Sunday, 16 February 2025

The Bicycle, written by Mevan Babakar & Patricia McCormick, illustrated by Yas Imamura, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart










This is a very special book; one which I think children will remember forever. Why? Because it deals with the very worst and the very best of humanity, showing those things particularly powerfully because this story is true. 

                    Mevan and her family had lived in Kurdistan for generations. It was a place 'where                   'figs fell from the trees and the air smelled like honeysuckle'. It was where                                  Mevan's family and friends were. My four-year-old grandson was particularly                           interested in the grocer who gave Mevan a sweet!

                    

                But then the Iraqi government forced Kurds like Mevan and her family to flee their                    homes. 

                

                    Mevan and her parents travelled to Turkey, on to Azerbaijan then Russia,                                    unwelcome, and with poor Mevan feeling smaller and smaller.

                       But they found kindness in the Netherlands where Mevan was fascinated by all                         the people riding bikes. She'd never seen bikes before. She longed to ride one,                         but she had no bike until ...



                ... Egbert, caretaker of the building she was living in, gave her a red bike that 'made                     Mevan feel a hundred feet tall'.

                 A year later, Mevan and her parents were told that there was a new home waiting                     for them 'in a country where they would be safe, where they would never have to                     leave. Mevan and her family had to leave in such a hurry that she never got the                         chance to say goodbye to Egbert.' 



                They settled in the UK, and Mevan 'never forgot the man who taught her how big a                   small act of kindness can be.'

                In a heartwarming Epilogue we learn that Mevan grew up and visited that land of                   figs and honeysuckle, seeing grandparents but, poignantly, 'the grocer was gone', as                   were many others.

                Mevan also visited the Netherlands, and she asked if anybody knew of kind Egbert                    who had 'seen her when others hadn't' and given her that important red bike? They                   did -



                What's Mevan doing now? Important and positive work towards a better world -                     https://mevanbabakar.com/     

                What a story! As you can, beautifully told and illustrated. Highly recommended.              









Thursday, 13 February 2025

Authors (and illustrators, and musicians) v. AI bros — Anne Rooney

 The UK government is holding an open consultation on copyright and AI. This might seem an esoteric bit of government faffing that most people don't need to pay attention to, but it's far more than that. It's potentially a fight to the death between British creative industries and the techbros who are currently tearing the US state machinery apart in defiance of US law and the constitution. Do they look like people we can trust?

This is the issue: creative work is protected by copyright laws. This makes it illegal for one person to copy the work of another without their permission and distribute it or make a profit from selling or licensing it. The livelihood of the creative industries and individual creators relies on this. You can't steal creative work in the same way that you can't steal beans from the supermarket. It's simple. But the AI bros say they want an exception so that they can 'scrape' high quality creative works to train their AIs. And for some utterly bizarre reason, the government is up for this. The creative industries are worth £126 billion and employ 2.4 million people in the UK. Latest UK government figures show AI generated only £14 billion and employed 64,500 people. But the government sees potential for growth (even at the cost of die-back in the creative industries).

The argument the AI bros make is that they are not really copying anything. They are scraping the works and generating new works from patterns they have identified in them. Yet if you tried to publish a 'new' Harry Potter story, you would find Bloomsbury and Warner Bros suing you within seconds. If you copied all Disney's 101 Dalmatians and made a new cartoon in which they did something else, you would be sued. So where's the difference? If AI has been trained on, say, the works of an illustrator, someone can ask it to produce a particular image in the style of that illustrator and then they don't have to pay the illustrator, even though the new image would not exist if it were not for their years of training and practising and developing their style.

The government and the AI bros are trying to get away with this by ignoring the distinction between generative AI (like ChatGPT or, more recently DeepSeek) and the more useful (for humankind) AI that will help develop new medications, identify cancer cells, decode degraded documents, and so on. Yes, we can benefit from AI's input in many fields. No, we don't need AI writing poor quality stories, or copying the artwork or musical styles of talented professionals. AI needs to be trained to recognise cancerous cells by looking at cancerous and non-cancerous cells, not by scanning images by illustrators or literary novels. It works out new protein structures by looking at the molecular configuration of known proteins, not by listening to all the work of Mick Jagger or scanning photos from a picture library. The point of training AI on high quality creative work is ONLY to replace those creators and their livelihoods. ChatGPT can already write coherent sentences, so if someone wants to use it to write their in-house reports, marketing documents, etc, it can do that now. It won't be improved by having scanned the latest prize-winning novel.

