The UK’s 2016 Little Rebels Award shortlist has been announced – and once again it sets a challenge for the judges… It presents a good mix of books for all ages. There are some big names among the books’ creators – and notable is Gill Lewis’s Gorilla Dawn, … Continue reading ...
Add a CommentStay Where You Are & Then Leave will appeal to middle grade readers interested in twentieth century history, life in England during World War I; also anyone who has had to deal with a parent changed by trauma.
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By: [email protected],
on 4/15/2015
I enjoyed writing the blog post Books with the word ‘Girl’ in the title so much, I thought I’d do one for books that have ‘boy’ in the title. At first glance, I thought this one might be easier, but let’s see how I go. The first book that comes to mind for me is […]
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By: [email protected],
on 9/8/2014
The 2014 Brisbane Writers Festival had an inspiring launch on Thursday night when author/publisher Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, What is the What – about the lost boys of Sudan) told a full tent about the genesis of McSweeney’s publishing company and its 826 Valenica Writing Centres. The tutoring behind these pirate, […]
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By: Zoe,
on 4/23/2014
If you were trying to support and encourage a young environmentalist, feminist or …anarchist (!) what books would you suggest for them?
I might give the newly re-issued Barbapapa’s Ark, or the simple but very effective What are you playing at?
Or if you were simply looking for a great read for your kids about making the world more peaceful and fairer where would you turn?
I might suggest The Arrival or The Island.
And if I were looking for more thought provoking books (as indeed I always am), I’d turn to the Little Rebels Children’s Book Award. Now in its second year, this is an award for radical fiction for children aged 0-12. Last year’s winner was the marvellous and moving Azzi in Between by Sarah Garland (my review can be found here), and this year’s winner will be announced in just a couple of week’s time.
The books shortlisted for this year’s award
The books, authors and illustrators in the running of the Little Rebels Children’s Book Award 2014 are:
I recently put a pretty tricky question to those authors who made it onto the shortlist:
If it were possible with a wave of a wand what would you change about the way the world works, to make it either more inclusive, less discriminatory, or a place which was more just and equitable?
Here’s how they replied…
Nicola Davies
Tricky. I have one practical thing and one that you really would need a magic wand for. The practical one is to make sure that every girl on the planet gets and education; women with confidence, education and power are the single biggest force for change.
And the magic wand one is to give all bankers, politicians, drug lords…all those in positrons of power over others to see the consequences of each of their actions on the wider world, as clearly as a movie and to feel them, as physical pain. I think that might be really helpful.
Deborah Chancellor
This one’s easy. I’d make sure half the people in every single profession were women. With my magic wand, fifty percent of all politicians, judges, business chiefs, religious leaders, generals (etc) would be female. Without a doubt, the world would be a fairer, more inclusive and generally more harmonious place. Perhaps one day we’ll make this utopia happen, but we’re still a long way off.
Andrea Beaty
I would create shoes that would transport people into the lives of others to show how their actions and attitudes affect other people. Many of the world’s problems would quickly straighten out if people who take advantage of others or inflict suffering upon others would have to walk a mile in the shoes of the people they disrespect, harm, or disregard. Perhaps Rosie Revere could invent the walk-a-mile shoes. She is very clever! Until we have walk-a-mile shoes, though, we have literature. It lets us each see the world through other people’s eyes. To walk a mile in their shoes. It gives us empathy. And that is more powerful than any magic wand.
An interior spread from Rosie Revere Engineer. Click for larger image.
Gillian Cross
If I could take one action to make the world fairer and more equal I would make education available and affordable for all children across the world, especially girls.
Gill Lewis
I would wave wand to enable us to be able to change our skin with people and animals…to walk a mile in their shoes…or hooves!
In Harper Lee’s story, To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus gives Scout a piece of moral advice;
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Most prejudice or discrimination is born of ignorance, indifference and fear of the unknown. To truly understand another’s situation is to live their life, to see the world from their point of view. I would extend this to animals too, for us to live an animal’s life; to live as elephant, an eagle or a honeybee and to be able to see the adverse effects we humans have on the natural world and to understand the consequences of our actions.
Unfortunately we don’t have magic wands, but we have the next best thing…books!
Books transport us into other worlds and give us some insight and understanding of others’ lives.
Until I find that magic wand, I’ll keep reading and writing books!
Unfortunately Geraldine McCaughrean and John Boyne were not able to take part; I would have been very interested to hear what they might have chosen to do with a wave of a wand.
