By: medinger,
on 11/8/2012
Here’s a BBC3 podcast with a brief interview with Philip Pullman on his new fairy tale collection and then, best of all, his reading from one of them, “The Three Snake Leaves.”
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 9/29/2012
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By: medinger,
on 9/23/2012
The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put a robin redbreast in a cage. A fairy tale is not a text.
From Philip Pullman’s brilliant essay “The Challenge of Retelling Grimms’ Fairy Tales.” Highly recommended.
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By: Ann Evans,
on 7/8/2012
By: Betsy Bird,
on 6/3/2012
#28 The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (1995)
61 points
It’s refreshing when children’s literature tackles grand themes and trusts that the reader can handle them. Such is the case with Philip Pullman’s landmark 1995 fantasy. What’s more grand than a meditation on the human soul? But maybe Pullman’s greatest feat was to craft a story that is exceptional for all, full of bear kings, cowboy aeronauts, and animal “daemons”, it’s a mind-expanding trip. – Travis Jonker
Glorious. And what an ending — simply operatic. – Emily Myhr
For the first time I need to make a titular decision. Do I stay with the Yankee moniker “The Golden Compass” and list the book that way, or do I reach back to the book’s original British roots and call it “Northern Lights”, as was originally intended? Since I didn’t decide to list Pippi Longstocking as Boken Om Pippi Langstrump, I’ll continue to name the books here under their Americanized names. I am, after all, a Yankee.
The synopsis from the publisher reads, “The action follows 11-year-old protagonist Lyra Belacqua, accompanied by her daemon, from her home at Oxford University to the frozen wastes of the North, on a quest to save kidnapped children from the evil ‘Gobblers,’ who are using them as part of a sinister experiment. Lyra also must rescue her father from the Panserbjorne, a race of talking, armored, mercenary polar bears holding him captive. Joining Lyra are a vagabond troop of gyptians (gypsies), witches, an outcast bear, and a Texan in a hot air balloon.”
I may have come to the adult world of children’s literature thanks to Harry Potter, but it was Pullman who pulled me in the rest of the way. Living in Portland, Oregon shortly after graduating college (a lovely town to live in, but not ideal for the penniless post-student) I spent a lot of time in Powell’s Bookstore. One day I read an article in the paper that was accompanied by an image of a large cat boxing with Harry Potter and winning. The gist of the piece was that Harry was all well and good, but if you wanted some serious children’s literature you wanted to get your hands on the His Dark Materials books. That’s how they sold Pullman’s series at the start. Reviewers would contemptuously pooh-pooh the Harry Potter phenomenon in light of Pullman’s sophistication. You weren’t supposed to like them both. Many did. And in the coffee shop portion of Powell’s I devoured all three books and found them gripping, each and every one.
The term “embarrassment of riches” comes to mind when searching for information about this book. Particularly in terms of literary scholarship. So the question becomes less, “what is there to say?” and more “what should I not bother to say?” Let us begin at the very beginning then.
In a conversation with Leonard Marcus (found in the book The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy), Pullman describes the “lonely” process of writing the first two books, his dinner with Tolkien, and whether or not he had a plan in mind for the three books from the start. “Not a plan. But I knew what the story was going to be and where it was going to go and when it was going to end, and roughly how long it was going to be. I didn’t intend to write three books. I intended to write a long story. But it very quickly became evident that it would have to be published as three books because otherwise it would just sit on the shelves. It probably wouldn’t have gotten published. Who wou
Northern Lights author Philip Pullman has launched an attack on the government's library policy, telling campaigners they were fighting a "war against stupidity", and criticising Brent council for "political bullshit" over its library closures.
He made the speech as library campaigners from across the country vowed to work together to put pressure on government, at a pioneering day conference held in London on Saturday (22nd October).
