Miss Clavel turned on the light and said, “Something is not right!” – Madeleine
You’ve written a wonderful story and identified a publisher. The next step is the most important: wait! Don’t send it off; instead, hide your story for weeks or even months. When you pick it up again it will be like turning on the light –you’ll see with fresh eyes all the lame bits glaring at you. Not waiting has been my biggest mistake as a writer – I always find things I should’ve fixed. When re-reading I often get a Miss Clavel feeling that something is not right; a scene doesn’t fit; the dream is broken and I’m jerked out of the story. A ruthless edit is needed. Illustration from the timeless Madeleine by Ludwig Bemelmans.
Nothing must be out of place. The reader must keep turning pages with no interruptions in the flow. – Darcy Pattison
Go over and over it…refusing to let anything stay if it looks awkward, phony, or forced.– John Gardner
Here are three of my favourite New Zealand picture books that give children a manageable dose of horror. Gavin Bishop’s Horror of Hickory Bay has grown on me over the years. The story of a bland family on a Canterbury beach and an amorphous beast seemed a bit coarse to me 25 years ago, but now I love the earthy monster (which has a new force in quakey times). Diane Hebley said it best:
I find this book fascinating for its masterly use of colour and design, its grim humour, its coherence of idea, text and image, and for its acceptance of the dreamworld reality.
The Were-Nana by Melinda Szymanik is a creepy delight about a visiting relative who might just be a monster. The suspense is nicely built up and the double surprise ending (true to horror traditions) is brilliant. Odd cover choice but fine shadowy illustrations by Sarah Nelisiwe Anderson.
Te Kapo the Taniwha by Queen Rikihana-Hyland is out of print but was always popular in class. It’s the story of a half-man, half-monster who was given the job of shaping the South Island. Zac Waipara’s pictures are stunning as usual.
My first comic book love as a child was the Donald Duck series by Carl Barks, perhaps the greatest comic storyteller. Barks fleshed out Disney’s slapstick film characters and created 500 engrossing adventures for children, making him “the most widely read but least known author in the world”. The hunt for square eggs in Lost in the Andes (1949) was my favourite Donald story; and anything with the Italian sorceress, Magica de Spell . When I was 10 years old, I moved on to superhero comics – I loved the bizarre character Mr Mxyzptlk who could only be beaten if Superman tricked him into saying his name backwards. But the best heroes were the Fantastic Four (1961) with their ‘grown-up’ plots and flawed characters.
Why are comics so popular? Because the style combines dramatic art, fast pace and engaging characters. Teachers can use comics in class as models of design and economical storytelling. Comic books are also ideal for reluctant readers, usually boys (see comics in education). The comic form also embraces stunning graphic novels for older readers, such as Persepolisand Logicomix, about Bertrand Russell.
Three neglected science fiction books by New Zealand writers: The Red Dust by Bee Baldwin (1965) is one of the first NZ post-apocalyptic novels. A deadly red dust released by Antarctic drilling wipes out much of the world. A group of immunes must survive roaming gangs and a mastermind who wants to rule New Zealand. It’s a chilling, well-structured story, with great use of NZ settings (this adult novel was inexplicably in my primary school library where I read it at age 10 and understood about 10%).
The Unquiet by Carolyn McCurdie is a strikingly original intermediate novel and a suspenseful read. It has an apocalyptic opening when the planet Pluto and parts of the Earth’s surface vanish. A small town girl has a gift for sensing unrest in the fabric of the universe and becomes the focus in a battle as the novel turns into a fantasy.
Where All Things End by David Hill describes a spectacular journey into a Black Hole. A mission to study the hole goes wrong and the crew race towards the Singularity- a point where all things become no-things. A ripping yarn underpinned by a convincing depiction of space travel and universal theories.
This is a victory for the precautionary principle, which is supposed to underlie environmental regulation.– Dr Lynn Dicks
The EU has banned the nerve agent that has been contributing to honey bee decline around the world. The scientific evidence against these extremely toxic nicotine-based pesticides has grown steadily. Honey bees have contributed to our survival for the past 20,000 years and it’s time we showed them similar courtesy. These banned pesticides are still widely used on NZ crops (eg.corn) and sold to the public in garden centres (eg. the Confidor brand). Bee photo by Sophie Huber.