And as for me? What would I magic up? I found myself nodding wildly at all the responses above, but if I were to offer something different here’s what I might conjure up: If looking just at the bookworld, I’d get rid of gendered marketing and watch with great interest to see how it shakes up (or otherwise) book sales. On a bigger scale, I’d ban private car ownership, and invest massively in public transport. It would do wonders for not only environmental health, but also personal well being I believe. And if I could move mountains, I’d change how economies work so they don’t have to be predicated on consumption.
What would you do with a wave of your wand to make the world a better place?
If you are after further interesting reading matter to foster your own little rebels, you might enjoy looking through this list of books for children and young people as compiled on the Marxist Internet Archive. “Some of these books were written to be expressly radical, and others need a stretch to find political implications.” Thanks go to Betsy Bird for alerting me to this bibliography.
Little Rebels Children’s Book Award is given by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers and administered by Letterbox Library and the winner will be announced at the London Radical Bookfair on May 10th 2014.
Add this book to your collection: Noah Barleywater Runs Away
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By: Aline Pereira,
on 4/29/2010
Well, we’ve finally started this year’s Reading the World Challenge in our household!
As our together-read, we’re “doing” Europe at the moment. We’re about half way through Dickens’ Oliver Twist, which I’m really enjoying, since it’s a good few years since I read it, and the boys are revelling in. I suggested it because I was getting a bit fed up with continued allusions to Oliver via the musical Oliver! and felt (poor kids, purist that I am!) that they needed to get back to grass roots here… 
I did wonder if we were biting off a bit more than we could chew but in fact they are completely caught up by the narrative and Dickens would be happy with his effect on their social consiousness/consciences! It’s definitely proving to be one of those books that they wouldn’t read on their own but that, with frequent, unobtrusive asides to gloss the meanings of words, they are more than able to enjoy having read to them. It’s just very long and now that term-time is back in full swing, it’s hard getting the sustained reading time all together that we would like.
We have also read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne (David Fickling Books, 2006). This is an extraordinarily powerful book about a nine-year-old German boy, Bruno, who becomes an unwitting witness of the Holocaust when his father becomes the Commandant of “Outwith” concentration camp (as Bruno mistakenly calls it), and who makes friends with a Jewish boy, Shmuel, on the other side of the perimeter fence. If you have read this breath-taking, punch-in-the-stomach book, do take a look at the discussion that Janet got underway here on PaperTigers on the Tigers Bookshelf. Although it says on the back cover that despite being a book about nine-year-olds, “this is not a book for nine-year-olds”, and I therefore, again, had some reservations of reading it with the boys, I was glad we did. Because we were reading it together (and not at bedtime – this is definitely not a book to read just before you go to sleep), we couldn’t read it in one sitting as has been recommended – but we all mulled over it deeply and all brought our own ages to it. I know that Little Brother’s nine-year-old perspective was very different to mine (as, indeed was Older Brother’s), but it was still valid; and I hope they will both read it again independently when they are older.
Little Brother’s own read was also focused on Europe with Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei by Peter Sís – this is what he says about it:
I liked The Starry Messenger because you could always recognise Galileo in the pictures because there were always stars near him. Sometimes he was wearing them and sometimes he was drawing them in the sand. It was hard to rea
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By: Aline Pereira,
on 12/3/2008
We have deeply enjoyed hosting the Tiger’s Choice, the PaperTigers’ online bookgroup, over the past year–it introduced us to a number of interesting books, a group of authors whom we hadn’t read before, and a collection of new friends from around the globe who joined in our discussions.
Nancy Farmer, Uma Krishnaswami, Ken Mochizuki, Minfong Ho, Jane Vejjajiva, Julia Alvarez, John Boyne, Katia Novet Saint-Lot are all authors whom we plan to return to again and again for reading that expands our cultural horizons. As their body of work increases, the Tiger’s Bookshelf will be there–to read, to praise, to cheer them on.
We will however be doing this in another form rather than through the Tiger’s Choice. As exciting and rewarding as it has been to explore books through this avenue, we have new plans for the Tiger’s Bookshelf that do not include our bookgroup. We thank all of you who have read this portion of our blog, and who have joined in the discussions, and hope that you will continue to be part of the ongoing conversation that will take place on the PaperTigers Blog, and through the Tiger’s Bookshelf!
I haven't been able to keep up with my LJ lately, but just read in the SLJ that this book has been made into a movie. Chilling. Here' the link. I'm not sure if it will work or i you have to be signed up with SLJ to read it.
www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6612057.html
Hmmm...interesting. I think the article misspelled the author's last name. It's Boyne, not Boyle.
