I do solemnly swear... by Alan McClure

 

Earlier this week I followed a thread in a facebook group for children’s writers. A member had asked a question regarding the appropriate use (very occasional, carefully framed) of expletives in YA literature. A host of helpful responses outlined the attitude of the publishing industry and the likely advice of agents, which could be generally summed up as, “For goodness’ sake, don’t do it. Parents, teachers and librarians will object and it will make your work less publishable."

I absolutely appreciate that for many writers the desire to achieve publication is paramount, and for good reason – it validates our compulsion to write, gets our work to its audience and in many ways helps us to hone our craft. But a few things revealed in the discussion really troubled me. I don’t doubt that the advice given was accurate and borne of hard-won experience, but my hackles instantly rise at any advice that potentially limits a writer’s expressive palette.

I should admit, early on, that I’m a big fan of a bit of well-placed swearing. There are those who strongly object to it, and I don’t altogether dismiss their concerns – but there are also those who strongly object to references to religious inclinations other than their own, sexual orientations they don’t share, and scientific data which ill fit their world view. Strong objections are interesting to hear and should be aired freely, but should never be the ultimate arbiter of what we can and cannot say. Swearing, I sincerely believe, is amongst the greatest joys of language – spontaneous, visceral, enlivening, it provides an instant release for pent-up emotions and a rich percussion to the music of speech.

Now, I’m not a complete eejit – as a primary school teacher I’m very aware that there are situations in which it is inappropriate. In over a decade in front of classes I’m pleased to say I’ve never slipped into fluent Anglo-Saxon, whatever the provocations (and there have been many!). It is perfectly possible to address every issue, reflect on every problem and discuss every conflict without recourse to four letter words. Note, if you will, my admirable restraint in writing these posts – nary an f-bomb will you find.

The thing is, I neither want to write about nor read about characters who are exclusively of a primary teacher’s mindset. I want to see realistic interactions in books. I want to see situations that reflect real life as I’ve experienced it, even if they’re taking place in fantastical settings. My armoury of expletives was honed, sharpened and polished as a primary school pupil, and to this day I seldom meet folk with quite such a liberal creativity in the field as the pre-teen lads and lasses with whom I shared my schooldays. I know perfectly well that the kids I teach are as well versed in this field of linguistics as Billy Connolly at his most florid, and while I’m happy for them to reserve it for the playground (it would cause pandemonium in the classroom) I’m not such a hypocrite as to suppose that exposure to a certain collection of letters on a page will fry their innocent young brains beyond repair.

We urgently want our children to read. We urgently want them to see themselves in books, and to relate the power of the written word to the power of the spoken word. YA books frequently deal with complex relationships, extreme violence, themes of horror, loss, sexual awakenings and all manner of grittiness, but for me this is instantly defused when characters resort to anodyne substitute curses like ‘effing’, ‘blinking’ and ‘flipping’. We take our young readers for fools when we slot these unsatisfactory nonsenses into dialogue and I’ve no doubt we dilute their enjoyment of the work.

If a writer feels that swearing is a sign of low character, then use it as a marker of low character. If a writer feels it is sign of limited vocabulary, then use it sparingly alongside the most gloriously erudite vocabulary you can muster. We are slowly and painfully getting to the point where colloquialisms and minority languages are being accepted in children’s writing (and a big shout-out is due to indie publishers for leading this charge) but there remains a censoriousness in mainstream publishing that assumes no agency on the part of our young readers. We, as writers, have a duty to present the full range of expressive possiblity that language provides, and to trust our readers to make their own judgements.

Of course it is up to the individual writer how they wish to express themselves, and for many, if not most, that will include a degree of self-censorship in the interests of avoiding unecessary conflict. For all my ranting above, I don’t personally pepper my writing with the sort of language I delight in whilst blethering with pals down the pub. But I have grave concerns when I read of an industry-wide orthodoxy that renders writing, particularly of dialogue, unrealistic, enfeebled and limited: I fear it is likely to drive potential readers further towards other art-forms (TV, films, video games) which suffer from no such delicacy. At a time when the news daily throws up political language of the utmost callousness, cruelty and entitlement, all couched in polished, expletive-free verbiage, I feel an urgent need to liberate the earthy, universal honesty of a good old swear.

Boycott or not? - John Dougherty

Hanging out in one of the hotel bars

Some of you may have read about the Think Twice campaign, asking authors to boycott the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai, which starts this week. The campaign's objections are to the festival sponsor, Emirates Airline, which is owned by the government of the UAE, a government with a less than enviable record on human rights.

Now, before weighing into the debate, I guess I should declare an interest of sorts. I went to the festival last year, and had a great time.   The organisers treated us tremendously well; the other authors were fantastic company; and all in all, it was as good as a holiday. So - as per the photographic illustrations to this piece - I have some very good memories of and feelings about the festival which may well compromise my objectivity.

Meeting a hawk in the desert

I should also say that I've got no objection to a decent boycott. I haven't knowingly bought a Nestlé product in years, probably decades.

Young Bond author Steve Cole on a camel

 But my feelings about Think Twice's proposed boycott sway between undecided and uneasy, and I'm not entirely sure why. In part, at least, I think it's the idea of targeting a festival solely on the grounds of its sponsorship that troubles me.

Leaping about in the desert with Steve
& photographer Lou Abercrombie
(there with her husband,
 YA author Joe)

The thing is, there are a number of festivals whose sponsors I have serious issues with. There's the Times & Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, a festival I'm proud to have spoken at more than once, but whose main sponsor is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a man who I believe has done immense damage to political discourse in this country and who holds disproportionate influence in the corridors of power. Or the Hay Festival, sponsored by the Telegraph, whose owners are allegedly no friends of democracy.

Now, if Murdoch or the Barclays tried to censor the festivals which which they're respectively associated, I think that would almost certainly be grounds for a boycott. As far as I know, they haven't. But as far as I know, there is no reason to believe that either Emirates Airline or the government of the UAE have tried to influence festival policy, let alone impose censorship.

