Richard Peck on the beating heart of what we do as children's writers

If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.

When Richard Peck said that, I would have applauded had I not been typing as fast I could to get down his every meaty line.

In all his books, he said, he always has an older character."I always put old people in, just in case there are no old people in my readers's lives. Just in case they no longer have to write thank you notes to their grandparents. A book, like a school, should provide what is no longer available in life ."

Mr. Peck was speaking at the 2010 SCBWI Symposium in Bologna. He is now 76 and it is nine years since he won the Newbery Medal for A Year Down Yonder, a book that few publishers would embrace these days because not only is it of a very specific regional bent, its lead character is a big fat and old lady, plus there is not a single handsome bloodsucker in sight.

His theme had somewhat evolved from the announced  topic "The Right Books Right Now" to what drives or should drive us children's authors to write for "a generation who knows no earlier century, who knows no time but now, and who recognizes no government but the peer group."

Says Mr. Peck: "We write for a generation we never were because ours is a higher calling: a deeper craft", trying to woo "a readership whose facebooks glow hot into the night long after their parents are fast asleep".

He listed what was required of us in breathtaking language:

• "We have crossed  terrible minefields of our own making ... the opening mine of the opening line. Are we writing with invitational simplicity without a word to slow it down?" He cites as an example of an opening with "invitational simplicity" a line from EB White's Charlotte's Web: "Where is Papa going with that axe?" 
• "Like no other authors we can doom ourselves before we start, fall at the first fence ... when the thickets of our dark woods see the adverbs coiling to strike. Boys don’t use adverbs. Boys live in an unqualified word." He quotes Mark Twain: "If you see an adverb, shoot it." 
• "We have to write as the readers. We cannot write as ourselves ...We must write nearer to our readers and farther from ourselves than any other kind of writer.". 
• "Character development is the beating heart of what we do." 
• "Dialogue is best written standing up. It improves the pace ... I write with my feet. That way I can act out my scenes when I get to the kids. If you are unwilling to get up and act out any of your scenes, you will be reduced to writing for adults 
• "The hard truth that a story must entertain first before it can do anything else ... and what entertains you and me doesn’t necessarily entertain the young."  
• "A story for the young must move in a straight line with hope at the end."  
• "The hook upon all our stories hang is the universal truth that actions have consequences. If actions have no consequences, plots fall apart. If actions have no consequences, it isn't a book ... it's a remedial programme. But being responsible for the consequences of your actions is the least interesting truth to the young ... and so we have to be canny and devious."

Wow.

It was not so much a keynote as a call to arms

And our responsibility is great - because what we create on the page is like a magic mirror that helps our young reader see the human being they can become.

Researching Richard Peck on the internet, I was delighted to discover he had written an autobiography Anonymously Yours. In it, he posted the following, a kind of Reader's Creed:

I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody; 

I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life;

I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning myself, and I wouldn't mind a map;

I read because I have friends who don't, and young though they are, they're beginning to run out of material;

I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time for me to start packing;

I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready.

This is why we write for children.

SCBWI Bologna 2008: Comic Books are not just for Klingon-Speakers

When characters on the Simpsons expressed surprise that Spiderman creator Stan Lee was still alive, the graphic-novel obsessed Comic Book Guy said:

Stan Lee never left. I'm beginning to think that his mind is no longer in mint condition.

Now I personally am glad that Stan Lee never went away - Spiderman was (IS) my all time favourite superhero. But the whole mint condition thing, the fact that Comic Book Guy (who once translated Lord of the Rings into Klingon) even exists, demonstrates the problem with comic books.

Comic books never had a good reputation with teachers, parents and librarians. And now, the readership has been totally taken over by adults - many of whom are of a type similar to Comic Book Guy.

But things are changing.

In 2007, the Michael L. Printze Book of the Year (the Oscar for YA book writers) went to the graphic novel American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.

Recently, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by David Selznick - a graphic novel published in the form of a hardback - won the 2008 Caldecott Medal.

In May, Philip Pullman publisher David Fickling will be launching a weekly comic anthology. Here's a link to the DFC's about page. Hmm. There is something familiar about the art on that DFC page.

In 2006 David Saylor - who published Hugo Cabret and is known for his art direction of the Harry Potter US editions - launched Scholastic Graphix, a comic book imprint for the world's largest children's publisher. The New Big Idea of Scholastic Graphics is actually an Old Big Idea. That kids love comics. Here he is interviewed by the All Age Reads blog

The first thing I'd love to change is the perception that “comics aren’t for kids anymore”. Perhaps it would be wiser to say: "Comics ARE for kids (and for everyone else, too)". In the push to make comics respectable and noteworthy, comics for kids have been somewhat ignored in the last 20 years. I believe strongly that now is the time for publishers to create wonderful comics for kids: we’re poised for an explosion of graphic novels, and perhaps even a new golden age.