Ok. Off to bed. Two random postings in a week and I'm worn out! LOL.
By: Aline Pereira,
on 10/14/2008
Since we are already in the middle of National Reading Group Month, our thoughts have turned to reading suggestions for book groups for young readers. At PaperTigers, we are deeply committed to books on multicultural subjects that bring differing cultures closer together. So of course the books on our little list are novels that we think will accomplish that, while they keep their readers enthralled and provide the nourishment for spirited book group discussions. Almost all of the suggested titles are in paperback editions and all should be available in libraries. Most of them have been reviewed by PaperTigers and one has been chosen by our own online bookclub, The Tiger’s Choice.
1. Beacon Hill Boys by Ken Mochizuki (Written for older readers, this novel explores teenage rebellion, parental expectations, and racial stereotypes with humor and perception. This is a perfect book for boys who are reluctant readers–by the end of the first page they’ll be hooked.)
2. On Thin Ice by Jamie Bastedo (Through entries in Ashley’s diary that she keeps while visiting family in an Inuit village, this book addresses the issue of climate change in Arctic Canada, where the polar bears are coming far too close for comfort.)
3. Woolvs in the Sitee by Margaret Wild (Who are the “woolvs” who terrify Ben and keep him sequestered in a place where he is safe from them? This is a title for older readers that falls into the realm of picture book/graphic novel, and one that will keep them reading.)
4. Kira Kira by Cynthia Kadohata (Winner of the 2005 Newbery Medal, this is a novel that takes a serious look at serious issues, through the lives of an extended Japanese-American family who are struggling in tough times.)
5. Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box by Juan Felipe Herrera (The tragedy of 9/11 as seen through the eyes and voice of thirteen-year-old Yolanda, whose uncle had “inhaled Twin Towers of dust,” while delivering flowers at the moment that the planes struck.)
6. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne (This is a book group selection for all ages, and when we chose it for our own book group, the discussion was thoughtful and lively–much to think about in this slender little volume.)
And there is our baker’s half-dozen–what suggested titles would you add to this little list? Let us know!
By: Aline Pereira,
on 6/18/2008
John Boyne says that he likes it when people read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas “in one or two sittings, over a couple of hours maybe…Because that, in a way, is how I wrote it.” That’s exactly the way I read this book, without stopping, in an hour or two, because once I began I couldn’t stop. Did this book pull you in from the first page, or did it take time before you were completely absorbed? If so, what part first pulled you in to the story?
Bruno incompletely understands the world around him and expresses his lack of understanding through puns. Was this something that enhanced the story for you or did it annoy you?
Do you think Bruno is a realistic portrayal of a nine-year-old boy, or is he young for his age? Do you think nine-year-olds today are more mature, and if so, why?
Why did Lieutenant Kotler disappear?
Do you think that Shmuel intended for Bruno to return home from their final meeting?
This is a book that left me yearning to talk about it. Please respond with your own questions and observations so we can continue this discussion next week.
By: Aline Pereira,
on 6/10/2008
My friend Holly who is an ardent and gifted bookseller of children’s literature put The Boy in the Striped Pajamas into my hands when I asked her which recently-read children’s book resonated and lingered with her long after she had put it down. She is a woman whose taste is beyond impeccable so I took her recommendation home with me, read it, and months later am still haunted by it.
Because it is a book that falls outside of the usual geographical boundaries that mark books recommended and reviewed by Papertigers, and because it is a disturbing work of fiction, I didn’t immediately feature it as a Tiger’s Choice for children and adults to read together. Then I talked to my friend and colleague Corinne about it. She immediately read it and gave it to her eleven-year-old son, so they could discuss it, and I begged to be part of their conversation when it took place.
And that clinched it–if this book had this effect on Holly, Corinne and me, all women of different ages and backgrounds, and if Corinne instantly passed it on to her son, it is a book that merits discussion by a wider audience–and here we are.
I think the author would be happy to know that it has been chosen as a book for both adults and children to talk about in a forum where everyone has equal footing. John Boyne remarked in the interview at the end of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, “I’m not entirely sure I know what the difference is between a children’s book and an adults’ book,” and then quotes a friend’s question, “What is Treasure Island?”
