Review or purchase this book from Amazon.co.uk here…
Dragons are looming large in our blogs this month!
The Dragon’s Hoard has eleven amazing stories from Viking Sagas, and it’s packed with warriors, battles, Berserkers, monsters and zombies. A really good book for story time as the nights get longer and darker in the northern hemisphere.
Lari Don is the author and Cate James is the illustrator in this recently published book from Frances Lincoln Children’s Books. As a team the production of this book is brilliant, it brings mythical and historical characters to life through the excellent stories and wonderful illustrations.
It can be used as a good resource for Key Stage 2 National Curriculum work on the Vikings. It is a very creative and inspiring read on the Viking period of history from long ago. It is a good book to have in the library and also at home as the short stories are easy to share together and will bring some magic to stories around the fire or at bedtime.
Lari Don was born in Chile and has lived in Scotland for a long while, a keen interest in Scottish Landscapes and myths and fables. She has written many books including the award winning YA novel Mind Blind.
In the vast outback of South Australia lived Yvonne, she was part of the Anangu people who had lived on that land for generation after generation.
‘They passed on this precious knowledge , sleeping under the stars through all cycles of the seasons.’
They knew this land and needed no maps, shops or anything other than that which the land would provide. And they were happy.
‘Then the walypala, (whitefellas) came, who did not know the land and they called it desert.
They brought sheep and other animals and started to build a railway.
They brought the need for other things that this land could not provide and they were greedy’.
In 1950, the United Aborigines Mission, had many women who now wore clothes and learnt the walypala’s ways. But one day they took one of their women away from the missions as she was to give birth to her new baby.
Yvonne was born, slightly paler skin than normal, but then her father was a walypala.
She went on to live through enormous change, tragedy and family sadness, with courage and, hope, giving strength to her people, leading them and giving grace.
In 1953, town atomic bombs were exploded at Emu Field, 320 kilometres from Maralinga. In 1956, when Yvonne was 6 years old, they exploded the first bomb of 15,000 tons, part of Operation Buffalo at Maralinga, followed by three further bombs.
And there was still more testing of atomic bombs.
But, strangely, life continued at the camps at Maralinga. The Anangu people were involved in working in the area, usually barefoot with no protective clothing for many years. The effect of this work directly on radio-active lands, and in the breathing of toxic air, meant that there were many deaths, many birth defects in babies and unbelievable suffering.
The book is a story of Yvonne, her life, her family and her ability to challenge and receive some support for her family and her peoples. It is a remarkable story and an insight into the life of an Australian indigenous people in the 1950’s.
The book is beautifully presented in a glossy finish. It is packed with wonderful photographs and artwork by Yvonne Edwards, of the families and the land of Maralinga.
It is a book to keep and treasure, and you can purchase on line too. We recommend for ages 10 and above, and it’s definitely a book for adults too.
It is an annual event and hosted as a tribute to the wonderful work of Phillipa Pearce who grew up close to Cambridge in the 1930’s. Her most famous books include; Tom’s Midnight Garden, Minnow on the Say and A Dog So Small.
Allan Ahlberg is the author of over a hundred books for children and winner of many awards, including two Greenaway prizes for Each Peach Pear Plum and The Jolly Postman.
He tells brilliantly funny stories and he has some fine collections of poetry.
We are looking forward very much to the lecture.
Sue Martin Books Go Walkabout
Cambridge
Dreamer by Brian Moses and Bee Willey, buy from Amazon.co.uk
A beautifully written and illustrated picture book about a world where we all care for each other, for animals, plants and places. It will be inspirational for young children and for adults as they see just how the world is changing.
Each page has a scene which has amazing colours and images, including the child dreamer, lots to see, and lots of ways into discussions and questions.
Brian Moses and Bee Willey are an excellent duo, they both have so much experience and good books to their names. Brian is one of Britain’s favourite children’s poets and he is featured on the National Poetry Archive with over 200 books published and 2000 schools visited.
Otter-Barry Books are new publishers this year and have included Dreamer in their new titles, a great edition and a clear direction for their books, which will make a difference.
Ifeoma is a writer, children’s author and photographer. Her books and photographs reflect life in Africa and are an amazing collection of images and stories.