Here's a suggestion. The government could licence for AI scraping any text written at the expense of the tax-payer. So any government documents, anything published by people who are paid for their work in the civil service, research papers from research funded by the state, and so on. And they can leave the rest of us alone. If a particular organisation wants to use AI to write their reports or whatever, they can get an LLM and train it on all their previous in-house work — that is, the text they own.

As for those people who would like to write a novel but don't have the skill — just don't. There are lots of people who would like to be professional footballers but don't have the skill. They can't do it. That's life.

And finally... While this consultation has been ongoing, DeepSeek has stolen OpenAI's work to make its own cheaper and better model. Those of us whose work has been stolen think this is pretty hilarious. It also means the UK consultation is probably a complete waste of time as the baton has already passed to China and no one is going to invest confidently in UK-based AI anyway. But please, if you want actual writers and illustrators to survive, tell the government we don't want the AI bros to have access to our work. And make sure you don't buy or endorse materials based on IPR theft.

If you want to respond to the government consultation, you can write to your MP or respond individually until 25 Feb. The consultation document is here. It includes specific question you can respond to. It's long. Of course. To discourage you. Don't let the bastards grind you down.

Anne Rooney

website

Coming later this year: The Essential Book of AI, Arcturus Publishing, November 2025


Tuesday, 11 February 2025

The Process of Making ‘The Old Cow in the Kitchen’, by Lynda Waterhouse

 

Here is the film.

This is how the project took shape.

https://www.londonsscreenarchives.org.uk/title/22456/

Ideas form and take shape

Rewind to the late 1990s, a piece of graffiti on a wall in the Elephant and Castle said:

A fungus grows on our collected Dickens

Back home I took the line and added one of my own to make a poem.

The soil of the Elephant makes rich pickings

Like a demented Cassandra I wailed on and on about how the developers will move in and destroy/sell off the area and that opportunities must not be wasted.

I never finished the poem to my satisfaction. It languished in my unfinished drawer.

In the 2010s I began a poem, ‘The Marmalade Ladies’, inspired by two older sisters, Marian and Jessie, who made tons of delicious marmalade to sell every year at West Square Summer Fete.

 I never finished this poem either. It also languished in my unfinished drawer.

Fast forward a decade or so and, as part of a campaign group set up to protest at the high rise land grab by off-shore developers, I met Marian who was now in her 90s. She told me she was leaving to move into sheltered accommodation.

There was no time to waste languishing or otherwise. Her memories needed to be captured.

Encouragement

So many people offered encouragement and support. There was a neighbour, John, who had lived in the area all his life, and was a treasure trove of stories, photographs and connections. There was Ludmilla, a film maker and housing co-op member. We’d recently worked together (with no funding) to make a short film about housing co-ops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irrF_AdbaKI&t=513s

Our Local councillor, Maria Linford-Hall, encouraged me to apply for some funding from Southwark Council’s Neighbourhood Fund. A local historical society agreed to vouch for me and manage the funding. We started visiting and recording Marian and John began to write down his memories.

The End Goal

At first our goal was simply to make a short film capturing memories, put on an event, and stay in budget.

Experimenting in style

We began by recording conversations loosely based around a theme but trying to capture the feel of a conversation between friends rather than a specific interview. We did experiment with a more traditional question and answer approach but it just didn’t work.

The idea changes shape and the End Goalposts shifted

John kept on writing, Marian kept sharing, AND we discovered Marian’s father’s photographs and felt that his work needed to be exhibited at the event.

I invited some people to sing and for local poet, Paul Taylor, to recite some of his poems. I finished the ‘Marmalade Ladies’ poem and dared myself to read it. We made John’s writing and photos into a booklet. There was a memory table for people to share their memories. The End Goal had shifted.

Celebrating is not showing off

By nature I am an introvert. I am also a product of my northern working class background where any attempt to push yourself forward was considered ‘making a show of yourself.’ This had to be worked on.

So, during this process I learned that ideas can take a long time to shape and form and sometimes they are developed in unexpected ways. It’s always good to have an End Goal to work towards but, once you start writing, expect it to change in surprising ways and embrace that change. Experimenting in style is a good thing because you can tell what doesn’t work as well as what does, and always take time to celebrate your achievements! 

Sunday, 9 February 2025

THE SECRET LAKE by Karen Inglis (a review) by Sharon Tregenza



This book has it all - a hidden tunnel, a secret lake and a disappearing dog. Good ingredients for a fun read and it delivers.  Author, Karen Inglis, describes it as "a time travel mystery adventure with modern twists'.

