Happy birthday to Joe (or me) by Keren David

(I wrote this entire blog post, and then realised that it is FEBRUARY and not JANUARY. Oh well. Just add one month to everything. This is what happens when you combine work, life and writing.) 

Three days ago I celebrated my 10th anniversary  (err, and one month)  as a published author of Young Adult fiction.
On January 5 2010 my debut, When I Was Joe, was officially launched into the world - on a day so snowy that I couldn't even go to a bookshop to see if it was there. Instead a lovely blogger held a virtual book launch party for me.
Ten years (and a month!) on, there was no time to party. I have a day job, and on the 5th I was at work until 7pm. My writing has to fit around it, which is quite a challenge.

When I Was Joe is contemporary YA, told in first person present tense. It's about a 14-year-old boy who gets taken into police protection after witnessing a stabbing which leads to the death of another boy. The narrator, Tyler, takes on a new identity (Joe) and starts a new life. It's a thriller, but also an examination of identity, of how much you can leave behind when you try and start again. 

I say 'is', because When I Was Joe is still in print. I still get emails about it, I am still asked to come into schools to speak about it. Today I got one such email, from someone who volunteers in a large comprehensive school. She told me about a boy who hates reading, and has only ever read one book that he enjoyed. It was -  I am proud to say -  When I Was Joe. I was thrilled, of course,  but not 100% surprised. I have heard the same before. Somehow I managed to write a book that is enjoyed by boys who don't like reading. Many of them have written to tell me so. (It's quite funny, because I wrote it for a girl  - 13-year-old me -  who loved reading, and would have absolutely devoured a book about a good-looking boy in terrible jeopardy. In fact, several of my books fit that description. I'm not sure what this says about me)

I am not saying this to show off (OF COURSE I AM)  -  well, not just to show off. I think there's a wider point to make about contemporary British teen fiction. Because, I'm sad to say, we rarely feel valued. Our books are often dismissed (by people who don't read them) as dreary 'issue' books. Because we work hard to write authentic voices, we are often not seen as literary. And because the world moves fast, its often assumed that our books cannot become classics, that they are effectively throwaway fare, soon to be superseded by the next 'issue' book.  And, as well, somehow contemporary voices are just more interesting if they aren't too close to home. American voices in particular. I'm not sure why that is.

When I Was Joe did not get me a big advance or a big marketing campaign, or any of those things that a debut author might hope for. I sometimes wonder what might have happened if it had. But it has achieved exactly what I hoped for it. It entered the lives of many young people, it spoke to them, it made them feel seen and heard, it made them think. Some of them had words from it tattooed on their skin. Maybe (who knows) it helped a few of them think about their choices, about knives, gangs, fighting, violence. Certainly, I've been told by more than one librarians from Young Offender Institutions that it was a much-stolen book from their libraries. I've been told that it was a book that passed from one teen to another, that it was a 'cult' book, that 'everyone' read it. I've no idea how widespread that was. But all the prizes it won were voted for by young people.

It was translated into German and Brazilian Portuguese -  I regularly hear from Brazilian readers (who are lovely and chatty) and rarely from Germans. It has had three different UK covers, and it spawned two sequels. I suppose, if I'd had a different sort of career, I'd have continued writing similar thrillers. But I didn't. Partly because I like trying different things, and partly because of the 25 publishers who turned it down. They couldn't all be wrong, I reckoned, what if there were no market for this kind of book? Now, you know what, I think that they were probably wrong. But I'm glad that I kept on experimenting, testing myself as a writer, trying new things. I've published 11 books since 2010. I'm waiting for the edits for book 12, and starting to think about book 13.

Ty, if he were real, would be 26 now, as I started writing the book in 2008. I sometimes think about him, where would he be? What would he be doing? And his little sister Alyssa (born in one of the sequels) would be nine. One day, I tell myself, I'll write about her.