There are other way to deal with pests without harming bees:
It is high time we returned to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) – an approach focussed on minimising pesticide use, maximising the number of biological control agents, using cultural controls such as crop rotations, and monitoring pest numbers so that chemical controls only need be applied when there is a problem.– Prof David Goulson
“You’re far too good a Highlander, Baxter,” he said, “not to be fighting for your king. When you get to France you’ll be throwing Germans over your head on your bayonet.”
“Yes, my ancestors fought for the king… I’m fighting too, only I’m fighting against a war.”
“Oh well,” he said,” they might get you a job rocking cradles.’
“If people of your views run the world,” I answered, “there soon won’t be any cradles to rock.”
– [A prison doctor tries to talk Archibald Baxter into fighting in WW1: quote from We Will Not Cease]
There are two kinds of war hero: those who show bravery while fighting, and those who actively resist violence. Young Archibald Baxter heard a lawyer explain that war was wrong simply because killing was wrong; so when WW1 broke out, Archie refused to enlist and was arrested. He was sent to prison several times and finally, he and other pacifists were loaded onto a ship and taken to Europe. He was imprisoned in England where they put him in chains and fed him on bread and water. To break his stubborn spirit, Archie was sent to the battlefield in France, where army officers tormented him.
Archie was tied to a post outside for up to four hours a day – the ropes so tight his hands turned black. Another time, they dragged Archie out onto the battlefield next to an ammunition dump during a German artillery attack. Incredibly, he was still alive when the explosions and mud settled.
Ordinary soldiers admired his courage, even if they disagreed with him, and were often appalled by their officers’ behaviour. One officer gave Archie a vicious beating then ordered some soldiers to throw him onto a wire covered walkway. But instead of smashing Archie down the soldiers lowered him gently down.
Archibald Baxter has never been hailed as a war hero by the media. His son, James K Baxter, was praised as our finest poet, and today it’s time New Zealand also recognised Archibald’s inspiring life.
One evening, a Sufi stopped by the roadside to read a book. He lit a bright lamp then walked some distance away and lit a small candle. He sat by the candle and read. People passing by asked, “Why don’t you read by the lamp?” The Sufi replied, “The bright light attracts all the moths. Here I can read my book in peace.” (Adapted from A Perfumed Scorpion by Idries Shah)
Big, bright blockbuster books attract many readers, but I’m attracted by books that the masses have almost forgotten. Here are a few of of my favourite hidden gems:
Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche – this love story is Lewis’ least known work but one which he described as “far and away the best of my books.”
Catastrophe, the strange stories of Dino Buzzati (1949) – a brilliant collection of surreal stories.
Daydreamer by Ian McEwan – imaginative, interlinked stories about a boy who daydreams to cope with the trials of growing up.
The Importance of Living, by Lin Yutang – thoughts on everything by Chinese writer and inventor (1938)
Drift by William Mayne – controversial survival story about a North American Indian girl and a white boy.
More than any other book I read as a child, The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) by Norton Juster gave me a love of words– it puns them, pushes them, and explodes their meaning. It’s overflowing with inventiveness: the man who is short, tall, thin and fat, at the same time; the orchestra that plays colours; the city that disappears because nobody cares. And I love the illustrations by Jules Feiffer, especially this faceless timewaster (pictured), The Trivium, who has a message for all writers:
What could be more important than doing unimportant things? … There’s always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing.
The Phantom Tollbooth is about a child’s quest to overcome boredom. It’s told with imagination, wit and wisdom — what more could you want in a children’s book?
I had been an odd child: quiet, introverted and moody. Little was expected from me. Everyone left me alone to wander around inside my own head. When I grew up I still felt like that puzzled kid — my thoughts focused on him, and I began writing about his childhood.