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What am I reading now? The Tree Girl by Darlene Twerdochlib
The New York Times‘ Maria Tatar published an article entitled “No More Adventures in Wonderland” on Sunday, October 9, 2011. The premise of the piece is the prevalence of darkness in children’s literature. Tatar contends that “[c]hildren today get an unprecedented dose of adult reality in their books, sometimes without the redemptive beauty, cathartic humor and healing magic of an earlier time.”
My issue with Tatar’s article is not her vehemence against darkness; I made my thoughts clear on the subject with my post Darkness Too Visible. Instead, my issue springs from the books she calls upon to give validity to her argument: J.K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter, Philip Pullman‘s “His Dark Materials” and Suzanne Collins‘ The Hunger Games. Tatar uses these books to exhibit that “the savagery we offer children today is more unforgiving than it once was … we have stories about children who struggle to survive.” The truth is, these books are detrimental to her argument because they do not fall under the genre of children’s literature. They come under the umbrella of young adult literature.
The book industry is a business like any other and the aforementioned books wouldn’t be published if there wasn’t a market for them. So, perhaps, the issue isn’t the existence of darkness in children’s literature but rather why it is so prevalent in young adult literature.
Profits at Canongate for its 2010 financial year fell by 42.7%, which the publisher said reflected the cost of acquiring specialist audio publisher CSA, as well as investing in staff and systems.
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By: Betsy Bird,
on 9/10/2011
Oh good.
Now we have a rallying cry. Bonus. Thanks to Maureen Johnson for the link.
Travis at 100 Scope Notes recently discovered the author video cache to beat all author video caches. As he puts it”I challenge you to a good ol’ fashioned game of ‘I Bet I Can Find a Video Interview of An Author You Like’.” Apparently Reading Rockets has done everything in its power to videotape many of the major power players out there. Your Selznicks. Your McKissacks. Your Yolens. There’s a Website and a YouTube channel so take your pick! Talk about a useful resource.
Of course, if you want to save yourself some time and trouble you can just watch this trailer for The Chronicles of Harris Burdick. But make sure you watch it until the end.
I could live a long and happy life in the belief that Chris Van Allsburg was some kind of a criminal mastermind. Yup.
Do all the classic children’s authors also know how to draw? I only ask because it keeps coming up. Tolkien drew. J.K. Rowling can draw. Now apparently Philip Pullman does too. Extraordinary.
A couple thoughts on this next one.
A: Check out those guns on Katie Davis! Wowza!
B: Yes, folks, we all know that Tuck Everlasting didn’t win a Newbery. It’s okay.
C: When I start a band I am totally calling it Weirdly Supple Crystal Ball.
Book trailer time! This one comes to us courtesy of Jonathan Auxier. He’s even gone so far as to write a post about the Five Things I Learned from Making My Own Book Trailer. The piece is fascinating in and of itself. The final product? I’d say it’s worth it.
Sort of reminds me of last year’s Adam Gidwitz 6 Comments on Video Sunday: Weirdly supple crystal balls, last added: 9/12/2011
By: Betsy Bird,
on 8/3/2011
Let this reassure all the authors of children’s books out there. You can be the greatest writer in the world and still produce middling fare in your early years. Today’s example is How to Be Cool by Philip Pullman circa 1987. Perhaps a bit different from The Golden Compass:
Step One: Find some hot pink pants to match your hot pink shoes and baby pink socks.
Author Philip Pullman has joined the fight to save the six Brent libraries threatened by closure, following Zadie Smith and Alan Bennett in taking part in a fund-raising event for the campaign.
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By: Bridget Whelan,
on 5/23/2011
Philip Pullman doesn't believe in it. "Carpenters don't get carpentry block." He argues that we shouldn't be so precious about what we do. Instead we should just treat writing like a job of work and get on with it.
James Kelman's advice boils down to the same thing. He says that the only way to defeat the blank page is to write even when it's the last thing you feel you are capable of doing. Even when all you can write is - I don't know what to write. The mind hates a vacuum and something will come out of it...not a very good something perhaps, but something all the same and writing always has to be better than not writing. Remember the wise words of the great short story writer Katherine Mansfield.