I would love to think that the subject matter of the book was no longer relevant to young readers. That knife crime had not multiplied, that young witnesses were not having to be given new identities, fearful for their lives for doing the write thing, that our criminal justice system was not in danger of collapse, that boys like Ty felt safe and secure on the streets of our towns and cities. Alas, things have gone worse. And now the 2010 mayor of London -  mentioned in the book on page 358 as "the weirdo blond guy off the telly" - is our prime minister. He was suggesting more youth facilities were needed then - boxing and Latin. Let's see if he remembers that now.

There are things I'd do differently now. The name, unfortunately, is one of them. I love it  -  but everyone thinks it is My Name is Joe. That's a 1998 film by Ken Loach, set in Glasgow, I say. Or it's a 2000 album by R&B singer Joe. It's one of those things. I'm used to it now.

Contemporary novels age badly, I've told, I'd regret mentioning 2008 politicians, singers, whatever. But I grew up reading books which had been written 10, 20, 30 years before I was born, and not worrying about it. Eventually contemporary morphs into historical. And I'm hoping that Joe will still be around in another 10 years at least.
 And anyway, I have a new book due out in exactly (yes, February!) one year.

Barmier & barmier: our Kafkaesque approach to fiction & teens - by Rowena House

Trawling through online teaching advice for the now-defunct A-level course in creative writing (with the intention of scavenging the best bits to help design my own fiction writing lessons) is a sad and salutary experience.

England’s last A-level creative writing students will re-sit their exams this summer and then that’s it. All over. 16-to-18 year olds who want to write their own original stories now have to be satisfied with a short module in another course.

Meanwhile, 16-18 year olds who fluffed their first English language GCSE still have to write an original story as part of their re-sit regardless of how difficult they find it.

My heart goes out to both groups of young people.

During its brief years of existence, the exam board which offered the creative writing A-level, AQA, said this about it: “Creative writing is a distinct discipline in higher education. It encourages the development of skills that are essential for further study and a range of professional careers. This A-level enables aspiring writers to start on the path to professional practice and is equally useful for anyone interested in improving their creative and critical thinking and communication skills.”

Amen to that!

Thousands of teachers and students signed a petition to stop it being axed.

In the past few weeks I, too, have seen for myself how well-thought out the course was, and how different to English language and literature, despite the Department for Education insisting it overlapped both.

Back in my day, creative writing wasn’t an option at school or sixth-form. But then, nor were Netflix, YouTube, Snapchat, What’s App etc. Instead, by 16, I had devoured hundreds of books. The local public library had been my bolt-hole as a child - as for so many writers. Then, collectively, my teenage friends and I discovered Tolkien and Middle Earth became our escape, our go-to safe space when being a teen got too tough.

Today, with the Harry Potter generation grown up, I can’t find a contemporary book that is shared in that same, immerse way.

For films, there are the Marvel franchises. The Twilight series and The Hunger Games also still seem widely known among teens. But a novel? By a contemporary author? So far, whenever I’ve asked, all I’ve drawn are blanks.

Now, back at that defunct A-level, among the many excellent bits of advice I found in its study programme was a recommendation that students follow authors on Twitter, and discover through them the immense wealth of blogs about creative writing written by professional writers.

In recent weeks, any student who’d followed that advice might well have stumbled across a fascinating discussion initiated by journalist Charlotte Eyre, of The Bookseller, involving two top literary agents, Joanna Moult and the founder of the Skylark agency, Amber Caraveo, along with Waterstones, Piccadilly, and various published and pre-published writers. The subject: a 21.5% drop in Young Adult novel sales last year, and associated issues surrounding  the younger teen book market.

This exchange included one tweet from Waterstones complaining about the dearth of books for the early teen market (!?!). Amber, in reply, suggested that Waterstones could make these books more visible by having a dedicated space for teen readers, which (rather surprisingly, imho) drew a positive response from the Piccadilly branch.