Stella and her younger brother Tom have moved to London. When their neighbour's dog keeps mysteriously disappearing and reappearing, wet. They are intrigued. 

Their attempts to solve the mystery involves a buried boat and a tunnel that leads them to a secret lake. The children travel back in time to their home and gardens as they were a hundred years before. Here they meet new friends and enemies and discover astonishing connections between the past and the present.

It's a book of short chapters which helps maintain the pace and the characters are interesting and charismatic. 

The Secret Lake is a good read for middle grade and any age upwards, really and has already been enjoyed by over half a million young readers and translated around the world. 

There is a second and third book in the series.



  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Well Said Press (4 Aug. 2011)
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0956932304
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0956932303







 

Friday, 7 February 2025

Members' News

 Congratulations to  Susan Quinn on the publication of MY MUM from Quarto Books on February 27th. 

The story celebrates the bond between mother and child and follows them as they take on life's big and small adventures - together. From sailing a ship around the garden and exploring forests, streams and meadows, to telling stories in a cosy den and cuddling before bedtime, a child reveals all the simple yet amazing things she loves to do with her wondrously adventurous mum.

https://www.quarto.com/books/9780711296688/my-mum




The Welsh language edition of Miriam Halahmy's YA novel, BEHIND CLOSED DOORS is coming from Graffeg this February. The novel was originally published by Holiday House Books in America and Firefly Press in the UK. It won the Manchester Metropolitan University great student giveaway in 2018, "the clear and popular choice."

https://graffeg.com/products/pan-fydd-drysau-n-cau




Congratulations to Karen McCombie for WORLD OF WANDA, from Uclan Books, publishing on 6th February

Karen McCombie’s latest MG novel – ‘World of Wanda’ – was one of The Observer’s Children’s Books of the Month for January. The story was partly-inspired by her son’s ADHD diagnosis, which coincided with her developing the dual-voice story of Wanda and Margot. ADHD very quickly and naturally became part of Wanda’s character. 

Twelve-year-old Wanda doesn’t go to school, because she and her mum are too busy back-packing around the world. The trouble is, Wanda is homesick for a home that doesn’t exist. When she finds out a secret her mum has been keeping from her, Wanda decides it’s time to have an adventure of her very own. Meanwhile, back in the UK, 14-year-old Margot isn’t prepared for the shock that’s about to land on her doorstep…

https://uclanpublishing.com/book/world-of-wanda/




Gathering the Glimmers, written and illustrated by Ffion Jones was published on January 30th, from Tiny Tree Press.

Glimmers are brief everyday moments that spark a sense of joy by reminding us of the beauty in simple things.

A little girl called Wren is on her way home through a dark forest when she gets lost. In the forest there are many triggers, which evoke her fear and anxiety. Yet through the darkness, Wren is able to notice glimmers all around her; in the leaves, the sunlight, and ultimately within herself.

 https://www.ffijones.com/

https://tinytreebooks.com/gathering-the-glimmers/






 Julie Pike's Flamechasers has been shortlisted for the Portsmouth School Libraries' Book Award in the Year 5 category. Congratulations, Julie.

https://fireflypress.co.uk/authors/julie-pike/



Barbara Henderson is celebrating the launch of I DON'T DO MOUNTAINS this month. Despite the official publication date of 17th March, readers at the Fort William Mountain Festival will be the first to get their hands on this adventure story set in the Scottish hills. It is Scottish Mountaineering Press's first children's book, following their 2023 win of Small Press of the Year, Scotland, at the Nibbies.

https://www.barbarahenderson.co.uk/




Congratulations to all, and to everyone else who has a book out this month. The next news shout-out will be on March 7th. Get your good news items to Claire Fayers by the end of February to be included.

Thursday, 6 February 2025

Celebrating the Lunar New Year by Eva Wong Nava


*Credit: Natelle Quek


An auspicious animal will be slithering in through your doors on January 29th during the new moon. The Year of the Snake will be upon us soon. You'll know this if you've been closely following the promotions on social media regarding the lunar new year.


For example, the Royal Mint has designed a set of collectible coins for the Year of the Snake. They will cost you a fortune, but over a billion people in China and around the world who consider themselves part of the Chinese diaspora will have no issues with fortune. Aspiring to be fortunate forms part of the lunar new year celebrations, along with good health and happiness.

