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CBCA ACT Branch eNews:
2018 Issue 1, 1 May 2018
In this Issue
- Welcome
- Membership
- Julie Long OAM Presents: Engaging with children through Picture books
- CBCA eStore - Book Week Merchandise
- National Simultaneous Storytime
- Australian Children's Laureate: Mostly Not Squashed May
- Australian Children's Laureate: News & Events
- ACT Writers Centre 'BITE' Magazine Submissions
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Welcome to our first full eNewsletter for 2018.
You've subscribed but have you thought about becoming a member?
You can join the ACT Branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia by clicking the link below.
Information on the benefits of joining is available at http://cbcaact.org.au/membership/ plus membership forms that you can print.
CBCA ACT Branch
info@cbcaact.org.au
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Julie Long OAM Presents: Engaging with children through picture books: A session for educators, parents, grandparents and everyone who loves sharing books with children.
This interactive session will show you how to ‘get inside a book’ with a child. From the wide range of books available for you to handle you will learn how to:
- Make books come alive as you share them with your child or class
- Select picture books that will engage children
- Develop your own techniques for drawing children into the stories
- Enrich your reading time with the children in your care
Julie Long has a Bachelor of Education majoring in children’s literature and long experience as an educator. She is currently the President of the ACT Branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia. Julie spent three years as Assistant Editor of Reading Time the journal of The CBCA and has reviewed for the journal since 1982. She is currently a judge in The CBCA Annual Book of the Year Awards in the Early Childhood category. Julie’s knowledge of picture books and experience as an educator sharing them with children over many years make her an ideal person to present this session.
The session can be used for Teacher Certified PL and a certificate of attendance will be provided.
Harry Hartog Bookseller will have some of the featured titles available for purchase.
Date: 9 May 2018 Time: 4.30-6.30
Where: ALIA House 9-11 Napier Close Deakin 2600
Cost: $35; $30 for CBCA members; $20 for students/seniors/concession
Includes refreshments
Registering is essential for catering purposes. Please register by 4 May 2018
Register by emailing Trish Milne: ncaclmeetings@gmail.com
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The eStore will open on Tuesday, May 1 for all merchandise sales.
Orders will be fulfilled, as in past years, by the Endeavour Foundation and all orders should be placed through the eStore, as per our previous practice.
I have been working with Endeavour in an effort to iron out any issues that affected our delivery capacity and efficiency in past years. I feel confident we’re going to have a good season.
Endeavour will be ready to pack and send the branch orders as a priority. To be able to achieve an efficient turnaround on this, please get your orders in as soon as you are able to do so. As soon as orders are placed, we will advise the estimated delivery date. This will be by courier and please note: no courier deliveries can be made to post office boxes. They must go to a physical address.
Once orders are placed, we will be able to advise the turnaround time for you.
The merchandise is again a beautiful presentation of the illustrations created for us by Anna Walker. The stock quality and specifications are exactly the same as those for 2017.
The stickers will have been rigorously tested!
The bookmarks have been brought down to their affordable new price in an effort to supply a product that cash-strapped schools can afford to buy in quantity.
It is hoped that the new products – the silicon wristband and pen – will open new markets for the CBCA.
Here is a link to two e-products we hope you will all promote:
- Find Your Treasure email signature and
- Find Your Treasure social media tile.
These are both available for free download and can be distributed to your members and beyond.
Please contact me if you have any questions.
Regards,
Kate.
Kate Flamsteed
National Executive Officer
The Children’s Book Council of Australia
P 07 38429120 or 1300 365922
M 0417 122468
Level 2 State Library of Queensland
Stanley Place, South Brisbane 4101
kate.flamsteed@cbca.org.au
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Welcome to Mostly Not Squashed May. If you're reading this on public transport you might disagree with me, and I'd understand that because I'm writing this on a bus or, as the elbow of the person jammed next to me helped me put it, on a boss. Which might well be true, because the person I'm squished up against on the other side is wearing a very smart business suit and keeps telling the driver which gear to use.