This whole chicken-and-egg discussion (are there too few books written for early teens or not enough exposure to generate a viable market?) reminded me of a debate I heard years ago about motor bikes in the USA. (This is from memory so please take the details with a pinch of salt.) The USA had, apparently, banned imports of smaller Japanese bikes to protect sales of the bigger US models like their famous Harley Davidsons. The trouble was, younger riders couldn’t afford big Harleys, and without access to cheaper Japanese bikes, fewer people became bikers so demand for Harleys fell over time.

Something similar is, presumably, happening with young people’s fiction.

Parents and grandparents still buy middle-grade books for children, while primary schools also actively promote reading for pleasure to these age groups. But then keen readers, who want to make their own choices at 11-to-12 years old, can’t find books to suit them. By that age, too, secondary school is demanding more and more of their time, and the manifold digital lures of our age are increasingly tempting as well.

Little wonder, then, if many of them stop reading for pleasure entirely. Like the USA bikers who never bought a Harley, even when they were old and rich enough to afford one, so these once keen readers are lost to the world of fiction. They aren’t around to discover YA, except if it’s linked to a Hollywood film, profits for which seem to have peaked with Twilight and The Hunger Games, hence we haven’t seen a really big YA novel for years.

I know this isn’t a new or an original argument, not by a long way. But given the well-documented drop-off in reading among teens, plus recent evidence of weak YA sales, it does seem to me that trends in the publishing world have ramifications for young people’s education, and therefore their job prospects.

If, for example, decisions about the content of English language exams rest on outdated assumptions about teens’ reading habits, then GCSEs are in fact far harder than they might appear to adults who come from a reading-for-pleasure generation.

As adults, we might bemoan this lost art of reading; we might even be right to do so. But to demand that young people write 500-word stories under exam conditions (and condemn them to try again and again if they can’t) when we couldn’t dream of flying a drone via our smart phones, let alone how to make a YouTube video out of our drone footage, then rig our phones to relay that film to a PS4 while simultaneously playing music, smacks to me of a highly blinkered mind set.

à plus, Louise Rennison! - Clémentine Beauvais

Keren has already written a lovely post about it, but I still wanted to add a small tribute to Louise Rennison who died last month. Being part of the 'Georgia Nicholson generation', it was moving to see what seemed like the whole of Facebook (well, at least the female half of it) shedding tears, but also sharing the funniest extracts, at the news. It's difficult to think about Louise Rennison without smiling - even at such a sad time.

I've never actually read Georgia Nicholson's diary in English. In the early 2000s, when the first book was left for me under the Christmas tree by a prescient Santa, it was in the form of Mon nez, mon chat, l'amour et moi: "My nose, my cat, love and me": a much more prudish title than the original. I read, reread and rereread the whole series in French throughout my teenage years.

Thankfully, Catherine Gibert's translation for Gallimard was exceptionally good. It takes a bit of genius to translate funny books in general, but it takes a lot of genius to translate funny books for teenagers. To keep up with Rennison, Gibert had to make up many words (not an easy exercise in French), twist and break traditional syntax (even less so); she pretty much invented a 'funny teenage voice' in French.

The neon-coloured covers were a bit of a novelty in the very ivory/cream/white aesthetic of the French literary landscape of the time (even for children):

Gallimard had hired, to illustrate them, one of the punchiest and most famous French female cartoonists, Claire Brétécher, whose legendary renditions of slightly ugly, very endearing teenagers fit perfectly with the theme. 

At the time, there were few authors in teenage literature who rang true, who were funny and modern and spoke to us. Louise Rennison was one of them, and my friends and I couldn't get enough of it. But interestingly, while everyone in the UK says that they found themselves in the books - that they identified with Georgia - for us French girls it was a very foreign world. We didn't have all-girls' schools, we didn't have uniforms, we had much less P.E. (seriously, I couldn't understand why Georgia was doing sports pretty much everyday - in France we had 2 hours a week, and spent them half-heartedly playing ping-pong). And, at least in Paris, we didn't have those residential streets with cats sitting on walls - though I was familiar with that concept from Harry Potter. And what??? teenagers drove motorbikes???