Far better to write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
It happens when I'm trying to write something that I'm not ready to write, or that I don't really 'want' to write. And there's no way to discover my unreadiness or unwillingness except to try and fail.I would certainly endorse that trying and failing bit. You can't write in your head. It only counts when paper is involved at some stage. All the thinking about a story won't tell you if it works: only putting one word after another can do that.
By: James Preller,
on 4/1/2011
* Yolanda Miller asks, “What Are Fathers For?” She begins with a great quote from Gloria Steinem, “Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.” About midway she writes:
By manhood, I do not mean the stereotypical beer-belching, video-game-playing, sports-fanatical behavior often attributed to men—I mean something deeper. I am talking about the core essence of a male identity that has gone missing. As gender roles have morphed, women have preached and proven their self-sufficiency. The end result is that we have implied (and sometimes stated) that men are no longer wanted or needed and that their contributions, outside of sperm and salary, are no longer desirable.
* Here’s an entertaining site for to-the-point book reviews from a retired guy’s perspective: “My Dad Reads Too Many Books.”
* This “Dedicated Dads Program” invites fathers into the school:
Watch D.O.G.S. (Dads of Great Students) is the parental involvement initiative of the National Center for Fathering that organizes fathers and father figures to provide positive male role models for students and to enhance school security.
At Anderson-Livsey Elementary, which opened in the Shiloh cluster at the beginning of the school year, officials launched the program in the school to ensure students would have male role models.
“The whole goal of Watch D.O.G.S. is to attract and get positive male role models into the education system,” said Darren Boyce, the school’s parent instructional support coordinator.
* Anna Richardson reports: “Kids prefer gossip mags to books.”
A National Year of Reading study [based in Australia] has revealed that children are reading celebrity gossip magazines such as Heat and Bliss instead of books, especially if the novels stretch to more than 100 pages, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Boys and girls as young as 11 said they preferred absorbing the exploits of pop stars and models such as Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss to reading books by Jacqueline Wilson or Philip Pullman.
The study sparked debate on whether children were damaging their development by reading such magazine, or whether children should be encouraged to read what they liked, as long as it was reading.
* Over at my other blog, Jamespreller.com, I had t
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By: Annie Beth Ericsson,
on 9/30/2010
When I have children, these will be among the best books on their shelf, but people around the country have found them much more controversial. So instead of saying “why not”, here’s WHY they are so great:
1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell / The adorable true story of two male penguins in Central Park who, with the help of the zookeeper, hatch a beautiful baby daughter. While one of the most challenged books in 2008-2009, this may be my favorite story about a “modern family”.
2. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson / Victims should never be blamed or silenced, and anyone that sees rape as pornographic is severely disturbed. I was appalled at how Anderson’s novel was targeted last week. Teens should be encouraged to #SpeakLoudly… and they can get the courage to do so from this book.
3. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling / Obviously. Since I am the kind of person that labelled myself as a “Christian witch” when I was 12.
4. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary / If kids are reading the dictionary (even if it’s to look up the definition of “oral sex”), the only consequence is that they’ll probably do better on the SATs. Also, if your children have to look up what sex means, you probably need to work on your parenting skills.
5. Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison / Ooh muttis and vatis may have a nervy spaz because Georgia’s diary contains gorgy sex gods, but if you cannot grasp the hilariosity, you are probably a wet tosser and in need of a duffing up. Now let’s go down the disco!
5 Comments on The Top 10 Banned Books I’ll Make Sure Kids Read, last added: 10/2/2010
By: Celia Rees,
on 9/24/2010
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By: Keith Mansfield,
on 8/30/2010
Note this blog entry contains spoilers about the final two Harry Potter books
It’s a truism that cinematic adaptations often pale besides their literary counterparts. An obvious counterexample is Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner but, off the top of my head, I can’t think of more. For those who’ve only seen the film, it’s well worth reading the Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to see just how different it is, but to explain some elements of the screen version you’d have to gloss over otherwise.
