Your Say

How do you like your vampires? Angsty or with snappy comebacks?

So there’s this article in the Wall Street Journal about YA fiction. It’s called “It Was, Like, All Dark and Stormy“, and the subtitle reads: Teenage readers are gravitating toward even grimmer fiction; suicide notes and death matches.

Ignoring the fact that this particular lament (ZOMG teenage books are so angsty and dark!) has been circulating for at least 30 years… do you think it’s true? Are all YA titles depressing and gritty? Is that what you want to read?

Look! It’s the upcoming title from Golden Inky winner James Roy!

Available in September.

Take the Quiz here!

We’re pretty excited about Gayle Forman’s If I Stay. It’s the current Featured Book, you can read the first chapter, and you can win a copy by telling us what your secret musical shame is (so far there seems to be a lot of Miley Cyrus shame out there!).

And if you still need to be convinced, here’s the book trailer:

The five UK children’s laureates were recently asked to name their favourite children’s books. The lists are mostly classics - the books they would have grown up with.
Chosen by Quentin Blake:
1. Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain by Edward Ardizzone (published 1936)
2. Queenie the Bantam by Bob Graham (1997)
3. The Box of Delights by John Masefield (1935)
4. Rose Blanche by Ian McEwan and Roberto Innocenti (1985)
5. Five Children and It by E. Nesbit (1902)
6. Snow White by Josephine Poole (1991)
7.Stuart Little by E.B. White (1945)
8.
Chosen by Anne Fine:
8. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken (1963)
9. Absolute Zero by Helen Cresswell (1978)
10. Just William by Richmal Crompton (1922)
11. Journey to the River Sea by Iva Ibbotson (2001)
12. Lavender’s Blue by Kathleen Lines (1954)
13. A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson (1885)
14.Sword in the Stone by T.H. White (1938)

Chosen by Michael Morpurgo:
15. Five Go to Smuggler’s Top by Enid Blyton (1945)
16. Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton (1939)
17. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (1838)
18. Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (1902)
19. A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear (1846)
20. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
21.The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde (1888)

Chosen by Jacqueline Wilson:
22. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868-9)
23. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1905)
24. What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge (1872)
25. The Family From One End Street by Eve Garnett (1937)
26. The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (1906)
27. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild (1936)
28.Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers (1934)

Chosen by Michael Rosen:
29. Clown by Quentin Blake (1995)
30. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)
31. Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner (1928)
32. Not Now, Bernard by David McKee (1980)
33. Fairy Tales by Terry Jones (1981)
34. Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear by Andy Stanton (2008)
35. Daz 4 Zoe by Robert Swindells (1990)

Do you read classics? Which ones? What do you like (or not like) about them?

So last week the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Shortlist was announced. There were sixteen books on the Older Readers Notable list, with six books on the actual Shortlist. Of the sixteen Notables, four books have female protagonists. On the Shortlist, there’s just one.

Now, we’re not saying that the books on the list aren’t good. They’re all excellent. But where are all the girls?

If you take a look back over the years at the books that have won and been shortlisted in the past, you’ll notice that there aren’t many girls at all (Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca are among the handful of girl-protagonist books awarded the gong in over 60 years).

And it’s happening everywhere! Today the Miles Franklin shortlist was announced. How many women writers on the shortlist? NONE. Ironic, huh? For a literary award that was named in honour of a woman who had to pretend to be a man to get published. A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

How come stories written by and about boys are rewarded and considered to be Serious Literature, but stories by and about girls are chicklit and trashy?

What do you reckon? Do you prefer books about boys or girls? Written by men or women? Does it even matter?

Here’s the new trailer for the upcoming film of Where the Wild Things Are.

What was your favourite book as a child?