Only later (when I arrived in the UK) did I realise that Georgia Nicholson's diary also gently mocked the British suburban middle-class, with its bored yummy mummies, its numerous opportunities for gossip, its populations of slightly immodest teenage girls looking for love by rolling up their uniform skirts. All of this very British lore felt just as unreal to me as the daily routine of Narnian fawns.

Yet it was still hilarious, and I still identified, because there's no need for social reality to make immediate sense when everything about the characters and their reactions feels so true. Rennison's teenagers were entirely contextual, and absolutely universal. They could not have been anything else than British, and yet they were every teenager in the world's best friends.

Louise Rennison was a teenage-literature genius, a redeemer of sad days, an exquisite social satirist, one of the best comedy writers in this country. I'm very sad I never got to meet her and thank her in person.

_____________________________________

Clementine Beauvais writes in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia.

Fifty Five Books in 2015 by Savita Kalhan

In 2015 I did my usual thing of trying to read at least fifty five books, and I managed to reach my target. I love reading, but sometimes work and life can get in the way, so having a target and keeping a record helps keep me on track.

It's also interesting to look back at what I've spent the year reading. Some of it is work related, of course, and some constitutes research. But it's definitely quite an eclectic list that ranges from middle grade books, to teen books, young adult, and general fiction. 

Last year I also set up a teen reading group at my local library, and what I discovered was that the kids in my group not only share my love of reading, but that, like me, they love a huge range of location, theme and genres in the books they read.

Interestingly, what they don't like is being misled by the blurb on the back of a book - especially if it's written in a very different style to the book. They like an honest blurb that more accurately describes the book. Some of them like chapter headings, some of them glance at the last page - just to make sure that the ending isn't going to be one they're not going to like, which can make them put the book down before the end.

My group are mainly younger teens, so although we did shadow the Carnegie for a while, we moved on within a few months. We discussed all the books on the long list and short list, and the group read several of them, but there were a few books that they could not finish because, in the kids' words, 'they were for much older kids.' I'm glad they tried them and knew when to put them down. Some of them will come back to them in a few years, I'm sure.

So here are a few of mine and my teen library group's favourite reads last year:

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

Silent Saturday by Helen Grant

Looking at the Stars by Jo Cotterill

I Heard the Owl Call my Name by Margaret Craven
Buffalo Soldier by Tanya Landman

Cow Girl by G R Gemin

Whale Boy by Nicola Davies

Liccle Bit by Alex Wheatle

And some more:

Half Lives by Sara Grant
Lockwood and Co: The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

The Fastest Boy in the World by Elizabeth Laird
Apple and Rain by Sarah Crossan

Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sachar

She is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick
The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo by Catherine Johnson
13 Hours by Narinder Dhami

I wish I could fit in more than fifty five books. Maybe I'll raise the bar to sixty books this year...

Happy reading in 2016!


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Books for young teens by Savita Kalhan

A few months back I volunteered at my local library to start a teen reading group, and I'm happy to say it's going strong. I've got twelve kids in the group from four different schools, five boys and seven girls, and new friendships have formed, as well as lots of book recommendations between them.

When the kids arrive, our table in the corner of the library is covered in library books for them to look at. They all read the blurbs on the back of the books and the opening pages, and then decide which of the books they want to read first. Interestingly, when they return for the next meeting, they have often felt that some of the books have not matched the blurb on the back of the books when they've come to read them. They felt that they were led to expect one thing and the book turned out to be very different to that, which put them off the book a bit.

The teen reading group has been shadowing the Carnegie, but not all the books have been suitable or appropriate for the group - their words, not mine! I don't believe in censoring books. I was never censored or my reading overseen by an adult. Because the reality is, kids will not read something that they feel is too "old" for them. Although the teens in my reading group have really enjoyed some of the books, they have also put down books that they felt were a bit too much for them. It's great that they tried them and I know that they will come back to some of them when they're a little older.

The majority of the kids in the group are aged 13, so they are young teenagers, going from middle grade to teen. Young adult books are a little beyond them at the moment, again this is coming from the kids themselves.