I'm determined to get this finished before my stop, and I will. That's how determined I am. How did I become such a determined individual? Same as most people – from reading lots of stories.
Stories, as the Children's Laureate Calendar and Guide To Living reminds us this month, Make Us Determined.
Our favourite characters in our favourite stories don’t give up. Well, maybe at first, if they have the sort of problems that make them want to run and hide and pretend the problem isn’t there. We all know what that feels like. But how often have you read a story with a main character who's still hiding from his or her problems on the last page? Well, OK, Felix in my book Then, but he's got Nazis to keep out of the way of and he's certainly not pretending they don't exist.
From the first page, Felix has been facing his problems and coming up with active and engaged strategies to solve or at least survive them. He loses a lot in the story but, thanks to not giving up, he ends up with a lot as well, including hope, liberty, life, friendship and hot meals.
Sooner or later, all main characters face their problems and get creative. They do it because we need them to. We've all got problems in our lives, and big thick bedcovers we could easily hide under, so from an early age we need inspiration and practical examples of how to deal with those pesky things called problems.
Research skills, insights, practice, new abilities, help from others, dollops of determination – all available in a story near you.
And even when things don’t work out at first, which they probably won't because writers usually need at least a couple of hundred pages to make a book, characters don’t give up. They don't get squashed by failure. Not permanently. Instead they discover how valuable failure is. How much we can learn from it. Failure might be one of our greatest fears, but there’s nothing like it to help us succeed.
Here's something you might like to try next time you're at book group. (Come on, just because there's a teacher out the front, it's still a book group. Some of my favourite book groups actually, because unlike some book groups I could mention, year five book groups always read the book.)
Next time the group is reading a book, see if you can spot a moment in the second half of the story where the main character succeeds at something difficult and important, and is only able to do it because they failed at something in the first half.
If you spot one, you're allowed to put your hand up and say in a loud voice, 'there's one, there's one.' (Show this newsletter to the teacher if necessary).
Hint. There are heaps of success-from-failure moments in my stories. But not just mine. They're an important part of a lot of stories, and I promise you'll find them if you're determined enough. |
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Mostly Not Squashed May Booklist |
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Hello! from the Bologna Children's Book Fair |
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| This year's Hello! from Australia stand at The Bologna Children’s Book Fair. |
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This annual fair is the forum for many major international events. It has a strong cultural element, recognising book creators with illustration exhibitions, interviews and panel sessions with authors and illustrators, seminars on process and new technology, and awards for excellence in publishing, writing and illustration. These include annual announcements of some of most prestigious awards in the world, including The Bologna Regazzi Awards and Publisher Awards; The Astrid Lindgren Award; The Hans Christian Andersen Award; and The White Ravens Awards. An important focus each year is the Bologna International Illustration Exhibition.
Every second year is the International Children’s Laureate Summit, which Australia was instrumental in developing. Each of our Laureates have attended since its inception in 2013 with a presence on the Hello! from Australia collective stand. ACLF acknowledges the support of The Copyright Agency, The Australian Publishers Association and the Australia Council who have made this participation possible.
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| Author–illustrator, Gabrielle Wang, works at the Creators Table and chats with visitors. |
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| This year the collective Australian stand, Hello! From Australia, included thirteen independent publishers. Books Illustrated coordinated the Hello!promotional display with a focus on Indigenous publishing for children in Australia. Twelve Australian creators attended Bologna this year and spent time on the Creators Table – a popular institution of the stand where visitors can interact with Australian authors and illustrators.The five-metre-wide enlargement of Lisa Kennedy’s illustration from Welcome to Country wrapped around the walls of the display area, creating a very special Australian sense of place! The Australian stand is supported with funding from The Australian Government, Department of Communication and the Arts. |
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Mostly Not Squashed May Activities |
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The Duck and the Darklings, Glenda Millard & Stephen Michael King (Allen & Unwin)
Grandpapa's eyes shine when he remembers the beauty of the world, long-ago. Peterboy wants to find something wonderful to bring the light to Grandpapa's eyes and keep it there. What he finds is a duck, wounded and broken, and Grandpapa mends her from top to tail; quack, waddle and wing!