There will be no questions posed about this book until we begin to discuss it after June 15th because it is crucial that we all come to our own conclusions in our very own ways. In explaining why it is a book that has world-wide importance, John Boyne says, “Fences such as the one in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas still exist; it is unlikely that they will ever fully disappear.” Perhaps if enough people talk about this book, and other novels that address the same issue, we may someday live in a world without fences.
By: Aline Pereira,
on 5/20/2008
Bruno is miserable. He’s a nine-year-old explorer with nothing to explore and no friends. His family has been moved from their comfortable, spacious house in Berlin to a place that is small and isolated. Nobody lives nearby except for a large number of people behind a long fence, whom Bruno can see at a distance from his bedroom window, and the soldiers whom his father oversees. It’s a dismal, gloomy place and Bruno wants nothing more than to leave it and go back home to Berlin.
Everyone, from his parents to his annoying older sister to the maid who has known him since birth, assure Bruno that this is impossible, but nobody will tell him why. So Bruno decides it’s time to explore his surroundings, as unprepossessing as they appear to be.
As he enters the outside world, mysteries present themselves. Why is the old man who helps him when he falls from his tire swing now a waiter when he used to be a doctor? Why don’t any of the people whom he can see from his window, the ones who live behind the fence, ever visit his family? And who is the boy dressed in striped pajamas on the other side of the fence who becomes Bruno’s only friend?
There are many questions in this book, and many of them continue to go unanswered when the end has been reached.
Is it a children’s book? No. Is it a book for adults?
“No. It’s a book,” the author tells us, “It’s a story.”
That it is, and it’s one that readers of all ages will want to discuss. Let’s talk.
By: Aline Pereira,
on 5/13/2008
We’re still receiving comments on this month’s Tiger’s Choice, Naming Maya. Please add your thoughts about this wonderful novel before the discussion ends at the end of May. And if you are eager to read additional fiction that will complement Uma Krishnaswami’s work, Sherry York has just published Ethnic Book Awards: A Dictionary of Multicultural Literature for Young Readers, which includes a reader’s guide to Naming Maya.
Next month we will go to historical fiction that will awaken a whole new arena of conversation, we hope. For those who would like to find the book in advance of the discussion, the book will be The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. Originally published in Great Britain, this novel is available in paperback and is a Young Reader’s Choice Award nominee in my corner of the world. It’s also showing up on quite a few adult book group displays, and will be our focus in June.
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By: Matthew Cheney,
on 11/14/2007
It is useful to imagine the book as two funhouse mirrors facing one another.
--Waggish
has. I am not so much going to describe what I think the book will do to you as what it did to me.
A saying of Leonard's comes into my head in this season of complete inanity and boredom. "Things have gone wrong somehow." It was the night C. killed herself. We were walking along that silent blue street with the scaffolding. I saw all the violence and unreason crossing in the air: ourselves small; a tumult outside: something terrifying: unreason -- shall I make a book out of it? It would be a way of bringing order and speed again into my world.
--Virginia Woolf
diary, 25 May 1932
We treat the past as real insofar as present existence has been conditioned or generated by it. The more indirect the causal derivation of the present from a particular past becomes, the weaker the past becomes, the more it sinks toward a dead past.
--J.M. Coetzee,
"Time, Tense, and Aspect in Kafka's 'The Burrow'"
in Doubling the Point
, and the uncertainties at its core had provided, I thought, a thrilling reading experience: the experience of never being on solid narrative ground. (The straightforward tone and style made this experience more profound than the tricks of many more obviously "experimental" novels ever had for me.) I had also read Priest's more recent (and most famous) novel, The Prestige
, which is often masterful, but nonetheless disappointed me with what felt like a tidy resolution. The plot trumped the metaphysics, and I'll always prefer metaphysics to plot. The Affirmation, I thought from reading various comments about it, would be closer to the purity of The Glamour."Give it back to me," I said at last. "I don't want you to read any more."
"I've got to," she said. "I've got to understand."
But time passed and not much was clear to her. She started asking me questions:
"Who is Felicity?"
"What are the Beatles?"
"Where is Manchester, Sheffield, Piraeus?"
"What is England, and which island is it on?"
"Who is Gracia, and why has she tried to kill herself?"
--The Affirmation
If the pages had become unworded, if the story was now untold, then it meant I could start again.
--The Affirmation
Any recommendations on books for newborns?
Great blog!
http://www.thedadnetwork.co.uk
[…] Playing by the Book… made me want to buy a new book case… and this post must have been so much work to create: Rebellious Reading and other Audacious Acts. I love the author comments in this post. […]