They like all genres and are happy to try any book that I suggest. I'd love to be able to compile a long list of books that have a broader appeal for that particular age group. I do have a list, but I know it can be better, so I'm asking for suggestions and recommendations in the comments section please.

Calling Teen Readers by Savita Kalhan

After attending a few meetings fighting library cuts in Barnet, I decided to get involved in my local library in a small way. Finchley Church End Library had no teen reading group, so with the help of the head librarian, the wonderful Steve Saunders, I decided to try and set one up. Flyers were sent round to all the local schools, and we were hopeful that it would attract a few kids.

Last week we had our first meeting. I went prepared and armed with lists of books. The librarian had reserved books from the Carnegie shortlist for me, so that the teens could have a look at each book before deciding which one they wanted to read and discuss first.

I got to the library early and set up the table. And then I waited. Ten minutes into the time, no one had arrived and I began to wonder whether there would in fact be no reading group because there was just no interest.

And then four kids arrived! And they were all into books and reading and excited to share what they liked and what they didn’t, what they had read over the last year and what they wanted to read. There were three girls and one boy, and all of them said they had friends who would love to join and could they let them know so they could come next time.

Of course I said yes, happily.

The kids decided that they did want to unofficially shadow the Carnegie and the book they voted to read first was When Mr. Dog Bites by Brian Conaghan (I think the swear words in the book only played a small part in that choice!). Our next session will be discussing the book and the issues it raises. The kids hadn’t heard of either Tourette’s or Asperger’s, so we’ll be talking about both of those conditions.

They have also decided that next they want to read Apple and Rain by Sarah Crossan, and then next Buffalo Soldier by Tanya Landman.

 

Hopefully, from these small beginnings the teen book club will grow and thrive, and I’m looking forward to sharing with them the many amazing teen books that are out there.

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Teenagers aren’t scary – Lari Don

I spend a lot of time in primary schools, chatting to upper primary age children about adventures and monsters, heroines and heroes, myths and legends, and my Fabled Beast Chronicles. As a writer and storyteller I get on well with 10 year olds - we seem to enjoy the same kinds of stories.

The wonderful thing about primary age kids is their open joyful enthusiasm about their own imaginations.

So a roomful of 10 year olds, or 9 year olds, or 8 year olds (or 4 year olds, when I’m reading one of my picture books) is not scary for me. Not even if there are several hundred of them in a large school hall. That’s my natural environment, as an on-the-road author.

However, a room full of teenagers? That’s scary, isn’t it? It’s certainly not my natural environment, or not until recently.

Because I published a teen novel this year, the YA thriller Mind Blind, and this month, I took Mind Blind on tour, chatting to widely varying numbers of teenagers in secondary school libraries, English classrooms and school canteens.

And I thought this would be completely different from talking to readers in primary schools.

I really did expect teenagers in large groups to be scary. More critical perhaps, less open. Taller than me, certainly. Wearing more makeup and fancier shoes than me…

And I’ve certainly discovered that secondary school events are very different from primary events, but not for the reasons I expected.

So long as I make it clear I’m not trying to teach them anything, that I’m just there to share my passion for ‘what happens next’, and once I’ve shown that I’m not concerned about rules or exams, that I’m prepared to admit mistakes and make a bit of an idiot of myself at the front of the room, then the secondary pupils are usually very open and enthusiastic about sharing their own thoughts, ideas and questions. Just like the primary school pupils.

One striking difference from primary events is that as young writers grow, as they read and write more, they begin to develop a good working knowledge of their own writing style and opinions, which makes for fascinating discussions about different and equally valid ways of planning / not planning stories, what makes a satisfying ending, and how to treat characters and readers.

But the main difference I’ve found between primary and secondary events is the timetable! I usually spend an hour or more with primary children. I can usually see them from the start of the school day until playtime or from the end of playtime until lunchtime, or a nice long chat after lunchtime. Primary teachers can be delightfully flexible, and are usually very keen for me to have as long as possible with their pupils.