The Duck and the Darklings is a triumphant story, for children and adults, about the coming of hope in dark days, the warmth of friendship and the splendour of a new dawn.
There are so many wonderful provocations for this title on the resources download found on the publisher’s website. There are several key ideas or themes which are suggested by the written and visual text in this work: Enduring Hardship, Family Love, Friendship, Letting Go, Environmental Destruction and Regeneration, Hope, Generosity and Kindness, and Memories. These themes could be considered in conjunction with the following school curriculum areas:
1. Study of history, society and environment
2. English language and literacy
3. Visual literacy
4. Creative arts
5. Learning technologies |
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Alfred's War, Rachel Bin Salleh & Samantha Fry (Magabala Books)
Alfred’s War is a powerful story that unmasks the lack of recognition given to Australian Indigenous servicemen who returned from the WWI battlelines. Alfred was just a young man when he was injured and shipped home from France. Neither honoured as a returned soldier, or offered government support afforded to non-Indigenous servicemen, Alfred took up a solitary life walking the back roads – billy tied to his swag, finding work where he could.
Rachel Bin Salleh’s poignant narrative opens our hearts to the sacrifice and contribution that Indigenous people have made to Australia’s war efforts, the true extent of which is only now being revealed.
For rich assessment tasks about this title for responding, examining and creating, visit Reading Australia. |
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The Stone Lion, Margaret Wild & Ritva Voutila (Little Hare)
Sometimes statues are granted a chance to become warm, breathing creatures. The stone lion has only one dream u to run, pounce and leap in the park across from where he sits. But one snowy night, when a baby is abandoned at his paws, he is compelled to think differently.
- Write a story about an event that caused you to act in an unexpected way.
- How did this event change your opinion or thoughts?
- Why is important for us to grow and change?
- Write about something you did when you were younger and describe how you feel or think about that experience now. What has changed? Does it feel different from an older perspective? Why is it different? Explain you current view point.
- Draw a picture of a place that you remember from when you were younger. Or maybe a place that you haven’t visited for a while. Maybe it is bigger or smaller than it actually was! Can you remember all the detail? Do you remember some things and not others? Why?
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The Australian Children’s Laureate Foundation is delighted to welcome Lindy Batchelor as the new program manager.
Lindy has always been an enthusiastic participant in the world of Australian children's literature. She has worked as a primary teacher; a librarian in schools and public as well the Taronga Zoo; author; reviewer; bookseller, and event coordinator for a children's bookshop. Lindy was the founding President of the Northern Sydney sub branch of the Children's Book Council of Australia, and is actively involved in various aspects of the Australian children's book industry, including her voluntary involvement with the NSW Committee of the Australian Children's Laureate Foundation since 2015. She is looking forward to her new role as Program Manager in working to help promote the ACLF's statement that 'reading changes lives'. Lindy works a volunteer children's guide at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Mike Shuttleworth finished his role in April 2018. |
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Sydney Writers' Festival, May 3
Morris Gleitzman will be appearing at SWF in conversation with former UK Laureate Chris Riddell, where they'll discuss the not-so-small topic: 'can children’s stories save the human race?' Book here...
Scribbler's Festival, May 9–12
Includes a two-day schools program and a two-day family program with a fabulous line-up of workshops and creative activities run by authors illustrators and storytellers from all over – national and international – and celebrating creative talent in the west which is great. Culture Ireland is supporting current Irish Children’s Laureate, PJ Lynch to attend the Scribblers Festival in Perth. Both immediate past UK Children’s Laureate, Chris Riddell and our own most recent Laureate, Leigh Hobbs are also featured on the program. See more...
CBCA Victoria State Conference, May 19
Laureate Morris Gleitzman is the keynote speaker at the Reimagine! New Ways with Literature conference in Geelong. The program is designed to delight educators and librarians with the power and pleasure of literature for students from pre school to year nine. Particular attention will be given to alignment to the literature stream of the national curriculum for English. See more...