Lunching with Steve & illustrator
extraordinaire David Tazzymen

I really don't want to downgrade the importance of the human rights argument. But Think Twice isn't calling for a boycott of every festival held in a territory with a poor human rights record; only this one. So I suppose my question is this: should the nature of their chief sponsor mean that Emirates Airline Festival of Literature should be held responsible for the UAE government's human rights record? 

I'm not sure it should. The organisers are not connected with the government; they're simply book enthusiasts who have worked hard to get a literature festival off the ground, and who have sought sponsorship from a local company with a lot of money. And I'm not sure it seems fair to try to close down their festival as a way of protesting against the sponsor. If the boycott is successful, the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature will be no more. Emirates Airline, and the UAE government, will continue exactly as before.

What do you think?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

John's Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series, illustrated by David Tazzyman, is published by OUP.

His new books in 2016 will include the next two Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face titles, his first poetry collection - Dinosaurs & Dinner-Ladies, illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones and published by Otter-Barry Books  - and several readers for schools.

Freedom to Read by Savita Kalhan

Last week I read about a girl, a teenager from Idaho, who, after her school banned Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, decided to start up a petition to campaign for the book to be unbanned. The book was on the curriculum for many schools in Idaho, but following a campaign by some parents it was removed on the grounds that it contained profanity and sexual and anti-Christian content.

 

The teenager, Brady Kissel, decided to mount a petition and got 350 signatures from fellow pupils asking the school to re-instate the book, but to no avail. The issue was picked up by Rediscovered Books, a local book store, who ran a crowd funding exercise to raise money to buy each of the 350 signatories a copy of the book. They raised $3,400, which was more than enough. Brady and the bookshop gave away copies of the book outside her school on World Book Day, but the story escalated further when some parents called the police to stop her, stating that Brady was giving children books without their parents’ consent.

The police, however, saw nothing wrong in what she was doing and let her carry on.

The national press then picked up the story and, eventually, the publishers of the book became involved and decided to provide a free copy of the book for anyone who wanted it. The American Library Association cites the book as the third most challenged/banned book in the States. Strangely enough, the Captain Underpants series tops the list, with Hunger Games coming in at number five. Most of the books that are challenged by parents fall into books aimed at the 14-18 age group. The expanding Teen/YA market probably has something to do with that.

You might say, well that’s the USA for you. But I’ve heard stories from authors in the UK whose books are sometimes excluded from a school because of their content. A “book ban” in the UK would happen, if at all, at school level, usually following a head teacher’s decision, not a formalised complaint or challenge to a school board or the American Library Association as in the States.

The States has a constitution which protects freedom of speech. Brady Kissel argued that, as teens, they too have the same rights as adults and banning a book contravened that. What actually happened every time a book was banned was that teenagers went out and got hold of a copy in another way.

I know some writers in the SAS have had their books banned in the States. But has anyone had their books banned by a school here?

I hope not...

Twitter @savitakalhan
My website
 

Why I'm Happy to Support Age-Banding of Children's Books by Emma Barnes

I’m a bit reluctant to raise this issue, because I know even a mention of it can cause fellow authors to start foaming at the mouth, talking about the end of civilization as we know it. For some reason, this is an issue that authors feel very strongly about. So here goes (whisper it)… I support the age-banding of children’s books. And many authors don’t.

 My new book actually has an age recommendation on the cover. See? My publishers were tentative when they first suggested it. They are obviously well aware of the sensitivities around this issue. But I said…go ahead.  It's actually very subtle.

For those not familiar with this topic, it kicked off a few years back, when publishers found, having surveyed their customers, that most would welcome some guidance on the covers of children’s books. There are, after all, a vast amount of titles in print. It’s not always clear from a cursory glance how “kiddish” a Wimpy Kid may be, how “little” a Little Woman or how “wild” a Wild Thing (in case you’d like to know, she’s a wild five year old, but her adventures are narrated by her older sister, and my publisher expects her adventures to appeal to 8 plus.)

Often the same author and illustrator produce books that look similar but are actually for different age-groups. These books by Jacqueline Wilson are for different age groups, but can you tell the difference?

When publishers first suggested that it might be a good idea to put a discreet piece of age guidance on back covers (very discreet indeed) a tirade of author anger was let forth. A campaign was started. Prestigious authors protested. You can see their statement of opposition here and author Philip Pullman’s particularly resounding condemnation here.

I will say straight off that I’m absolutely in agreement with all those authors and librarians who have a desire to see children have as much access to books as possible. It’s something I feel passionately about (as any friend who has heard me rant on about this subject will attest.) I so much want children to find books they enjoy. I despair when I hear about another library closure…visit a school with shelves virtually devoid of books…or read studies like this, with its grim findings about the negative attitudes of children to books. (My heart lifts when I meet those inspiring teachers and librarians that are doing wonderful work to bring books and children together.) I desperately want children to have access to books, and to find the books that appeal to them – and I think it’s a massive tragedy that so many don’t.

If I could have three wishes, one would be for every primary school to have a librarian – somebody well read in children’s books, able to maintain a well-stocked library, to keep up with new releases and to guide children to the books likely to interest them. The Society of Authors is campaigning for exactly that, and I think it would have a massive, positive impact on children’s reading – and their wider well being.

What I don’t understand is why an age recommendation on a book is somehow seen as being contrary to these ideals.

The trouble I think is in some people’s minds, age guidance of any kind seems to mean only one thing: censorship. Now censorship can be an issue in children’s books: every year, for example, the list is published of most banned books from US libraries. Then there is the more implicit kind of censorship – the worry that publishers might perhaps feel that a gay character will prove less popular than a straight character in YA fiction, or should be of a certain race to maximize sales. But neither of these issues have anything to do with age-banding. And especially not here in the UK, where I’ve seen little evidence that (the sadly increasingly few) children’s librarians out there are interested in limiting children’s access to books in any way. As for parents, I’d argue that they are more concerned about what kids see on the screen, than what they might find between the pages of a book.