But in secondary schools the timetable is the boss. I may be told that I can see the pupils for period 3, which is 10.48 to 11.36 exactly, and that the class will have to go to their teacher to register first, so that might really be 10.54 to 11.36, and that they have to be packed and ready to leave when the bell goes, so that’s more likely to be from 10.54 to 11.32…

So I don’t get nearly as long as I’d like. I can’t just blether on, I have to be more organised, more focused, and get to the meat of what I want to do faster. But once I have got my head round the much shorter session time, then it’s fine. Because really, wherever I am, I’m just chatting to people about stories, whatever age those people are.

So now that I’ve accepted my subservience to the tyranny of the timetable, I’ve realised that teenagers aren’t that scary at all. Not even 170 of them in an echoey old school canteen. They are equally as imaginative and enthusiastic and full of adventure as primary pupils. They may just need a little extra encouragement to step out of the confines of the timetable themselves and let their imaginations fly free.

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 22 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. Lari’s website 
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Childish Things? by Anna Wilson

I have read a lot of teen fiction this summer because I like to keep up to date, and also so that I can recommend titles to my own teenage children.

Actually, who am I kidding? I read these books because they are so damn good! I would go so far as to say that often so-called “teen fiction” is better written and more original than that on offer for adults.

Of course I am not alone in thinking this. Gillian Tett, writing in the Financial Times earlier this week, discussed the fact that:

“Booksellers now estimate that almost half of young adult books are being read by people who are over the age of 18.”

She pondered on why this was, coming to the conclusion that:

“Teenagers now face a world where boundaries are becoming blurred on many fronts [. . .] the lines between childhood and adulthood, good and evil, friend and foe, male and female are no longer clear-cut. Once teenagers expected to know what “side” they were on (even if this was the anti-adult side); today, the world is no longer black and white. There is category collapse.”

“Category collapse” is exactly right if by that Tett means that we are reading back and forth across the age ranges. However, exactly the opposite has happened when it comes to how books are shelved. The boundaries that have been created to delineate adult novels from those considered to be for teens are surely artificial?

What makes, say, Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden an adult novel but puts E Lockhart’s We Were Liars squarely in the teen category? Morton’s book tells a story from the point of view of characters between the ages of ten and ninety, so it cannot be the age of the protagonists. The subject-matter in Morton’s novel would not be an issue for teens either, and as the mother of a fifteen-year-old girl I would almost prefer her to read Morton’s book for the content than some other teen titles which have much more troublesome subject matter. Equally I delighted in the writing in Lockhart’s novel and gasped aloud at the reveal and have been recommending it to adults and teens alike.

Why was Claire King’s The Night Rainbow published for adults but Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur for children? Both books tell a story about grief, loss and depression from the point of view of a young child and both have content that is perfectly suitable for young teens. There are many other examples I could give, some of which, such as Joanna Nadin’s Eden, have been promoted by publishers as a “cross-over” read, openly acknowledging that age-banding is a conceit, and at times a not very helpful one. And what about Plath’s The Bell Jar and du Maurier’s Rebecca . . .?

Is the answer that, actually, “category collapse” has happened in general, across the media and in our choice of leisure time activities? I am quite happy to sit and watch Friday Night Dinner or The Big Bang Theory with my kids, for example, and they will happily watch The Village or Downton Abbey with me. I will read a book and hand it on to them and they will do the same. We will go as a family to swing between the trees at Go Ape or take surfing lessons together. None of this was the case when I was growing up. Kids’ books were for kids and kids’ activities were for kids. Adults kept their lives quite separate.

Nowadays, though, we seem to actively turn away from the edict: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

I, for one, am happy with this “category collapse” as it gives me licence to stay in touch with my inner child and even (she says, hopefully) to be in with a chance of understanding my own children’s lives. I also feel that the calibre of writing in teen fiction is excellent and this is something that the world has woken up to.

We are giving the “adults” a run for their money, and this can only be a good thing.

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