There was a well attended post exhibition talk at Archway Library on Monday 1st August and Ifeoma talked about her work, her travels and her books.The next day there was a workshop and activities for children.
Part 1: This article was first published on the pages of conversationsEAST, another project of SmithMartin LLP in the East of England. Part of a series of articles celebrating culture, technology and the arts in The North.
Continuing our theme of ‘Northern Energy’, we were in Newcastle upon Tyne this week and, on Friday afternoon, took time to visit Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books. They have an important exhibition and research project into the donated archive of the writer Michael Morpurgo. Below is what we thought.
”Michael Morpurgo Exhibition 2 July 2016 – Sunday 2 July 2017, Newcastle UK. A Lifetime in Stories. Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books introduces an exclusive exhibition drawn directly from Michael Morpurgo’s extensive archive donated to Seven Stories in 2015”.
View, print or download this Guide here…pdf
Through one of our our sister projects, Books go Walkabout, an international delivery system to get authors, illustrators and poets, and their books, to corners of the world previously unreached, we have an abiding interest in children’s literature as you would expect.
The Seven Stories Morpurgo exhibition is certainly about a fantastic canon of work dedicated to the young imagination. However, the research team have extracted illustrative and delightful insights into, and evidence of, the writing process, using the archive generously donated to the Centre by Michael Morpurgo in 2015.
What the display and featured narrative does offer, in the broadest terms, is an insight into the creative process, the research and writing of a book, much of which in this Seven Stories gallery has taken place before the arrival and dominance of the word processor.
Not only an exhibition in praise of the work of Michael Morpurgo, but an illustration in itself of what can be achieved with a simple notebook and a pen or pencil. The imagination does not need an elecrical socket and plug to thrive apparently!
Some key exhibition elements:
Michael Morpurgo was born in 1943, and his early life was beset by sadness and conflicting tensions. It was interesting to see the detail of Michael’s school, home life and reaction to his early experiences in the British Army. This thematic thread of war and militarism can be traced through the exhibition, as in Michael’s life. His mother’s grief at the loss of her brother in the Second World War was an equally powerful emotional driver for the writing.
In 1962 Michael met his future wife Clare, and it was the summons home by his mother, with the pretence of an imaginary illness, that offered the opportunity for them to get married, against the prevailing condition that cadets of the Royal Military College Sandhurst must be single. A signal turning point in a creative life which solidified his pacifism, well evidenced and illustrated by this exhibition.
Own your own Wombat here, from Amazon.co.uk
His first short book, published in 1974, was It Never Rained, an interconnected narrative about five children. By 1999 Mopurgo was ready to publish Wombat Goes Walkabout, with wonderful illustrations by Christian Birmingham. A great story about digging holes and how a wombat can save the day.
1982 saw the release of War Horse, perhaps Mopurgo’s most famous creation. The exhibition offers the visitor a display of many of the notebooks, first drafts, corrections and re-typed double spaced manuscripts that drove the creation of this seminal work.
This series of displays offers, we thought, a powerful illustration of how writing is both a physical and an intellectually layered process, but which requires a gritty determination to see the story through to the final end – publication. It is this revisiting and deterministic approach to his craft of writing that makes a Mopurgo novel so dramatic and engaging we suspect.
You can buy this book from Amazon.co.uk here…
To an archivist this is vital in determining the writers emotional condition on any particular creative day. As his pen moves rapidly across the notebook page, Michael has left a marker, a measure of intensity, for later researchers seeking to determine his emotional or creative state. Something a plastic keyboard, no matter how powerful the micro-processor it is connected to, could ever offer the interested reader in years to come.
Looking at the Morpurgo ‘war’ material, we pondered on what must be a pivotal issue for the contemporary archivist or researcher. With ready access to technology, publishing processes and cloud storage – how will future archivists and seekers of process engage with material that is electronic and resting, potentially, in a thousand different formats, storage facilities and locations around the globe.