Having an age guidance figure on a book does not mean a child can’t or shouldn’t read it. It’s not a legal limit. It’s guidance. Guidance. That’s all. Last time the issue hit the news, I remember reading an article where the journalist explained he’d been reading Balzac at age nine. (Or was it Voltaire at eight? I can’t remember.) Nobody is setting out to rein in Balzac-reading nine year olds. I’m not especially worried how many swear words adolescents read either. (Though some are – see the recent debates following this article about a new YA novel, which sparked off the age-banding debate again.) What I do care about is that more books should reach more children – and I think that some kind of well-meaning indicators for the adults choosing books (it is mostly adults who buy children’s books) helps that goal.

One thing we do know for sure is that many parents almost never buy books for their children. Surveys show that almost one in three children in the UK did not own a single book.  Research in the UK and USA has also shown that book ownership is strongly correlated with children’s enjoyment of, and ability in, reading. Children who owned more books were significantly more likely to have positive attitudes to reading. And there is now strong evidence that children who read for pleasure do significantly better educationally in all areas than those who don’t – even in mathematics - see here.  Have a look at this overview to see the many important benefits reading for pleasure brings.

For me, all of the above is strong evidence that we should do whatever we can to help parents in getting books to their children. As a parent buying books, I know I’m regularly confused about who a book is aimed at. I inspect the cover…the blurb…I flick through. And some of the time, I’m still confused. But the cover and blurb are “rich in clues” the anti-age banding lobby tells me. Well, guess what. I can’t always read the clues. And if I can’t read them – and I’m a children’s writer – then why should any other parent be able to either? And do you know what happens when parents can’t tell? They buy a copy of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, because they can remember exactly what it was like and who it was for, or they buy a copy of Roald Dahl for the same reason. Now, I’ve got nothing against either author. Or the tables and tables of rereleased classics – Stig of the Dump, Tom’s Midnight Garden – that seem to be mushrooming in my local Waterstones. But I think it is a shame if it means that children are less likely to discover contemporary authors, the ones that are writing specifically for them, about their lives, right now.

It’s even more of a shame - more of a mini-tragedy - if that parent (or aunty, granddad, friend) gives up on the idea of buying a book for fear of getting it wrong and decides it would be much easier to buy something else instead.

Not everybody is familiar with the language of book covers. Not everyone has even heard of Roald Dahl, Horrid Henry or Winnie-the-Pooh. It’s true. The most striking example I can think of is the woman I know who gave a ten year old an explicitly erotic bodyripper as a present. She gave it in genuine good faith, and would have been mortified to know of its content. But she didn’t read the clues. (In fact she had worked out it was historical, and she knew this particular child liked history. It wasn’t that she couldn’t be bothered trying to find the right book.) She was a member of an immigrant community, and English was not her first language. There are many parents in this category. There are also people who are unfamiliar with libraries and bookstores, or who struggle to read themselves. Many still want to buy books for their children. They may not, however, have easy access to advice, or be able to easily afford to write off the price of a book if they “get it wrong”.

I can’t help feeling there’s a kind of intellectual snobbery in the idea that everyone should be able to deduce the nature of a children’s books – (or even, as sometimes helpfully suggested, that they should read the book first themselves. Maybe a parent of a book hungry child doesn’t have the time? Maybe they don’t have the ability? A voracious reader will be reading far more at eight, nine or ten years old than even the most interested adult will have time to keep up with.) I also find it rather ironic that children’s authors – generally a liberal and leftward-leaning lot – have been so keen to embrace a line which I feel can make it harder for many to enter and explore the world of children’s literature.

So why else are people opposed? These seem to be the main arguments:

Slower readers will feel embarrassed about reading books with younger age-ranges on the cover 

I put this one first, because it may be true and certainly does concern me. But I’d be interested to see the evidence that age ranges on covers puts off readers – or that kids even notice them. (They are pretty discreet – look at the photo.) When I asked high school librarians recently about the accelerated reader scheme – which assigns a “level” to books, and then encourages children to progress through the levels – they denied that having “levels” humiliated or embarrassed less able readers. On the contrary, they claimed that the scheme appealed most to exactly those kids (less able boys) that form the much worried about “reluctant reader” category.

You can’t choose an age-range – every child is different.

They are. And they may develop at different rates. But it’s surely daft to say that because individual children vary, age is irrelevant. A child will most likely enjoy The Gruffalo before they start reading Horrid Henry before they read Harry Potter… Even if there is no explicit age band given, there is still an audience in mind.

Expert librarians and booksellers can guide children to the right books.

Sadly, both are becoming almost as rare as hen’s teeth. (And likely to remain so unless the political and economic climate changes.) Libraries and bookshops are closing at an alarming rate.

So can teachers. 

Another lovely thought, but until children’s literature is a much more prominent part of teacher training, and every primary school has a designated school librarian (and well-stocked library) most children will not get this kind of expert guidance. Primary teachers are generalists, not book specialists, and have 30 plus children in their class. 

Bookshops already categorise by age.

Yes. So why shouldn’t publishers help them? After all publishers and authors know the books best. And what about those buyers (likely to have the lowest incomes) who can only access charity shops or supermarkets?

Good books are for everyone. Age is irrelevant. 

Yes – and no. Sorry. Yes, I might enjoy curling up with Alice or Winnie-the-Pooh or Jennings or The Church Mouse or The Ogre Downstairs or a zillion other favourite children’s books, but the art of writing for children, I’d argue, is that the writer is able to craft something that appeals (in language, theme or content) primarily to a child at a particular stage of development, with a particular level of experience. The very few genuine crossovers (Harry Potter perhaps) remain the exception, not the rule. I love reading children’s books, but I read them on those terms – I feel privileged to return to a child’s view when I read them, and I don’t expect to find an adult perspective or theme suddenly appear. (Some children’s books, especially picture books, may include jokes for their adult readers. That’s great. But they mustn’t lose sight of their child reader. And even the most universal of material – say, Greek mythology – will be presented in different ways appropriate for different age-groups.)

