On Wednesday Older Brother, Younger Brother and I had a wonderful day out when we went up to Newcastle for the opening of Seven Stories‘ new exhibition, From The Tiger Who Came to Tea to Mog & Pink Rabbit: A Judith Kerr Retrospective, which now runs until May 2010 – and if you are fortunate to be within a few hundred miles, don’t miss it – it is wonderful!

In keeping with Seven Stories’ aims to inspire and spark the imagination, the walk-through exhibition has something to suit everyone – from hands-on activities and props to fascinating artefacts and displays: and a whole lifetime’s original artwork and manuscripts. For, despite escaping Nazi Germany at very short notice and moving several times across Europe before finally settling in England, Judith’s mother kept many of her daughter’s early paintings and story-writing. As Kate Edwards, Seven Stories’ Chief Executive, pointed out, it is particularly special to have “a whole life-time of drawing and story-telling encapsulated in one wonderful archive” and through that archive and now also through this exhibition, “we start to experience Judith’s life through her eyes”: as a child, a refugee, a wife, a mother, an artist, and a wonderful storyteller. “She’s also very funny: she moves us but she also makes us laugh, which is a wonderful, wonderful gift to give to children.”

That humor, as well as the upheaval of Judith’s early years, is beautifully conveyed in the exhibition. My two were immediately captivated (more…)

The first winner of the ground-breaking new Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award is Cristy Burne for her manuscript Takeshita Demons, “a fast-paced adventure story” about a Japanese schoolgirl in the UK who confronts the demons that have followed her family from Japan. She wins £1,500 and the option of having her novel published by Frances Lincoln Limited. Christy, who has Australian/ New Zealand dual nationality, currently lives in the UK. As well as studying Japanese at school, she has lived and worked in Japan, which is when she first heard about the yokai. Speaking about these supernatural spirits in an interview with Geraldine Brennan, one of the Award’s judges, Christy explained:

“There are dozens of supernatural yokai that most Japanese people will be familiar with. They appear over and over again in all kinds of stories. Some are benign, some are nasty and some you’re just not quite sure. The demons that Miku [the book’s young heroine] has to deal with include the nukekubi, a kind of child-eating flying-head demon, and the noppera-bo, a faceless demon that can take on other personae.

Most Western children don’t know about these yokai in the way that they know about vampires and werewolves, but just as vampires fear garlic, the demons often have an Achilles heel or fatal flaw. The nukekubi, for example, must leave its body somewhere while its hungry head flies around, and you can destroy the head by destroying the body. I chose the demons I thought would have the most potential for an adventure story, but there are plenty more for future stories. I like to write about children, especially strong girls, having great adventures.”

Created in memory of publisher Frances Lincoln, who died in 2001, the award was co-founded by Frances Lincoln Publishers and Seven Stories, the Centre for Children’s Books in Newcastle in the UK. The Award was announced on Thursday at Seven Stories, which was a magical and perfectly fitting place to host the evening and I will be devoting a separate post to it next week. This is a photo of Hannah Green, archivist at Seven Stories, with a display of books and manuscripts from the collection.

In her introduction to this inaugural presentation of the Award, Kate Edwards, Chief Executive of Seven Stories, talked about the importance of highlighting global communication in a way that will promote understanding; and of finding the right voices to communicate with the 8-12 age group. She made a very striking point about considering books as cultural mirrors – sometimes they offer a true reflection of their contemporary society; sometimes they distort or play with that reflection.

John Nicoll, Managing Director of Frances Lincoln Limited, then spoke as Frances’ husband of his quest to establish the right kind of project in her memory: and this, he felt, was exactly what she would have supported, in its promotion both of new talent and of good stories to provide a bridge for people who find the unknown challenging. (more…)