Zana Fraillon has been shortlisted in the UK CrimeFest Awards (young adult category) for her powerful novel exploring child trafficking, The Ones That Disappeared.
The 2018 Readings Kids Prize has been won by Jo Sandu for her novel Tarin of the Mammoths.
The New York Times published an interesting article about the benefits of parents and carers reading aloud to their child. 'The parent-child-book moment even has the potential to help curb problem behaviors like aggression, hyperactivity and difficulty with attention.' Read more...
And in The Conversation, you can find five handy tips for reading with a child to ensure it's fun, relaxed and easy – and that you're both getting all the benefits you need from the activity. Read more... |
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During May, Morris will be spending two days working with the team at 100 Story Building on a creative writing resource for young people and their teachers. It's a project close to Morris's heart, and to the theme of his laureateship that 'stories make us'. Morris will be sharing his 30+ years of writing craft and focusing on the process of how stories can be developed.
100 Story Building is a social enterprise based in Footscray, western Melbourne, and develops a brilliant range of creative, story-based projects for a culturally diverse region. Find out more about 100 Story Building and their projects including Early Harvest and Pigeon Post, a monthly story package printed and delivered – by post!
We're thrilled to be working with 100 Story Building and will share news of the project as we go. At a later date, Morris and 100 Story Building will offer a professional learning session for teachers. |
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The Australian Children's Literature Alliance (ACLA) is changing its name. We will now be known as the Australian Children's Laureate Foundation (ACLF).
Our website and contact details will be updated shortly to reflect the new name, which more clearly identifies the focus of our work. |
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| E N E W S L E T T E R | 2 0 A P R I L 2 0 1 8 |
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| Call for BITE Magazine Submissions |
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We are still accepting pitches for BITE Issue #3. The theme is 'Creative Inspiration' and there will be payment for published pieces.
When submitting to BITE, please consider the following thematic sections of the magazine and indicate which section your work suits.
- Extract – extracts from recent published works by ACT writers
- Lit Scene – information about literary groups in the ACT or online groups
- Feature – articles about any aspect of writing and publishing
- Profile – Q&As with authors, agents and publishers
Click here for more information on BITE magazine, including how to submit your pitch. |
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| Don't miss out on this opportunity to share your pitch with a roomful of publishers and agents. There are still a few spots reserved for ACT Writers Centre members, but they're selling quickly so make sure you get in. Details here. |
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| Thanks to Skinny Fish Music and Madman Entertainment, we've got 20 double passes to Gurrumul to give away! Check the details at the bottom of this week's enews for your chance to see this coming-of-age film about the blind Indigenous artist Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, one of Australia's most important and acclaimed voices. |
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Creating Compelling Characters with Isobelle Carmody
10am–4pm Saturday 19 May
Join bestselling author Isobelle Carmody in this six-hour intensive on creating characters who draw readers in and don't let them go. BOOK NOW |
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| The Write Stuff at Libraries ACT |
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The Write Stuff bite-sized workshop series is presented by Libraries ACT in partnership with the ACT Writers Centre. Cost: Free.
The Write Stuff: Story to Script
6pm–7:45pm Monday 23 April
Woden Library
Ever wondered about the mysterious craft of screenwriting, or how a script can be turned into a final television or film product? Join Ché Baker and Felicity Packard as they unpack the whole process, from writing to production. They’ll explore:
- The difference between writing a screenplay and a novel;
- What TV networks, streamers and audiences want;
- How to get your big break as a screenwriter; and
- The role of the writer in film and TV.
BOOK NOW |
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| Community Literary Events |
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7:30pm Friday 20–Sunday 22 April
Flash Fiction Fun Weekend
East Hotel
If you are an aspiring writer, an emerging writer, or an established writer, then this weekend is for you.It is specifically designed for writers to mix with other writers and to hone their craft. Speakers include Jack Heath, Jackie French, Susanne Gervay and Suzanne Kiraly. Cost: $175 per day, $329 for full weekend.