In conclusion, I’m glad that my book has an age-band on it. I hope it won’t put off those six or seven year olds who might enjoy it, or much older readers too. I don’t believe that it will. And if it helps those people, parents in particular, that I’ve met at schools and signings, and whose first question is always: “What age is it for?” then I’ll be more than happy.

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Emma's new book, Wild Thing,  about the naughtiest little sister ever, is out now from Scholastic. It is the first of a series for readers 8+.

 Wolfie is published by Strident.   Sometimes a Girl’s Best Friend is…a Wolf. 
"A real cracker of a book" Armadillo 
"Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended" Books for Keeps - Book of the Week 
"This delightful story is an ideal mix of love and loyalty, stirred together with a little magic and fantasy" Carousel 

Emma's Website
Emma’s Facebook Fanpage
Emma on Twitter - @EmmaBarnesWrite

Censoring a Children’s Book - John Dougherty

Censorship is a tricky area, isn’t it?

Generally speaking, it’s a Bad Thing. I fume as much as the next author when I read one of those articles about a US school board voting to remove To Kill A Mockingbird or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the library because of some imagined unsuitability. I thought the Daily Mail was a bit off with its recent suggestion that teen fiction dealing with issues like terminal illness or self-harm qualifies as “sick-lit” (and, no, I’m not going to provide a link; it’ll only encourage them to do it again).

And yet, occasionally, I’ve found myself censoring children’s books.

I don’t mean that I go through them with a marker pen deleting the ‘unsuitable bits’; and I certainly don’t mean that I remove books from my children’s book shelf, but… well, let me give you the most recent example.

I’m currently reading Watership Down with my kids (they’ve got older since the photo was taken, as have I). My daughter, now aged 10, wasn’t sure about it at first, but they both seem to be really enjoying it now. And so am I; I loved it when I was about their age, and I’m loving reading it again. But a few nights ago, I ran into a sentence that made me feel a little odd when I first read it, and makes me feel extremely odd now.

For those of you who know the book, when Hazel & his companions are in Cowslip’s warren, their hosts ask if one of them will tell a story. And the next sentence reads:

“There is a rabbit saying, ‘In the warren, more stories than passages’; and a rabbit can no more refuse to tell a story than an Irishman can refuse to fight.”

When I encountered this sentence as a child - well, I can’t remember exactly how I felt, but I know it made me pause. I’m Irish - Northern Irish, to be specific - and I’ve never felt particularly inclined to physical violence. Yet here it was, in a book - a terrific book, at that: just an aside, here’s something we all know about Irishmen. They’re violent. Why on earth should the author say that?

So it made me a bit uneasy then. It makes me more uneasy now, not least because in my first proper job - in England - I worked with a colleague who was convinced that Ireland, and especially Northern Ireland, was a horrible violent place. A lot of our clients were troubled young men, but my colleague took it as read that being Irish - or, in the case of one client, merely having an Irish father - would mean a particular predisposition towards violence. It was a dreadful belief to find in someone who was generally thoughtful and intelligent, and in the end it rather poisoned our working relationship.

So the sentence I’ve quoted above is, for me, problematic - as problematic as would be a sentence suggesting that Jewish people are prone to parsimony or black people to idleness. But I’d forgotten about it until… well, until I reached it.

If either child had been leaning on my shoulder, silently reading along with me, as they sometimes do, I’d have had no option. But it so happened that they were reclining at opposite ends of the sofa with their feet on my lap. Which gave me a choice, and a second in which to make it.

I went for the easy option. I censored. I read the second half of the sentence as “no rabbit can refuse to tell a story” and read on.

Did I do the right thing? I don’t know. Perhaps I passed up an opportunity to talk about prejudice. My children are sensible enough to question this sort of statement. Probably both of them would say, “that’s silly’; my son, now at secondary school and becoming more interested in societal issues, might say, “that’s racist, isn’t it?”

And to be honest, I still don’t know quite why I did it, or even for whose benefit it was - theirs, or mine.

What would you have done?


John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com.
He's on twitter as @JohnDougherty8

His most recent books include:

Finn MacCool and the Giant's Causeway - a retelling for the Oxford Reading Tree
Bansi O'Hara and the Edges of Hallowe'en
Zeus Sorts It Out - "A sizzling comedy... a blast for 7+" , and one of The Times' Children's Books of 2011, as chosen by Amanda Craig

How private are you?

How private a person are you? I assume I'm fairly average. I don't think I have any appalling, dark secrets that would ruin me if they came to light, but on the other hand there are parts of my life I like to keep to myself, or to share with only a few close friends or family. Some of these things are thoughts, some are letters or other documents, and there are perhaps one or two photographs and mementoes that mean something special that I would rather not share with the world at large. Other private things are pin numbers and codes that safeguard my bank accounts. I certainly don't want people to see them.

Until fairly recently it was simple to keep these private things as they were supposed to be...private. An old shoebox in a cupboard in a bedroom is pretty perfect for that collection of personal oddments that are an adjunct to our lives. A locked filing cabinet, if we feel the need, keeps all but the most determined away from our most private papers, while our thoughts... our thoughts are wholly ours.

And yet...how true is that today? Some of our storage solutions are looking decidedly leaky. Imagine living in a house with a front door so flimsy that it's hardly worth closing, let alone locking. Imagine if that house was in a city where numerous people were simply waiting for you to go out so they could walk in and sift through your life. Imagine having a private conversation with a group of friends and discovering it broadcast on the six o'clock news.

It used to be simple to be a private person, but no longer. Online information gathering has become ubiquitous. We leak our love of woollen socks, concern about our weight, and interest in Bengal cats through our so called private emails, and see the information gathering evidence in the advertisements that pop up by our inboxes. We gaily delete emails, thinking that they are gone forever, but how many people in public life have found that to be patently untrue? And, as emails give way to social networking, our lives are becoming increasingly leaky.