Read the book to discover why the Blade Runner owl is artificial
A wonderful thing about a book is that everyone’s idea of it is unique. The reader converts the printed word from the page into a world of their own imagination. How I see the Imperial Palace on Melania in my head, is different from any readers of the Johnny Mackintosh books. Perhaps that’s why film adaptations so often disappoint, as the Director is competing with thousands of movies that have already run within a reader’s head.
There’s no film I can remember that’s disappointed me more that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, directed by David Yates with a screenplay by Steve Kloves. As someone who loves the stories so deeply, it horrifies me that this pairing were also asked to make the double film of the final book. While I think the quality of film-making in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince isn’t terrible (though it is weak), what I can’t fathom were the drastic, totally unnecessary changes to the plot that were introduced, diverting from Rowling’s marvellous story architecture and characterization.
[spoiler alert]
Yates and Kloves think they know better than JK Rowling
With a long book, why introduce a mad scene where Bellatrix Lestrange destroys The Burrow? Where will they hold the wedding in the next film, or has that been scrapped too?
A more important example was the death of Dumbledore. In the book, Harry is powerless to act, hidden under the invisibility cloak with Dumbledore’s body-bind curse on him. He would do anything to fight to save his pseudo-grandfather figure, and knows all too well the Hogwarts Headmaster is dead when the curse lifts. If the film, Harry is hiding in the background, and chooses simply to watch and not act, perhaps due to some bizarre element of cowardice that Yates and Kloves wanted to introduce into Harry’s character. There are numerous other examples and a lot concerning Dumbledore’s relationship with Harry: in the books, our hero is kept in the dark and has o puzzle things out for himself; according to this film, Harry is Dumbledore’s confidant.
When I write the Johnny Mackintosh books, I confess I sometimes have a secret nod to possible future film adaptations. I know a fair amount about film theory and structure, and sometimes I’ll be particularly proud of a passage because I know how well it would translate onto the big screen. I see the same in Jo Rowling’s writing at times, where she’s gone a little out of her way to write a beautiful, cinematic scene for her directors, knowing how much it would enhance the film. Yates completely ignored this. There ar
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By: Lynne Chapman,
on 7/5/2010
The space was a proper, banked lecture theatre, but Saturday was roaringly hot, and there was no air-con, so we got dreadfully stuffy up at the top. Fortunately, I had brought a fan with me and wafted myself throughout, like something from The Importance of Being Earnest!
By: Jennie,
on 10/27/2009
So, for my China Challenge, if you're doing the Silk Road Trek level, you have to do 3 out of 10 China-related tasks. I've done 2!
One involves making a Chinese recipe that you've never made before. Done and Done. I highly recommend the Green Tea Steamed Shrimp Dumplings from Ying Chang Compestine's new book, A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts: A Collection of Deliciously Frightening Tales.
Another one is to listen to some lessons on Chinese Pod and learn some Mandarin. I actually spent my birthday money this year to buy a subscription to this site because I haven't kept my Mandarin up at all and that makes me sad. When I signed up, they had a sale, so I was upgraded to the guided level, which means I have a teacher who tells me which lessons to study and the calls me once a week from Shanghai! This level is so great because that means I HAVE to study.
It's funny though, because one thing I've realized is that I remember weird idiomatic things, but not how to say the days of the week. It's interesting what sticks and what doesn't...
And look! I actually read a book for my Guardian Challenge!
By: Meg Harper,
on 8/4/2009
Well done to John on his very measured and all encompassing post about the ISA controversy! I am still entirely confused. I thought ISA was going to destroy CRB checking at one fell swoop but the child protection bod at my church (yes, churches need such people these days) says all Sunday School teachers still have to be CRB checked in September even though we’ll have to be ISA’d in October. Pourquoi??? Personally, I could paper the walls of our downstairs loo with my assorted CRB checks. I even have one because I volunteered to dog-sit for Guide Dogs for the Blind – not, thankfully, because they thought I had nefarious desires about the dog but because I might wangle my way into the lives of vulnerable people. I was looking forward to no more CRB forms (which I could now do blindfold) but perhaps I am mistaken! If anyone can clarify the situation, I’d be delighted – and personally, I’d willingly pay £64 to put an end to this torture!