4:55pm Monday 23 April
Book Launch: Fire at Sea: HMAS Westralia 1998
Poppy's Café, Australian War Memorial
The HMAS Westralia fire in 1998—one of Australia's worst peacetime naval disasters and subsequent investigation—is the subject of Canberra military historian Dr Kathryn Spurling’s latest book. Dr Spurling covers how the families' battle for justice revealed a labyrinth of innuendo concerning fraud, nepotism, dishonesty, incompetence and official cover-up.
7pm Monday 23 April
That Poetry Thing with Paul Cliff & Moya Pacey
Smith’s Alternative
Canberra poets Paul Cliff (A Constellation of Abnormalities) and Moya Pacey (The Wardrobe, Black Tulips; co-editor of Not Very Quiet Journal) share their published and new work. Includes open mic. Cost: $5.
6pm Thursday 26 April
In Conversation with Robyn Cadwallader
Paperchain Bookstore
Robyn Cadwallader, author of the internationally praised novel The Anchoress, will be in conversation with publisher Catherine Milne on Robyn's second novel, Book of Colours, a profoundly beautiful story about creativity and connection. Cost: Free.
6pm Thursday 26 April
Book Launch: The Beast's Heart by Leife Shallcross
Harry Hartog
In 2017, publisher Hodder & Stoughton gave budding authors around the world the chance to present their stories with an open submission. Of the 1,445 submissions received, only one could be successful. Canberra author Leife Shallcross was that successful author, and the time has come to release this book into the world. Cost: Free.
3pm Sunday 29 April
Book Launch: The Perennial Plants by Martin Zierholz
Paperchain Bookstore
The Perennial Plants by Martin Zierholz gives the reader a solid foundation and keys to successful design, cultivation and propagation of perennial plants and is equally useful to the professional landscape architect, the professional nurseryman and the passionate gardener. Cost: Free.
7pm Monday 30 April
That Poetry Thing with Gabrielle Jones & Andrew Galan
Smith’s Alternative
Wollongong-based poet and drummer Gabrielle "Journey" Jones (Spoken Medicine) joins renowned local poet Andrew Galan (For All the Veronicas: The Dog Who Staid) on the Smith's stage. Includes open mic. Cost: $5. |
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| Competitions + Opportunities |
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30 April
Sutherland Shire Literary Competition
Sutherland Shire Council has just launched a new literary competition, and Australian residents 18 years of age or over are invited to submit their original poetry and short stories across a range of categories. The first place winner in each category receives $1,000.
1 May
The Big Issue Fiction Edition 2018
The Big Issue is seeking unpublished contributions to their 2018 fiction edition between 300 and 3,000 words. They are looking for stories covering all genres. Every story published receives $500.
7 May 2018
The Cultural Fund Grant
The Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund provides grants to cultural and educational organisations for projects that deliver opportunities for authors, journalists, and artists, and key industry stakeholders in the writing, publishing, education and visual arts sectors.
9 May
2018 Prime Minister's Literary Awards
Australian writers, publishers and producers can now submit entries to the 2018 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. There are six categories: fiction, poetry, non-fiction, Australian history, young adult literature and children’s literature, and all are now open for entries.
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Program Officer, NSW Writers Centre
Applications due 30 April
FIND OUT MORE
Editorial Intern, Australian Book Review
Applications due 30 April
FIND OUT MORE
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Gurrumul is a portrait of an artist on the brink of global reverence, and the struggles he and those closest to him faced in balancing that which mattered most to him and keeping the show on the road.
In Yolngu lore the name, image and voice of the recently departed is retired from all public use. A very rare exception has been made by Gumatj and Gälpu clan leaders for Gurrumul. Three days before his death he approved this film. It remains unchanged since this time.
To celebrate the film’s release we are giving away 20 in-season double passes to see the film. For a chance to win, simply email admin@actwriters.org.au with your contact details. |
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