I'm not sure that we ought to become paranoid about these potential intrusions into our lives. After all, those fragments of conversations we read on a forum, twitter or facebook when the wrong button has been pressed don't matter, do they? Aren't they just like overheard bits of conversation on the bus? Well, mostly yes, but not entirely. If you are so minded you can often trace these fragments back to a careless person who doesn't understand all the ins and outs of online privacy. (And let's face it, that's most of us.) You may keep your own sites personal, but does everyone you communicate with do the same? No. Of course not, and so your words can spread like the water from a leaky washing machine.

It used to be so easy. If you wrote something a little indiscreet, not only were few people able to read it, but as time passed it got forgotten. Not on Facebook timeline, which makes it simple to find out what was said in any particular year. Just as we're encouraged to communicate the minutia of our lives, giving our hastily thought through opinions on this and that throughout the day, we also have to be careful of what we say, for we know not who will read it, or what they will do with what they read. Mostly of course nothing; sometimes comments or photographs might be used by 'friends' to embarrass us, which doesn't much matter if we don't have a public reputation to guard, but if we do, then the potential damage could be more serious.

Big Brother may not be watching us, (though he often is through street cameras and the like) but he is constantly collecting data about us. Some of this is government led, but much of it is fuelled by big business, wanting us to buy. And as well as that invasive, annoying advertising there's more. Some prospective employers are now using social networking sites to research interviewees. If you don't shape up on facebook you don't even GET an interview. In the old days a company would have had to employ a private detective to pick up some of the information that is available now in a few clicks. Do we want our employers to do the digital version of sneaking up to our windows and listening to our conversations with friends? Well no, I don't, but many of us are sleepwalking our way into this new world. Why? because social networking is fun, and addictive, and internet security is terribly tedious.

So is there nothing we can do? Will those unkind comments made five years ago remain for ever to embarrass us? Well maybe not. Word from the wise is that there is a law being discussed. It's the 'right to be forgotten'. Well hurray to that. But make no mistake. There is no going back. We can't un-invent digital data collection, and like many inventions it has good uses as well as bad ones. Society is changing, like it has done many times. Not every culture regards privacy to be vitally important. Maybe we should relax, and learn to value our privacy less. After all, most of the comments we make will be like digital pebbles on a vast beach, and will never come back to haunt us,

will they...

I do bite my thumb, sir: Gillian Philip

I don't watch EastEnders. It's on at a bad time for me, and I don't want to get caught up and addicted to the plot. I'd barely heard of Ronnie and Kat before last week, and leaping to their defence isn't something I'd ever planned to do.

On the other hand, I love the internet. I do. Some of my best friends are internet friends, whether on Facebook, Twitter or email.

The net has its drawbacks, though: like its potential for the manipulative and the mob. I daresay 6,000 members of Mumsnet were truly, authentically upset by the famously 'offensive' EastEnders storyline in which a mother devastated by a cot death swaps her dead baby for someone else's live one.

Harrowing, yes. Off limits? Oh, yes, for the Mumsnetters who cannot distinguish between issue-led fiction and... well... issues. Or indeed fiction.

Sorry, but I don't have shades of grey on this one. If I want to write about an individual - an individual - who has been turned completely barking by a terrible tragedy, then I hope I'll always be able to do so. I was going to add 'without being accused of offensiveness and insensitivity by those affected by the same kind of tragedy', but that's always going to happen, isn't it? What I hope is that I won't get the media tarring-and-feathering for it, and I hope I won't ever be bludgeoned into a humiliating climbdown for the crime of writing fiction (as the BBC was this week).

I'm not saying issues shouldn't be approached with understanding and sensitivity. But there has to be room to treat fictional individuals as just that - individuals, with the same quirks, traits and madnesses they'd have in real life.

So maybe it stings a little when miscarriage is portrayed in a TV soap - and happening to a horrible character who had it coming. I remember watching Secrets and Lies, and the ghastly recognition that the infertile wife was a bitch of the first order, and mostly because of her infertility. It touches awful chords when a fictional couple is faced with a possible abnormality showing up on an antenatal scan. Tonight I've just finished watching Silent Witness where, as so often, the killer was a disturbed gay guy. But as Sophie Hannah put it so well in this Sunday's Herald, Psycho is deeply offensive to hotel owners who don't go around stabbing their guests in the shower.

But I have no right not to be offended. You have no right not to be offended. You start ring-fencing fiction with the fear of offence, and it's dead. So is a lot else.

Of course we should write with sensitivity and awareness of the effect of what we write on whoever may read it. But to self-censor for the fear of upsetting anyone? I hope I never do. And kick me if you see me doing it. My editor already has, once or twice.

Forgive me if I start with a still from a frothy soap, and finish with a shot of a man who has been garlanded and showered with rose petals for shooting another man. The victim wasn't actively offensive, but he had defended the rights of people who might be accused of being offensive.

Maybe the comparison is a little offensive, but maybe it's the time of the month for me.

And if my husband said that, I'd be furiously offended...

www.gillianphilip.com

The Subtle Censor - Celia Rees

A quick look through recent blogs will tell you that writers for Young Adults spend a lot of time worrying about their readers and what is deemed to be appropriate or inappropriate in their fiction. More so than other writers, as Nicky Morgan pointed out last week. Other people also get exercised about this, hence the calls for book banning and burning that have been discussed here, too. The difficulties are almost always to do with sexual content. Violence not so much. Language a bit more concerning. But sex. That's the difficult one. This puts the writer for Young Adults in a bit of a dilemma. Do you, or don't you? If you do, how are you going to do it? I'm not talking about putting yourself forward for the Bad Sex Prize here, more how you are going to mention it at all.

Here are some rules: Sex is OK if...*

You are a male writer of some stature or a male writer who is Well Known For It (preferably both).

You are the above and writing about boys from a boy's point of view (but NOT homosexuality).

You make sex into a metaphor, so you are not writing about sex per se but something else, something Other, something to be put off for a long time (preferably altogether) or something Bad will happen and your heroine will never be the Same Again. It is better to burn than turn.