But this whole issue does bring to mind some of the conundrums regular school visitors face. I have just completed a residency in a nearby primary school, helping year 6 to write and publish their own book – and very delighted we all are with it too. In theory, of course, I should never have been left alone with the class. I had both a teacher and a teaching assistant to help with the project. But towards the end, when we had children flying backwards and forwards between computer room and classroom and sometimes more help was needed in one place than the other, of course I got left on my own sometimes for short periods. I’m a qualified teacher, I run a youth theatre, teachers soon get the vibe that the kids are not going to run amok if I’m left on my own – and so it happens. Am I really going to abandon ship every time? Theoretically I should, according to the terms of my public liability insurance – but I could be putting the children more at risk by doing so. I know darn well that I’m not going to interfere with them sexually – but I also know darn well how quickly some kids can put themselves at risk when left unsupervised. So which should I choose?
I chose to leave on a school visit a few weeks ago. As part of an arts week, I was booked for three days to do a series of 6 two hour drama workshops with years 7, 8 and 9, based on my book, ‘Fur’. It was an excellent initiative with lots of artists from a huge number of disciplines sharing their know-how. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was very challenging, especially as the groups were mixed age and didn’t know each other to start with. I had to work hard to win some of the kids over but we got there on the whole – until my final workshop!
This group was something else. I could tell almost from the word go that a good half of them were in the mood to undermine. I persevered and we made progress but I was using every teacher tactic I knew. After about half an hour I made a decision. I was not there as teacher. I was there as visiting artist. I should not be having to ‘do the discipline’ with such a vengeance. I was there as a respected guest and I should be being treated as such.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that I am stopping this workshop now and I am going to reception to explain that I am doing so because the attitude of this group is unacceptable.’
Appalled silence.
‘Oh, please don’t do that!’ said the randomly allocated minder/teacher. ‘I will speak to the group. We can’t have this!’
She spoke to the class. I agreed to carry on and the majority of the kids were more co-operative. There was one notable exception, a young lady who had interrupted regularly with comments like ‘Why do you have to read from you own book? You wrote it. Why don’t you know if off by heart?’ After another fifteen minutes or so, I stopped the workshop again. Politely, I told the young lady that I was now excluding her from my workshop. The teacher agreed that she should go. (It turned out later that this was a girl who was usually excluded from normal lessons. ‘I don’t know why she was in your workshop!’ I was told.) But then, to my astonishment, the teacher disappeared after her!
This was the point when I chose to leave. This was completely unacceptable. I was with a group I barely knew who had already proved themselves to be difficult and unco-operative – and now I’d been abandoned by my minder for I knew not how long! I told the class that I was not insured to stay without a teacher and left. Not a great moment.
Fortunately, I found my minder within a few minutes, she apologised profusely, we returned, I continued the workshop and we achieved most of what the other five groups had achieved – but the whole episode gave me pause for thought. Luckily for me, I work with teenagers every week as well as writing. I was naffed off and irritated but that was all. But I can imagine that some visiting authors would have been extremely upset by what happened – and as regards the ISA controversy – well, it just goes to show that although the lauded likes of Philip Pullman may believe they will never be left alone with kids, there are plenty of us working as creative writers in schools who will! Schools are places where unpredictable things happen. You cannot legislate for them all. I am entirely with John in not wanting to come down on one side or the other in this debate. There are points on both sides. But my point is that these are muddy waters. There are no guarantees of anything where you put a huge number of young people into one building with a relatively small number of adults. What is supposed to happen may not. That’s just school life. I wasn’t supposed to be doing my presentation in the room next to the very shrill recorder group. A small, disturbed boy wasn’t meant to do a moony in at the end of my talk. It was no one’s fault that there was a fire in the adjoining community centre causing us all to be evacuated. I have never been more surprised than when the Headteacher said, ‘It’ll be all right if I have my piano lesson at the other end of the hall while you’re doing your workshop, won’t it?’ (No, it wasn’t and she didn’t!!!) And so on. All this and more has happened to me as a visiting author.