David told the Bologna SCBWI conference that it was at the massive comic convention Comicon that he had a Pauline moment about kids and comic books. Here was a "major pop culture event in the US", an "incredibly vibrant world". He "remembered how strongly connected to comic books I had been as an eight and nine year old" - not with superheroes but with character-based comics like Little Lotta (pictured right) and Richie Rich.

Scholastic is the largest distributor of children's books in the world. Why were we not publishing comic books? Why were there no comics being produced for kids?

The result of this epiphany was Graphix, Scholastic's imprint devoted to comic books - which launched in 2005.

David set out to find comic books that, because of the graphic novel's skew towards adults, had not reached the kid's market. Graphix's big success is the Bone comic books by Jeff Smith, that pretty much already had achieved cult status as a black and white, self-published comic book. Jeff's website explains:

Apparently, BONE was one of the most requested graphic novels in libraries across the country. By kids! Now, if you’ve followed my career in comics, you know I’ve fought against BONE being labeled a children’s book. Mostly for marketing reasons - -today’s comic book readers are mostly adults, and a kid’s comic wouldn’t survive long - but also because I wasn’t writing for kids ... (but) the kids found BONE and claimed it. They got enough librarians looking for it, that Ingram [the library distributors] called us. When trade magazines like Booklist, Library Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly began reporting on the high circulations of graphic novels and teachers’ discovery that kids actually were reading them, big publishers like Scholastic took notice.

Graphix adapted existing bestsellers like The Babysitters' Club and Goosebumps to the comic book format.

David had some negotiating to do to get booksellers to put comic books into their children's sections, drawing a lot of knowing merriment from the audience when he said:

Comic book stores are not friendly to women and kids

Librarians were the first to take the new comic books on board. Children were easy. Teachers less so. But David predicts the dawning of a "golden age of comics for kids" as the gatekeepers of our children's reading life realise that "visual literacy" has a role to play in keeping kids reading.

As a child, I was the proud owner of a towering comic book collection - and read classics like Lorna Doone after being introduced to them in Classic Comics. Little Lotta and Spiderman didn't do me any harm either.

Words can't express how wonderful it is to witness the return of comics for kids! As Comic Book Guy would say:

There is no emoticon for what I am feeling!

Bologna 2008: News

When I was a journalist covering rather exciting events such as the fall of the Marcos dictatorship or communist guerrillas in the Philippines I used to despair at my lack of insight.

"But what does it mean?" I'd ask myself as I flailed around with my reporter's notebook and my battered camera. "What does it all mean?"

My current incarnation as a wannabe children's writer doesn't demand an immediate interpretation of events around me. Which is a relief. If you would like to know what actually happened at the Bologna book fair you'll have to turn to Publishing News where Graham Marks (a YA author himself) has filed a report. Interesting to see that a book featured during the SCBWI pre-Bologna conference found a UK publisher

... in an exception that proves the rule, Frances Lincoln's Janetta Otter-Barry saw a project at a gathering on Sunday - Jana Novotny Hunter's When Daddy's Truck Picks Me Up - and agreed a deal with its creator there and then, on a napkin…

Jana gave a talk to the SCBWI conference on picture books through the ages. She told us about her own book, When Daddy's Truck Picks Me Up, about a boy looking forward to the arrival of his father, who is coming to collect him. It was an ingenuous idea and beautifully illustrated. Well done, Frances Lincoln for spotting it!

I also enjoyed LookyBook's report on Bologna, which dropped into my inbox along with its latest titles:

Leather-clad Punks page through books next to publishing executives in suits and ties—the contrast of people is as fascinating as the books themselves. Massive crowds circulating between stalls of books, with an boundless flow of publishers, authors, illustrators, and literary agents making deals—complemented by eager portfolio-toting artists looking to get published. Ironically, because the show is closed to the public, the only type of person you won’t see is an actual child!

Lookybook is pleased to report that the picture book is alive, well, and still speaking the universal language of a child's imagination.

The Bookseller suggests that Bologna activity in the area of young fiction tended away from fantasy:

Fiction, especially series fiction, remained strong. Maeve Banhan, RH rights director, said: "It feels as though there is a definite move away from fantasy."

This, even as the high profile Sarah Davies, Harper Collins editor-turned-agent for the newly emergent Greenhouse Literary Agency, declares that:

Horror is the new fantasy.