The outcome is Bad. See under abuse, rape, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, because then it is a) A Serious Issue, b) not the heroine's fault and c) even though it is not her fault, she's getting punished for it anyway.

NOT OK

Sex for sex's sake. Sex where people enjoy it. Sex that is part of everyday life, even if it is safe, legal and not frightening the horses.

So there is a kind of censorship, nothing official, nothing as dramatic as banning and burning, but it is there, nonetheless. Most damagingly, it can get into the writer's own head after years of being told to take it out or tone it down because if you don't then the libraries won't take it, the schools won't like it, the booksellers won't know where to put it and, oh, you can forget the Carnegie. No mention, of course, of teenagers, the actual readers, who might like to see their lives reflected with veracity and applaud the book's honesty.

* ellipses are useful in this area of writing.

Banned Books - Savita Kalhan

Offending a vocal minority, or arguably even a hostile majority, in the areas of politics, religion and morality can result in your book finding itself on the banned list. Banned Books week, launched by the American Libraries Association, ALA, to celebrate the freedom to read and to highlight the dangers of book censorship, has just come to an end. When I read Anne Rooney’s piece, "Banned: The Hidden Censorship of Children’s Books", it all brought back memories of what it was like living in a society where 95% of published books were banned.

For most of us in the UK, it’s an alien concept. Yes, we know that in the distant past books have been banned here, but not in modern times. We’ve got used to the choice, knowing that if a book is out there, the librarian or bookseller only needs the ISBN number and, hey presto, the book will arrive in the library, or in the bookshop, or through your letterbox in a matter of days.

Imagine a place where there are no books, no fiction to speak of, no poetry, no comics, no magazines, unless they have been vetted and deemed suitable by the Ministry of Information. It’s a terrible vision, too awful to contemplate.

For several years I lived in a country where there were no public libraries to speak of and only one bookshop. It would be two or three years later before the second bookshop opened.

This was back in 1991. Most books were banned. You could pick up the work of a few lucky authors – but the choice was limited. I remember John Grisham being stocked, but I think the covers of his books were pretty uncontroversial. If you wanted to read a half-decent book you had to bring it in to the country yourself. And that was a tall order. You had to smuggle it in.

So, my once or twice yearly trip to the UK involved buying lots and lots of books, and when I went through a phase of reading fantasy epics, well, you can imagine the problems that that caused. The trilogy was out of favour. Several thick books in a series were common. Yes, it gave me headaches, and I hadn’t even got as far as thinking about how heavy my suitcases would end up, the excess baggage payment, or the sweaty-palmed dread as I walked towards customs at the other end.

I spent several years hiding books in the lining of my suitcases, folding them inside clothes and secreting them about my person, so having to wear the voluminous black abayas did have a use! It was no laughing matter. A few hundred pounds of books were hidden away in our bags, and so much more. To be caught red-handed meant the books would in all probability be confiscated. If you were lucky you would get some of them back. It really depended on the covers, the book title and the mood of the customs man. If he found some of your books and he wasn’t feeling magnanimous, they would be sent straight to the Ministry of Information, where they disappeared in a bureaucratic black-hole while you desperately applied for the books to be returned to you. To be caught meant being deprived of several months of reading and that was a horror that I didn’t want to contemplate. It was a situation that faced us each time we disembarked with our bags and headed towards customs.

We shared our books with our friends. It was the kids I felt sorry for. If they didn’t go to the International School, then there was nothing out there for them. We left just before my son was one. It was the same with the local television. There was a dubbed children’s programme that had been cut to such an extent that the original half hour programme barely lasted ten minutes. As soon as satellite television became available, people installed it as fast as possible and from then on no one watched the local television stations.

Almost twenty years later and I can say there has been a change for the better. There are quite a few bookshops now and they stock a wide variety of books from crime to classics, and instead of taking up a small corner at the back of a shop and the rest of it being devoted to stationery, books now take up half a floor or more. There is still no teen or young adult fiction, so teens there still have to make the leap from children’s fiction to adult – much the same as we did here thirty, forty years ago. And there is even a lovely bookshop for younger children. That’s real progress, but it has taken time and perseverance to achieve that state.

My son will be studying To Kill a Mockingbird at school this year, which if he was in a certain state in the US he would be denied. He’s twelve. This summer he read, amongst several other books, The Hunger Games trilogy, Killing God, and White Tiger, the latter falling firmly into adult fiction. He’s a wide reader. Lots of kids are. He also knows when he’d rather put a book down and leave it for another year or two. He uses his mind and tries to think for himself. He wouldn’t stand a chance in the bible-belt.

Take a look at the banned books of 2010, not banned in the UK of course:- http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2010/sep/24/censorship-libraries#/?picture=367015209&index=9

So, why oh why would anyone want to slam doors shut when books are meant to open doors and open minds? One can only hope that over time, those people who like bashing the good book, will have their minds opened.
Go back to the days of censorship? Never.

(Apologies for the late posting! I got the day wrong...)

Call Me Irresponsible: Gillian Philip

I'm going to apologise in advance because this will be short, and much of it is based on this post from Pete Hautman, which is an incredibly interesting account of another author being 'uninvited' from a teen literary festival, and how Pete Hautman himself withdrew in solidarity. It isn't just the post that's interesting but the comment thread (I love it when a comment thread is smart and fascinating instead of just abusive).

The reason this is rushed and half-stolen (bear with me while I explain my tortuous train of thought) is because I've just arrived at the Edinburgh Book Festival, which is just as fabulous as always. Anyway, my new book FIREBRAND was published just in time to be on the shelves, and will be launched here at an event on the 27th, so I took the chance to vandalise some copies with a signature or ten. As I was doing this, along came a curious 9-year-old, who wanted to know if she could read the book. And since I won't let my own 9-year-olds read it, I said I didn't think that was a good idea. (Which wasn't that virtuous, actually. I sold one to her older brother and said she could read his copy in a few years.) But the point is that my (many would say underdeveloped) sense of responsibility did actually overcome my commercial instincts. I think all YA/teen authors would say the same. Wouldn't we?