I've been celebrating the lunar new year since I was a babe. I am one of the millions of people who are part of the Chinese diaspora. When I go to schools to give talks about the festival, this is what I tell the children:

 

Eva Wong Nava was born on a tropical island where a merlion protects its inhabitants from marauding pirates. Her ancestors braved monsoon winds sailing from the Middle Kingdom across the Southern Seas to plant roots in British Malaya. They brought ancient traditions and rituals with them and have practised them in Southeast Asia since the 13th century. When the winds changed, her relatives sailed north, braving hailstorms and snowfall, taking familiar traditions and rituals to America, Europe and England, where they formed new homes and families, and continued practising these traditions in the Western Hemisphere. Eva writes stories for children inspired by her childhood and heritage. She lives in London with a goat, dog and tiger.



There are books galore helping children and their parents, caregivers and teachers celebrate the lunar new year, which is called Chinese New Year by the Chinese and its diaspora, Tet by the Vietnamese and its diaspora, Seollal by the Koreans and their diaspora, and Tsagaan Sar by the Mongolian and its diaspora. While some books are IP (Intellectual Propery) created in-house by publishers, there are also ones written by own voices authors with lived experience of celebrating the lunar new year. I will focus on the ones published in the UK.


For children aged 6 - 9, Eric Huang's debut duology, Guardians Of the New Moon (Little Tiger), is a fun and pacy read, introducing children to the myth behind the legend of the Great Race and various gods and goddesses of the Chinese pantheon.

 

*Author's Instagram

Maisie Chan's Tiger Warrior series (Hachette) makes for a great close companion. These are good for children 8 plus.

 

*Author's Instagram

East Asian Folktales, Myths and Legends (Scholastic) is a collection of stories good for children from nine plus. I had fun researching and retelling the many familiar stories of my childhood. I grew up in a family of storytellers and like the many children of the Chinese diaspora, stories like the Great Race, were passed down orally from one generation to the next.

 

Also from the same publisher, there is I Love Chinese New Year. This is picture book, with illustrations by Xin Li, a China-born, Norway-based illustrator, is a celebration of the festival for readers from three plus. It gives teachers, who are keen to teach their classes about the festival, tips on how to do this within the story, explanations about the symbolisms in the back matter, and fun facts on why the dragon is still the most revered and favourite animal in the Chinese zodiac. [Hint: the dragon is the only celestial animal in the Chinese zodiac.]


In the UK, there is a dearth of books that explore the Chinese diaspora experience, culture and heritage for children. While there are many editors focusing on Christmas, Eid and Diwali, there are others who understand that often times, books on the lunar new year written by own voices authors are missing.


A new book, Dancing Dumplings For My One And Only (Walker Books), has twirled its way to your kitchen.

 


This book celebrates family bonds, traditions and a heritage food -- the dumpling or jiaozi -- and it was released on January 2 in the UK. The publisher had planned it for the 2025 lunar new year market, even though this picture book isn't strictly about the lunar new year. An author's note provided by me explains why jiaozi are eaten during this special time of the year.

 

*the inside cover of Dancing Dumplings For My One And Only

Dancing Dumplings For My One And Only was illustrated by Natelle Quek, a UK-based illustrator of Malaysian-Chinese heritage. I'll be honest and admit that Walker and I decided to wait for Natelle. Hence what was suppose to be my UK debut became the fifth book in my writing career. by the time it was released. 


The Art Director from Walker, Nghiem Ta, said, "After so many years designing children's books, this is the first project I've worked on that fully showcases my heritage."


This echoes the reality of East and Southeast Asian representation in the UK publishing market. While the Chinese New Year celebrations are gaining traction and becoming more familiar and popular in the United Kingdom, the Vietnamese, Korean and Mongolian lunar new years are barely mentioned and invisible in books and media. But things are changing as the Year of the Snake promises to bring in good omens for those who are patient, stategic and willing to embrace the Snake's wisdoms. "Slow. Firm. Focused" is the way to go! Like in my favourite Aesop's tale - slow and steady wins the race.




 Wishing one and all a sssmasssshing Year of the Snake!

*
Eva Wong Nava writes for children. She is also a sensitivity editor, ghostwriter and freelance editor. You can find her on Instagram and LinkedIn @evawongnava. 

Tuesday, 4 February 2025

Lawrence of Arabia by Paul May

It's several years now since I wrote on this blog about the publishers called World's Work Children's Books. You can read that post here but, to recap, I'd always been intrigued by this publisher who produced high quality illustrated children's books throughout the 1960s and 1970s, mainly reprints of US editions, and then disappeared. 