So much to see, so much to tell.

But what does it all mean?

If I knew that, I would still be a journalist.

Bologna 2008: a selection from the Artists' Wall

One of the unmissable features of the Bologna Children's Book Fair is the Artist's Wall, a series of hoardings near the entrance where artists pin up their work and their business cards in the hope of making contact with clients. Here is a sampling from this year's batch.

Even late in the afternoon of the second day there were still artists pinning up their work.





Illustrators had so many creative ways of leaving contact details.


You could look and look for hours and still keep finding something wonderful to look at.

Now I've got my own Sarah McIntyre

My Bologna roommate Sarah sent this cartoon of me in Bologna.

I've never been described as foxy before but Sarah totally captures my spikey-headed, bleary-eyed late night writing habit.

Thrilled to have my own Sarah McIntyre! Thank you!

Bologna 2008: and then there was the loot

Bring a small suitcase. On wheels. That’s the standard advice to writers and illustrators attending the Bologna book fair. There’s so much loot to be had. Not only are there catalogues and posters and postcards but if you are very, very nice, people give you things. Especially if you attend the last day of the fair when everyone’s taking down their stall and have no desire to ship their books home.

I didn’t manage to attend the last day of the fair but I tried to be very, very nice to people.

And they gave me things.

Here’s a list of what I got:

1. A Babette Cole How to DVD

I am probably the only person in the world who can say I rescued uber picture book person Babette Cole (Mummy Laid an Egg, Doctor Dog) TWICE.

Well, I didn’t exactly snatch her from the jaws of death but it came close.

Well, I sort of fixed her computer problems.

Which makes me practically a super hero.

Here’s what I look like in a cape:

That's why Babette kindly gave me her much coveted DVD on how to make a picture book.

2.The Ariol DVD
Ariol is France's much loved blue donkey character created by artist Marc Boutavant and writer Emmanuel Guibert, much loved in France. He is the star of a series of books, with comics instead of chapters,

Boutavant screened a trailer for the pilot of an Ariol TV series. I approached him afterwards to ask if the video was already up on YouTube.

To my surprise, he handed the DVD to me!

Unfortunately, i can't seem to upload the thing to YouTube so you'll have to settle for this version without the English subtitles

3.A bunny picture book from Taiwan

One of my favourite events of the conference was when editors from all over the world (England, the United States, Venezuela, America, France and Taiwan) each discussed their favourite books. I loved the Taiwanese book – a PB about a rabbit born with short ears who goes to great lengths (get it?) to change his ears.

Guess who grabbed the book after the talk?

4. The Slant Book republished as Il Libro Sbilenco

Now this was actually for sale and I did not physically buy it as my feet by this time were totally wrecked by the marathon walking required at book fairs. Peter Newell was a cartoonist from the 1900s famous for his innovative picture books The Slant Book and The Hole Book. Il Libro Sbilenco is Marco Graziosi's translation, beautifully re-published by an Italian publisher.

The baby character though has a rather scary face.

Home from Bologna to Internet Silence

So I'm back from the world's biggest children's book fair, having met loads of famous people, seen oodles of exciting new books, and with photos and posts galore to put up on the blog.

But my internet was down.

I felt like this:

But today after an emotional reunion with my internet provider, Virgin Media, I'm back and I'm ready to tell you all about Bologna - in nifty, accessible chunks to aid digestion. For now, here are five interesting things about the trip:

1. British Airways provided passengers with a waste bag which is a folded plastic bag within another plastic bag. TWO plastic bags for one!

2. SCBWI British Isles was the opening feature of the first SCBWI Showcase stand at Bologna. Here we are just before the crowds came rushing. From left to right, author Margaret Carey, British SCBWI regional advisor Natascha Biebow, British SCBWI illustrator coordinator Anne Marie Perks, illustrator Sarah Mcintyre, me, author Catriona Hoy, and illustrator Trish Phillips. SCBWI stalwart Anita Loughrey missed the photo-op because she was busy schmoozing educational publishers.

3. Agents really work hard in Bologna. Here is the most terrifying hall in the fair.

Lined up like cattle, the agents didn't look that scarey.

4. Bologna has really INTERESTING statues. Here I am with illustrator Anne Marie Perks in front of a woman with spurting breasts:

5. In Bologna, it is possible to randomly meet cool YA authors. Here I am overcome with joy to meet Uglies creator Scott Westerfeld

Ah.

It was all very, very good.

And though the internet was down when I got back from my four days away, everything else was just as I had left it - particularly the mess in the kitchen.

And the children had not escaped.