This brings me back to Pete Hautman's post. I was uninvited once. I'd been asked to speak to primary pupils - just about the business of writing, and what was involved in doing it for a living, and how I went about it. I'd already explained that my work wasn't suitable for younger children, and they'd understood that, and agreed I'd simply talk about being a writer, and the invitation stood. But then they panicked. What would the parents say if they googled me? So the invitation was withdrawn at the last minute.

I'm still not sure how I feel about that, and I'd love to know what anyone else's perspective would be. I sympathise with the nervousness about a pack of angry parents; but I can't help feeling they were confusing me and the writing profession with my characters and storylines. Are we simply not trusted if we address certain issues in our work? Should organisers capitulate to a vocal minority (or even the prospect of them?)

Answers on a postcard, or possibly the comment box. And now I had better get this posted...

It's a violent world - get used to it! by Meg Harper

Tonight I've been reading Gillian's excellent post about knife crime, hot on the heels of the horribly disturbing report about the two brothers who attacked two other boys, hitting one on the head with a sink, forcing them to commit sexual acts and leaving one so battered he was unconscious. Last week I was at the Edinburgh Fringe watching a profoundly moving piece of theatre entitled 'In a thousand pieces' about sex traffiking – girls lured into thinking they will be moving to education and a better life and ending up being carted from British city to British city where they are raped 50 times a day and never see the outside world. As a volunteer school counselor in an inner city school, I have heard stories not so disturbing that they'd hit the Misery bookshelves, but far too violent and unpleasant to be accepted by a YA publisher. One of my own sons has been mugged twice. At the weekend I was at the Greenbelt Christian Arts Festival, listening to a talk about the myth of redemptive violence in Disney movies – time and again we see the only solution to the bad guy being to kill him or her. You worry about violent video games? Saturation in violence starts much younger than that – aren't you worried about that? That was the question being raised.

'But,' said a teenage voice from the floor, 'it's kill or be killed.'

'It's a violent world,' said another young man. 'You've got to get used to it – the sooner the better. Then it's not such a shock later.'

I got chatting to the latter young man on the way out. 'You really think that, do you?' I said. 'That it's a violent world – get used to it?'

'Yeh,' he said. 'There's nothing you can do – you've just got to get on with it. It's human nature.'

'But,' said a friend who was with me (a published poet incidently!) 'so's adultery. Should we just get used to that too?'

'Yeh,' said the young man. 'You might as well.'

On the other hand, I had a youth theatre parent complaining about the use of the word 'bastard' in a YT play being created by 12-14 year olds because she didn't want her daughter to grow up too soon- and I'm sure the editors I've met would be on her side.

I find all this profoundly depressing and I'm sure we all ask ourselves about our role as writers here – observers, moral guardians, activists, entertainers? But my other question is where are the books that reflect this world? I haven't read 'Crossing the Line' but it sounds like it does. Bali Rae's books do I think and possibly Kevin Brooks' and Keith Grey's – but there aren't many. When I suggested a series of books about a gang of young kids, such as those who kick around our estate, unsupervised and at hours of the night abhorrent to parents who are doing bedtime routines which end in a story and a kiss, my agent just laughed. No publisher would publish them because it is middle-class parents and librarians who buy books and they wouldn't want young children reading about dodgy street gangs, apparently. So we all end up reading about a very nice world inhabited by remarkably nice people to whom nothing terribly beastly ever happens – or we read fantasy. Sorry – is there a difference? Isn't it all fantasy?

I haven't met many editors but inevitably they've all been very well- educated and have been well and truly middle class. (They've all been stick-thin too, which is very annoying seeing as they have a sedentary lifestyle!) Most of them have been young and haven't had children. A significant number seem to be products of independent rather than state education. Do they know what it's like to be a kid growing up in today's violent world? I only have the vaguest of insights myself, despite having 4 teenagers and despite spending a large part of my working life working with young people. And we wonder why such a minority reads books.

It's great that 'Crossing the Line' is out there. But where are the books for younger children reflecting our modern world? Is there a raft of books that I have missed? Who is going to publish them? Supposing they are published, which librarians will stock them and which teachers will be bold enough to read them to their classes? And, most importantly, who is going to write them?

One of the endless conundrums of fiction. Do we read it to escape reality – or to embrace it? Do our readers want time away from their lives – or the reassurance that others have been there too?


PS. Sorry there's no picture! My computer died today and I'm using my husband's - and he doesn't have photos of me!!!

The Right to Write Anne Cassidy

I’m glad the Julie Myerson furore has died down. Now I feel that I can creep out of hiding and say what I really think. Myerson wrote a book about her family’s experience of her son’s drug use. I have listened to a number of interviews that she gave and read various articles in which she has been criticised. I was amazed, frankly, at the level of abuse she received. I don’t know Julie Myerson, I’ve never met her and I’ve never read any of her books. I am a writer though like her and I have to say that when she got all this abuse I felt some solidarity with her.

Who has the right to tell writers what they should write about?

I don’t think anyone should feel that they can restrict the subject areas that writers should or should not cover. Writers themselves should make that judgement. Writers of fiction use autobiographical material all the time. They fictionalise it. I know I have. Indeed I would argue that this is what makes my writing successful. When people read my stories they recognise situations and emotions that they may have experienced. They empathise with things that I describe.

Some of the responses to Julie Myerson’s book suggested that she should have written a novel about a mother with a teenage son who was into drugs. That would have been OK, people said.

But she wanted it to be non fiction, a memoir, a piece of autobiography. She wanted to write about her life as it was being lived. She wanted to write some truths about being a mother. What’s wrong with that? Oh! Everyone said, but she shouldn’t have written about her son! That’s criminal. How could someone write a truthful account of being a mother of a teenage boy without mentioning the teenage boy? How could she describe, analyse, inform without giving the reader the whole picture?

She shouldn’t have written it at all, many people said.