I finally got around to doing some proper research back then, and among the things I discovered was that The Windmill Press where the books had been produced had been established in the 1920s by the publisher F N Doubleday. Everyone called him 'Effendi" because of those initials. Doubleday wanted to set up a press in the healthy surroundings of the Surrey countryside. He found a suitable site after some searching and apparently took the architects and a couple of friends for a picnic of smoked salmon and champagne in bluebell-carpeted woods on the hillside above the planned location. Those friends were TE Lawrence and Rudyard Kipling.

RIBA Ref No RIBA72832 The Courtyard
Windmill Press, Kingswood, Surrey. 1929
Photo: Sydney W Newbery
If you enlarge the photo you can just see Kipling's fishpond.
Check out the Google link below to see the courtyard today.

Lawrence suggested that the windows on the ground floor should go right to the ground to provide maximum light and a lovely view for the workers inside. Kipling suggested a fish pond and later provided fish from his own pond at Batemans. Back when I wrote about this I was planning to travel across London and see what was left of Effendi's vision, Lawrence's windows and Kipling's pond, but I somehow never got around to it.

Then one day last autumn I noticed that the film of Lawrence of Arabia was on the TV and I watched it. It's very entertaining if you haven't seen it, what with Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif and Anthony Quinn racing around on camels with thousands of extras. And shortly afterwards I was thinking about where we could go for a birthday weekend in January and I remembered that during the pandemic we'd been planning a trip to Weymouth that had never happened and I started looking at hotels. When I came across The Lawrence of Arabia Hotel (sea-views, Arabian breakfast!) how could I resist?

And, having booked the hotel, I remembered my plan to visit The Windmill Press. After a bit of searching on the map I found the spot and learned that it was now occupied by an investment management company called Fidelity International. I couldn't work out if the old buildings were still there and decided not to call and try to arrange a visit in case they said no. Instead, I got my folding bike and caught a train. 

It was a very cold and misty day in early January. I arrived at Epsom Downs station and cycled past the racecourse with the grandstand looming out of the mist. Tamworth and Kingswood were villages once, but London has overwhelmed them. I cycled through suburban streets and then through a vast, up-market private housing estate where the houses are planted in the forest and surrounded by trees. I finally emerged by the road that led up to the Windmill Press, or it did once. Now it led up to security barriers. I could have just ridden past them but as I hoped to get a close look at the buildings I pressed the buzzer and spoke to the security guards.

They sounded puzzled. They would speak to their boss but they thought it was unlikely. I got cut off. I called back. 'Oh, yes. My colleague is on his way out to see you. He'll explain.'


The front of the old building, 2025. Nice to see that the windows are the same.

Looking away from the entrance towards countryside

I saw a man in a hi-vis vest approaching and I pushed my bike towards him. He said he'd had a word with his boss and I couldn't come in. I suggested I could take some photos from the entrance and he replied that he couldn't stop me. It was a public right of way. I tried a bit of chat about Lawrence and Kipling but he didn't seem to know who they were. He walked away quite slowly. I pushed my bike past the barriers and there was the original building at the end of the driveway. As I fiddled around with my camera I kept catching sight of the security guard trying to keep a covert eye on me, presumably to make sure I didn't approach too closely. Lawrence's windows are still there, but Kipling's pond is gone. Happily, someone has posted a photo of the current arrangements in the courtyard inside the building on Google Maps. Effendi would have been astonished, though he'd probably have been even more astonished by the multi-storey car-park that has recently been constructed in the grounds. And in those grounds the fund managers stroll at lunchtime, presumably very much as those lucky workers at the Windmill Press used to do.

At the beginning, the workers had to catch the train to Kingswood and then walk a couple of miles, but many later moved out to the suburbs, helping to drive the growth of Kingswood and Tamworth. But the tide of London housing stops short of Effendi's workers' Utopia and the site still feels as if it's on the edge of the countryside, despite the fact that Reigate and the M25 are only just out of view. 

A week later we made our way to Weymouth. The Lawrence of Arabia Hotel is a kind of shrine to TE Lawrence. The hosts are extremely knowledgeable and the breakfasts and sea views are excellent. On the way there we stopped for lunch at Kingston Lacy, where the National Trust property naturally has a second-hand book shop. I went in and almost the first thing I saw was this copy of Under Black Banner by Geoffrey Trease. I opened it and discovered that it was published back in 1951 and printed in Great Britain by The Windmill Press Ltd at Kingswood, Surrey.

More on Geoffrey Trease next month . . .