $20 ($12 concession)

An evening with James Roy

Thursday, 16th of May, 6-8pm

Come down to the City Library on Degraves Street to meet multi-award winning YA author, James Roy. The Children’s Book Council of Australia (Victoria branch) will be pulling out some wine , cheese and a fabulous speaker.  Who could ask for more?!

Click on the link to make your reservation to this free event.

Meet James Roy at The Little Bookroom

Wednesday, 22nd of May, 6pm

Make your way to the 769 Nicholson St, Carlton North store for some drinks with James and a good old chin way with those that are passionate about young adult literature.  The Little Bookroom have started a monthly YA get together (Books & Booze) and its fantastic to have an author guest in their second event!

Free event, reservations directed here.

Fiona Wood’s Book Launch for Wildlife

Thursday, 23rd of May, 6.30pm

Have you been waiting on tenterhooks since Six Impossible Things?  Join Fiona at Readings Hawthorn for the highly anticipated release of her sophomoric title.  YA author extraordinaires, Cath Crowley and Simmone Howell, will be introducing Wildlife into the world and you can grab yourself a copy a week before its release!

Free, no booking required.  More information here.

I have this post-it note beside my computer, because it’s something I can never be reminded of enough. Teens are smart. Teens are discerning. And a lot of them love books.

The Inky Awards are all about celebrating the best of new young adult releases – and facilitating the teen voice in what makes a great book for teens.

If you know an enthusiastic teen reader, we want to hear from them. Teens aged under 20 can now apply to be a 2013 Inky Award judge. The successful applicants will receive the twenty longlisted books (titles announced 1 June), but in return they have the (un)enviable task of selecting just ten of those books for the shortlist.

Applications to be a teen Inkys Judge close 30 April.

Taking place in Melbourne on the 2nd of May, the PTA workshop

“… will allow participants the opportunity to hear Melina Marchetta speak about the use of her novels in a classroom setting and share a vast array of activities, ideas and assessment tools for use in your classroom or library.”

It’s a well known tale that Marchetta is a former English teacher who had to teach Looking for Alibrandi to her own students at one time.    Also on the program is Laura Gordon, experienced teacher and academic in all things children’s literature.  Who better to learn from?

More information here.

Congratulations to all the recognised writers, it was surely a difficult decision for the judging panels.

Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature shortlist:

• Three Summers  - Judith Clarke (A&U)
• The Ink Bridge – Neil Grant (A&U)
• Sea Hearts – Margo Lanagan (A&U)
• A Corner of White  - Jaclyn Moriarty (Pan Macmillan)
• Into that Forest – Louis Nowra (A&U)
• Unforgotten – Tohby Riddle (A&U)

The younger readers are also represented on the NSW PLA radar with the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature .

The shortlist is as follows:

• The Ghost of Miss Annabel Spoon – Aaron Blabey (Viking)
• Brotherband 1: The Outcasts  - John Flanagan (Random House)
• Pookie Aleera is Not My Boyfriend  - Steven Herrick (UQP)
• A Bear and a Tree – Stephen Michael King (Viking)
• The Tender Moments of Saffron Silk: Kingdom of Silk Series 6 – Glenda Millard with illustrations by Stephen Michael King (HarperCollins)
• Dragonkeeper Book 4: Blood Brothers  - Carole Wilkinson (Walker Books)

The winner of each category will be announced at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on the 19th May.

Book of the Year – Older Readers

• The Ink Bridge by Neil Grant (Allen & Unwin)
• Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)
• The Shiny Guys by Doug MacLeod (Penguin)
• Creepy & Maud by Dianne Touchell (Fremantle Press)
• Friday Brown by Vikki Wakefield (Text Publishing)
• The Wrong Boy by Suzy Zail (Walker Books)

Notables list

Book of the Year – Younger Readers

• Pennies for Hitler by Jackie French (HarperCollins)
• Other Brother by Simon French (Walker Books)
• After by Morris Gleitzman (Penguin)
• Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett (Penguin)
• Pookie Aleera is Not my Boyfriend by Steven Herrick (UQP)
• The Tender Moments of Saffron Silk by Glenda Millard (HarperCollins)

Notables list

Congratulations to all those recognised by the CBCA.

The winners will be announced on the 16th of August with the Victorian announcement taking place at the State Library of Victoria.

Remember you can see Vikki and Morris in action at the Reading Matters conference (31 May- 1 June 2013).  Place still available.

Follow the link to the webpage of the schedule with a downloadable PDF available at the bottom.

Four international YA authors.

Twelve Australian YA authors.

Three presentations.

Nine panels.

And the INKY AWARD LONGLIST is unveiled!

We look forward to seeing you there.

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) announced today that the multi-award winning Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman is joining the prescribed text list.  Narrative has always been absorbed in a myriad of ways and the Centre for Youth Literature is delighted that the VCAA have brought the graphic novel into the mix for students.