But how are we ever to find out the truth about family life if people are discouraged from telling it? Most parents know about the grim teenage years, the years when one’s much loved golden boys and girls turn into strangers. Is this not something to be written about?

Or is it only possible for adolescence to be written about in medical terms or ridiculed in sketch shows or over dramatised in soaps? What’s wrong with an honest account?

Some people said that she should have written the account anonymously and changed the names. But my interest in those real life articles always flags when I know that the John or Sue that I’m reading about is a made up name. How much more powerful these accounts are if you feel that you are reading about real people.

Julie Myerson wanted to lay open her family for inspection warts and all. I wouldn’t have done it (I hide in fiction) but as a writer I think she has the absolute right to do it.

Julie Myerson seems to have paid a heavy emotional price for publishing this book as does her husband and her teenage son and her other children.

But there is a heavy price to pay if we, as writers, start to say what should or shouldn’t be written about

The maundering old woman, kicked out of the republic - Anne Rooney

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My daughter wanted to talk about worthwhile careers - but not with me because I’m clearly not qualified to judge. Huh?

‘You’re a children’s writer,’ she said.

‘Isn’t that a worthwhile occupation?’

‘Duu-urrrr!’ (I’m not sure how to indicate that undulation of the word that carries all the weight of disdain – but you know how it goes.)

I asked what she thinks my job entails.

‘Telling lies about an imaginary bird’, she answered without hesitation.

Ever since Plato banished poets from the true Republic, writers have had to answer the charge of untruthfulness. Usually, it has been leveled against loftier works.

‘They’re not lies, they’re stories,’ I said.

‘But they’re not true,’ she countered.

I tried the line about deep psychological truth versus literal truth, dragging in Boccaccio as witness for the defence: ‘There was never a maundering old woman, sitting with others late of a winter's night at the home fireside, making up tales of Hell, the fates, Ghosts and the like … but did not feel there was a grain of truth in them.’

She eyed me suspiciously.

‘What’s maundering?’

Oh God, now she thinks I’m a maundering old woman. I wanted her to think I was Boccaccio.

‘He’s wrong,’ she said, with the inalienable confidence of the teenager. ‘They’re lies; they’re not true.’

Ah, but we know they are true, somehow. That’s why books are dangerous. It’s why books (and writers) have been burned throughout history. It’s why Arthur Miller faced the House of un-American Activities Committee, Salman Rushdie got his fatwa and the fabulous Wild Swans was banned in China. We liars tell dangerous truths that some people – tyrants, the Church, Americans – don’t want voiced. I imagine a bonfire of the vanities, with first-readers about luckless birds prominent.

But writers can’t be subversive all on their own. Writers rely on intelligent readers. If the book-banning authorities thought readers would be blind to the message, they would have no reason to worry. Writers know their readers want the key to the secret room; the best writers know how to slip them that key, even under the harshest regimes. And childhood can be one of the most repressive.

Some children feel they are in solitary confinement, locked away from anyone who can explain what is happening in their lives, to their bodies, in their minds. A story can show them that their experience is universal. Some children need not just a key, but a file hidden in a pie. A good book, whether it’s a story or a fact book, can be the pie. That’s why the job is worthwhile. We don’t only tell lies about imaginary birds – we try to hide files in pies, too. We don’t need to make the files – they’re universal – we just cook the pies. Which is lucky, as I have a cooker but not a furnace.

Arming the Imagination - John Dougherty

Boys like guns.

I know I’m dealing in generalisations here; but by and large it’s true to say that most boys, however gentle and peaceable, are fascinated by weaponry and in particular by weapons that go ‘bang!’ Give them the chance and they’ll play with toy guns; deny them the chance and they’ll build them out of Lego.

And yet for some reason the current consensus seems to be that they shouldn’t have the chance to read about them.

I say ‘for some reason’; I assume the rationale is that we don’t want guns to be glamorised. I don’t want that either; but the problem is that, to most boys, guns already are glamorous, and making them a taboo subject - no playing with them; no reading stories containing them - will only serve to deepen the mystery and attraction surrounding the things.

Current thinking, however, is that guns are Bad (with which I agree) and that reading about them will turn children into Bad People (with which I don’t). And therefore we shouldn’t let guns into children’s books.

This way of thinking can lead to problems for the author trying to write for boys. Ever noticed how the British Secret Service is happy to send the fourteen-year-old Alex Rider into all kinds of potentially lethal situations, but won’t ever give him a gun? I think Anthony Horowitz has handled that particular dilemma very skilfully, but for me it requires disbelief to be suspended just that little bit more than should be necessary.

I didn’t realise how much of an issue guns in children’s fiction had become until, as a newly-published author, I showed my agent an idea I was working on and was told, “You won’t be able to get that published unless you get rid of the gun.” Since it was hardly plausible that my imagined villain would be able to keep four hundred people quiet, compliant and unresisting with the threat of a good hard smack, that was the end of that idea. It stung all the more because I’d intended, when my hero was faced with the gun, to draw a contrast between the fantasy of such a potent weapon and the reality of being threatened with one.

This wasn’t always such an issue, of course. In Treasure Island, Jim Hawkins is armed; the Famous Five are threatened with guns more than once. Yet now it appears that children must be protected from so much as thinking about them - although it’s apparently okay to give an eleven-year-old fictional hero a weapon which can be pointed at someone else and discharged with lethal force, just as long as it’s made of holly with a phoenix feather core. But is there any significant difference? Some will say yes, guns are real and wands aren’t; but as a child I never equated the toy guns with which I played, or the fictional guns I read about, with the very real armalite rifles carried around the streets of my home-town by the soldiers from the nearby barracks.

Now let me just reiterate: I’m not in favour of glamorising guns. But in a time when research is suggesting that maybe letting kids play with toy guns is not such a bad idea (see here, here or here), perhaps we should think about the possible benefits of allowing them to read about fictional guns, too - or at least the disadvantages of not allowing them.

Because as Steve Skidmore said to me recently, stopping boys from reading about guns won’t make them non-violent. But it may make them non-readers.