ISA? CRB? I don’t know what you need to keep the kids and yourself safe. Maybe just a bomb-proof attitude and a willingness to say ‘Enough’s enough!’
By: Susanne Gervay,
on 6/27/2009
Celebrity is a curse, and absolute celebrity is something very few people
are evil enough to deserve.
Philip Pullman on Michael Jackson’s recent death 25th June 2009
I like being an author because I get the pleasure of readers engaging in my books, without the awful burden of FAME.
As the Director of the 4th Kids and Young Adult Literature Festival I talk to creators, share story and have a great time with some of the world’s and Australia’s most admired writers.
There are HUGELY famous authors speaking including Melina Marchetta, Garth Nix, Kate Forsyth. Garth has sold 4 million books worldwide. The gorgeous Deb Abela with her Max Remy Super Spy sold all over the world. So many special authors and illustrators are speaking but NO ONE has celebrity. How lucky are they?
They don’t have to change their faces or hide behind a mask or create a safe private world away from the crowds. Michael Jackson was astonishingly talented. He leaves behind a legacy of ground breaking music, dance, video images and the knowledge that celebrity can kill you.
The Kids and YA Literature Festival is on the 4th July and the craft day on the 5th July at the NSW Writers Centre Rozelle in the beautiful grounds of Callan Park, in Sydney. Come along and say hello if you’re around. For bookings and programme log onto www.nswwriterscentre.org.au
Celebrating books with Jon English, Susanne Gervay, publicist Louise Dear and the Book Worm
Susanne Gervay,Jeni Mawter, Kate Forsyth
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By: Katherine Langrish,
on 6/15/2009
By: Lucy Coats,
on 10/29/2008
By: Roger Sutton,
on 9/30/2008
After his unusual demureness in face of the star-making machinery, I'm pleased to see Philip Pullman recovering his characteristic pugnacity to defend his dark materials from the interference of the interfering Faithful: "Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good."
By: Roger Sutton,
on 9/8/2008
As we did late last year, Child_Lit has been discussing the U.K.'s age-banding proposal with some ferocity the past few days. While I am firmly in the camp of those who oppose the scheme, a speech Philip Pullman gave on the subject is working my nerves. It's very much a speech to the choir (which it was, being delivered at a conference of the Society of Authors), and at the beginning quotes from the research report that allegedly boosts the proposal: "A recent trade survey has shown a general preference to move to age ranging, although with some strongly held contrary views, but now what’s needed is a piece of research that delivers some definitive answers from the people who matter most – book customers and readers."
Pullman then clutches his rhetorical pearls for this response:
The people who matter most?
Whoever wrote that – whoever read that and believed it – needs to be reminded that without us, without our work, our talent, our willingness to put up with almost anything in the way of reduced royalties, humiliating treatment over jacket design, endless travels to this bookshop, that school, that library, anything to help our books reach the readers – without us there would be no editors, no designers, no marketing teams, no publicity people, no secretaries, no helpful personal assistants, no senior executives, no expense account lunches, no pension schemes, no company cars, no sales conferences in attractive places, no publishing industry whatsoever. Any of the people who do those other things could be replaced with very little difference. Take us away, and you’ve lost everything. The people who matter most? Authors and illustrators are the people who matter most, and no publisher with any sense of what’s right and true would have allowed that sentence, and that attitude, to stand.
By: Julie Fortenberry,
on 6/11/2008
A month or so ago I had a letter from each of my publishers telling me that they had commissioned some research and that, as a result of the findings, they were going to place an age-guidance figure on all their books, saying that this one was for children of 9+, that one for 7+, and so on.
My immediate response was to say, as vigorously as I could, "Not on my books, you're not."
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Wonderful! Thank you, Monica!