Children’s publishing at the cutting edge of the digital revolution. * Children’s Bookfutures. * 10 best walks for children. * Have bad parents taken over children’s books? * Under 12s book cover design competition for The Secret Garden. * 40th anniversary of The Railway Children. * The creepiest children’s books ever. * The 2011 Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition. * Kitty Crowther wins the Astrid Lindgren memorial award. * The Monster Engine. * Top 10 heroes in children’s fiction. More here. * The 10 best young adult books for grown-ups. * The parent problem in Young Adult Lit. * Literary feasts for children. * Postmodern kids. * The great divide between writing for children and adults. * Bob Dylan‘s forthcoming book for children. * Rethinking children/childhood for the 21st century. * The Great Hamster Massacre. * Half of all kids don’t read fiction. * The hunt for young writers. * John Grisham moves into the children’s market. * The Wimpy Kid. * Curious George. * Avant Garde Preschool. * Liminal, a new literary journal for and by teens.
It was almost a shame to bemuse his father further, thought Thomas. The poor guy was confused enough when everything was running smoothly. Thomas’ Dad was a scientist. He could think the most complicated thoughts about space time and do amazing things with numbers. Or rather, the odd squiggly symbols he used in the place of numbers, since he occupied a zone of maths too complicated for simple ones, twos and threes. But down here on earth, Dad struggled.
When the box of stuff arrived in the huge grey palace of the central committee, the officials prodded and sniffed the contents, before passing it on, perplexed, to the scientists. In air-tight rooms with reinforced glass windows, the stuff was burned, frozen, melted, cut, blended, squashed and exploded with careful measurements being taken. As the scientists gathered their results, they became afraid. So did the central committee as they read the report. They had no choice but to present their findings to the glorious leader — a big old man with a deep voice and grey hair from the burden of ruling the country all his life. ‘What?’ he raged, ‘a thing of no use, it is not possible!’
They holler, they chant, they hurl abuse his way, but no reason is ever given. His form is affected and he’s dropped from home games, but even when he’s sitting on the bench, the bile from the crowd is incessant. And he can’t do anything to stop them: the baying mob have made up their mind. I could imagine them pointing and leering in much the same way I would later on when reading about the one minute’s hate in Nineteen Eighty-Four.-
Search It!
-
Recent Entries
-
Links