Interestingly, MIT Technology Review has just published an article on the use of computing and data mining techniques to show that there are, it contests, only six basic ’emotional arcs’ in storytelling. These are…
…a steady, ongoing rise in emotional valence, as in a rags-to-riches story such as Alice’s Adventures Underground by Lewis Carroll. A steady ongoing fall in emotional valence, as in a tragedy such as Romeo and Juliet. A fall then a rise, such as the man-in-a-hole story, discussed by Vonnegut. A rise then a fall, such as the Greek myth of Icarus. Rise-fall-rise, such as Cinderella. Fall-rise-fall, such as Oedipus.
We are intense users of the notebook and pen ourselves, in our ordinary workaday lives, but have to recognise that research and analysis would now be immeasurably diminished without technology. We wondered, travelling through the Michael Morpurgo exhibition, an historical audit trail of the creative mind, what other contemporary children’s and young adult writers take on ‘techno’ is today?
Perhaps this is a Seven Stories seminar series in the making? Pen or Processor, the creative methodology in contemporary children’s literature. We would buy a ticket! (Ed.)
A visual treat:
Towards the end of the exhibition content is a section dedicated to Michael Morpurgo’s artistic collaborators, the artists who have contributed to the written work.
It offers the visitor a fascinating insight into how the imagination is populated by the story, how the psyche is suggested a character and landscape by Michael Morpurgo’s writing. It is also, within the context of this article, a soaring endorsement of the power and durability of putting a hand to paper. Surely no machine can replace the creative evocation of story by the artists below?
The work on display includes artwork from Quentin Blake, Gary Blythe, Peter Bailey, Christian Brimingham and Tony Kerins amongst others. We particularly warmed to the diversity of images in the exhibition that depicted the sea. Whether Kensuke’s Kingdom or When the Wales Came, the original cover art to be seen provokes an imaginative dream of action, wind, water and a tale to be told.
It was wonderful to see this collection of individual artistic work within the context of theSeven Stories Michael Morpurgo exhibition. But each artist has a separate body of work which is lively, imagination capturing and enchanting in equal measure. We hope you can use the links above to explore this on-line collection ‘gallery of galleries’ too.
Getting to Seven Stories NE1 2PQ :
If you leave the impressive Newcastle Central Station and turn right down towards Quayside, you can turn left along Quayside and walk, past the Pitcher and Piano until you come to St. Ann’s Steps on the left. Ascend them. At the top, look back down the river to the bridges receding into the distance. Turn and cross the road and right down to Cut Bank on the left, following the river left along for a couple of hundred yards and Seven Stories will apppear on your right.
The journey there, if the sun is shining, can be as uplifting as your visit to The National Centre for Children’s Books. This is a fascinating insight into the work of our national story teller. Seven Stories offers a whole rainbow of experience around ‘the children’s book’, whether a holidaying family looking to stimulate young imaginations, a visit to the cafe and bookshop, or a serious academic look at the sweep of children’s literature.
Editor Notes:
‘Seven Stories was able to support the acquisition from Michael Morpurgo through support from Heritage Lottery Fund’s ‘Collecting Cultures’ programme, which has been awarded to Seven Stories in recognition of the museum’s national role in telling a comprehensive story of modern British children’s literature’.
Source: Seven Stories web site. Accessed 09.07.2016 See http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/collection/collection-highlights/michael-morpurgo
Mr Badger is always on hand to cope with many surprises at the Boubles Grand Hotel.
My favourite story is Mr Badger and the Missing Ape. Algernon is usually kept stuffed in a glass case in the lobby. But Lady Celia’s granddaughter is not happy with this gorilla and wants it sent away. As she usually gets just whatever she wants the alarming disappearance one morning gives Mr Badger quite a task, but solve it, he does.
There are four stories in the one book, which is full of brilliant sketches and the characters really come to life.
Mr Badger is written by Leigh Hobbs, who has an amazing talent for writing and for illustrating too. He has a great website for a whole range of his books.
This year he has been appointed as the Australian Children’s Laureate and there are whole host of great activities for children all over the world as well as Australia.
We are working with a school in East London in February to deliver one our City Stories author and book events.Leyton Stories is the children’s book group based around the school and children’s centre in Leyton.
We are working with the school, the publishers Frances Lincoln and over a hundred children to undertake workshops and author meetings with parents and carers.
The event is part of our City Stories project – designed to deliver books, authors, illustrators and story-tellers to inner city children.
We are working with a school in East London in February to deliver one our