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale

Maus depicts an interview between the author and his father, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor.  In bringing this text into the curriculum fold, students will be able to further explore this period of history through the richness of this medium.  The minimalist style of Spiegelman’s work shares the rawness of the subject matter, while his depiction different races as specific species of animal (Jews are mice, Germans as cats) draws on the rampant use of propaganda during war times.  Drawn with a fountain pen and correction fluid, flaws are evident in the work, heightening the personal nature of Spiegelmans’ work and the effect on his family.

The Centre for Youth Literature is committed to showcasing quality youth literature.  We are very excited that our upcoming Reading Matters conference features award winning graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier (Smile, Drama), poet Tim Sinclair (Run) and gaming aficionado Paul Callaghan (Freeplay festival).

Many teachers have used Maus in their classrooms to great effect. This opportunity for further exposure to Maus is a move towards progressive integration of alternate mediums into the school curriculum to augment reading and a greater understanding of the world.  It is a commendable move by the VCAA and hopefully the first of many graphic novels that make the step into the curriculum.

The Centre for Youth Literature has picked the brains of Australia’s YA publishers to gain insight into their work, and their titles. For the next few weeks we will be featuring interviews with a number of individuals on their work in YA publishing.

Let’s welcome Susannah Chambers, the Senior Editor for Books for Children & Teenagers at Allen & Unwin.

As a Senior Editor, I provide editorial feedback and support to the author; develop ideas and take part in discussions and brainstorming regarding list-building and commissioning; read and read and read manuscripts; manage production from manuscript to printed book, including liaising with authors, designers, typesetters, printers, and in-house staff; direct design of cover and text; write cover blurbs and other marketing copy as required. I am responsible for helping the author make the book the best it can be. The process of shepherding a book from manuscript to beautiful new book can be quite mysterious for writers being published for the first time. On our blog Alien Onion we have attempted to demystify this process by a series of posts entitled What do Editors Do All Day.

What is the first book you worked on and in what capacity?
Parvana’s Journey by Deborah Ellis. Rosalind Price was the publisher and I was the production editor. I briefed the cover designer, Australianised the text, checked the page proofs and sent the book to the printer.

What is the most anticipated release of this year?
When We Wake by Karen Healey & Evan’s Gallipoli by Kerry Greenwood

What are the popular themes in YA right now?
Broader settings come and go – Dystopia, Paranormal Romance, Fantasy, Action, Contemporary Realism – but the core themes seem to remain constant: finding out who you are and who you aren’t, learning to navigate the world (whatever state that world is in), making choices and discovering how those choices – good and bad – affect your friends, family, loves, and the broader community.

Which fictional character would you like to be?

• Lirael (from Lirael by Garth Nix) – because she is brave and resourceful and clever, and works in a dangerous library and is best friends with the Disreputable Dog
• Anne of Green Gables (from Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery) – who wouldn’t want to live on Prince Edward Island and marry Gilbert Blythe?
• Lyra Belacqua (from the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman) – I’m not saying I’d want to go through everything (anything?) she does, but having a daemon and being friends with an armoured bear would be pretty terrific.

 Now to introduce….Claire.

I’m the children’s publisher at Pan Macmillan Australia, based in Sydney and responsible for commissioning, developing and producing a boutique list of titles, from junior fiction through to young adult.

What is the first book you worked on and in what capacity?
I was living in Cambridge, UK, and working for the literary magazine GRANTA. The first issue I ever worked on was GRANTA No. 19 – ‘More Dirt’. It was a who’s who of extraordinary American writers such as Richard Ford, Jayne Anne Phillips and John Updike.

Officially, I was the subscription manager but we were a very small team so everyone did a little of everything, such as proofing and actually pasting up the magazine (this was in the old days). I wasn’t very good at the pasting-up part and still remember the panic of searching for a paragraph I had accidentally chucked in the rubbish bin.*

What is the most anticipated release of this year?
This is an impossible question to answer in the singular so my most anticipated releases this year are GIRL DEFECTIVE by Simmone Howell in March, WILDLIFE by Fiona Wood in June, THE HOWLING BOY by Cath Crowley in September and the sequel to A CORNER OF WHITE by Jaclyn Moriarty in October.

Pan Macmillan has a year of magical YAs.

What are the popular themes in YA right now?
YA is such an elastic category but ‘voice’ and ‘heart’ are still as important as ever, regardless of the theme. As a reaction to the recent paranormal and dystopian deluge, ‘real teen’ fiction is possibly gaining more traction and GIRL DEFECTIVE, WILDLIFE and THE HOWLING BOY are all superlative examples of this.

Which fictional character would you like to be?
Oh no! Another singular question. Well, Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye. (I read this when I was sixteen and it was my first real experience of ‘voice’.) Or maybe Emma from Jane Austen’s Emma, or …

*I found it.

YA is magical, as has been your time on Read Alert.  Thank you Claire for sharing