ALAN Review

The U.S. edition of MBT: Foundling has made it on to the cover of the ALAN Review, along with Laini Taylor's Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer - she and I are stablemates at Penguin.

Laini has an excellent site on the struggles of writing over at Not for Robots - I found myself agreeing and encouraged by almost all she says. Writing is hard - I certainly find it so, like pulling teeth without anaesthetic; so heck it out if you want a lift to your flagging authorly spirits - indeed for those who want advice on such things on getting published, I think Liana is a better source of advice than I.

As for the The ALAN Review, it is the ALAN's (the Assembly on
Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English) "peer-reviewed journal ... devoted solely to the field of literature for adolescents." (taken from "Instructions of Authors: About the ALAN Review" the ALAN Review Winter 2007, p2 - head over to the site for more if you want... or not)

This is a signal honour, thank you ALAN! There is apparently no actual review of MBT 1 in it though ... so there you go.

Half-Continent definitions for real words and more meaningful content will be coming soon; meanwhile you should still go and check out the marvellous images made by MBT readers in Spain.

Remarkable! Illustrations of the Half-Continent

May I invite you all to head over to the Spanish MBT website, Tatuaje de Monstruo. There they have run a drawing/painting competition and the results are just - well - wow!

It is hard to describe the feeling of seeing such a response from others to my own ideas - it is a very very good feeling, that is for certain: community, sharing, connection - these are all there.

A los que han hecho este trabajo puedo decir solamente, en Español gravemente traducido...
(To those who have done this work I can only say, in badly translated Spanish)

Le agradezco de mi corazón por sus imágenes maravillosas. Son verdad hermosas y me ayudan a ver el Mitad-Continente (del Continente Central) de maneras mejores que hice antes. Digo otra vez le agradezco!

Time for a bit o' fun

It is getting a tad serious here. I am afraid I might be exhausting people with all the heavy pondering. Therefore, in response I'd like to show how I look - if I were on The Simpsons [TM].

An intriguing likeness. I wonder what I might do in an actual episode - get shot through and acid factory like Luke Perry perhaps? Hmm...

I am probably waaaay behind; you all have probably known about Simpsonising [TM] yourselves for ages. I would love to see what you guys might look like as citizens of Springfield [TM] - not sure how though - perhaps you could post them somewhere then leave links in the comments? Maybe that'll work?

By the way, I am digging the polls - very informative, I love getting feedback. I hope people are enjoying them. Anyone got a good idea for any other questions I could be asking? Also, does anyone have a real world term they would like to challenge me to turn into a Half-Continent term? (It has been soooo long since I last had a go at this - so go on, challenge me.)

An objectionable question

After the last post I have some questions rolling about my head.

If a book that truly was objectionable is published would it be best to ban it (no doubt increasing focus on it and therefore sales) or leave it be and hope it evaporates into obscurity?

If a child you knew (son, daughter, niece, nephew, younger sibling and all the rest) wanted to read a book you had doubts about do you let them just read it - not wanting to impact their liberties - or ban them entirely - seeking to preserve their innocence? Or would it be better (though a whole lot more work) to read the text first or along with the child and then discuss the objectionable parts and give then some perspective?

Being that I have been married a little over a year and children are a possible future for me, this is becoming startlingly relevant. Anyway, nothing particularly new in these queries, they have been a vexed issue for long before I was ever pondering them.

Objectionable Book

Discovered this little gem not so long ago - found here and written by THE HON. DR GORDON MOYES.

'I knew Scholastic also had an Australian Book Club. I later found in some of their promotional material: “Welcome to Scholastic Book Clubs, where you’ll always find fabulous books, terrific value and wonderful resources! The most affordable books!” They were advocating the sale of “Harry Potter”, “Halloween” and “Monster Blood Tattoo” so I could expect to find the objectionable books with these if they had them.' (bold type added by me.) (I do not have any issue with the general content of the article - I am not that keen on wolves in sheep-clothing either.)

So if I read it right by the inference, I reckon I can say it is official: MBT is an objectionable book.

I wonder if the Honourable Mr Moyes formulated his opinion on a thorough reading of the text or rather by a cursory and shallow assumption based on the title alone? I fear it was probably not the former.

Either way, I feel like I've won something and do not know who to thank first.