Children are still the same as they’ve always been. They still get bored and confused, and still struggle to figure out the important questions of life. – Norton Juster
The only thing to withhold is what happens next.– Orson Scott Card
I made a basic mistake in the draft of my latest junior novel. I tried to create mystery and suspense by withholding information from the reader. Result: boredom, confusion and a plot that has no early grip. The Hitchcock Principle is that you create suspense by showing the audience as much as you can, as clearly as you can. He gives a movie example of two characters talking at a table for 15 rather dull minutes then a bomb blows them up – the scene provides a mere 15 seconds of surprise. But if we see the bomb under their table from the very start of the scene – it provides 15 minutes of suspense. I’ve now edited my opening chapters, clearly introducing the characters, setting and central problem in the first pages, and even promoting a ‘surprise’ (from late in the book) up to Chapter 1.
As soon as the character engages with the problem, narrative tension starts. This tension is the dynamic of the story; it’s the energy that pushes the story on its journey. – Norman Bilborough
The worse drafts hide information, wrongly believing that just giving a hint here or there is the best strategy. Instead, the reader becomes confused and closes the book…– Darcy Pattison
The movie that forever changed my attitude to the future. – Michio Kaku
Forbidden Planet is a classic sci-fi movie about an advanced society that has destroyed itself through technology. It shares elements with The Tempest (Morbius is Prospero, the robot is Ariel) except the movie uses science instead of the supernatural – recalling Arthur C. Clarke’s maxim about advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. The science is well grounded and the psychology even more so. I love this movie for the set design, the monster from the sub-conscious, the first ever all-electronic score (by Bebe and Louis Barron) and the melodramatic script:
My evil self is at that door, and I have no power to stop it! – Morbius
For fascinating reading: Imagining Technology, an essay about the influence of science-fiction on advances in technology, such as H.G. Wells and the atomic bomb:
H. G. Wells named the atomic bomb in The World Set Free in 1913… Leo Szilard, reading the book in 1932, still had it on his mind when he conceived the idea of a chain reaction the following year. –John Turney
A great final sentence can offer hope, provoke a smile or a chill, be wise or witty. At its best, it encapsulates the whole work. Where are these brilliant last lines from?
“Hey, Boo.” (novel)
“Nobody’s perfect!” (movie)
“Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.” (short story)
“There is a crack in everything, it’s where the light gets in.”(song)
“All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe.” (poem)
How big is an atom? Picture a walnut sitting in the palm of your hand. If the walnut was an atom then your hand would have to be the size of the Earth.
Atoms are held together by electromagnetic force and they are mostly empty inside. You are made of atoms, so you are mostly empty space too. If you took away the space from everyone’s atoms you could fit the entire human race into a small Lego brick.
Atoms have smaller particles inside them. There’s a nucleus in the centre with a cloud of electrons around it. There’s also a whole zoo of even smaller particles within atoms; with names such as gluons and muons, strange quarks and charm quarks. We live in a vast universe, but the universe is also inside us.
We should not write them off as superstitious primitives.
It’s a myth (turned cliche) that science and faith have always been at odds. The superb book, God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Scienceby James Hannam, shows how the medieval church supported the genesis of science. Early universities were church-sponsored and ‘natural’ philosophy (as science was called – the word scientist wasn’t used yet) was a core subject. European thinkers drew on ancient Greek and Islamic texts to develop scientific principles that we still use today. Hannam brings a warm appreciation to these unsung scholars (eg. Gerbert); debunks the myth of the ignorant ‘Dark Ages’ (eg. people knew the Earth was round) and that the church burned scientists; and details inventions such as clocks and spectacles.
Choosing a title is the fun stage of writing a book. The hard work over, I spend hours happily test-driving pithy, bizarre or lyrical titles. The great children’s titles describe some aspect of the book (plot, setting, character, etc) in utterly striking language. My favourites titles are: A Swiftly Tilting Planet; The Stupid’s Die; and of my own, a book of cautionary rhymes titled, Global Norman. Here are some classic titles of children’s literature:
* Character: Oliver Twist, Shrek, The Halfmen of O, Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy, Flat Stanley
* Plot: Millions of Cats, Journey To The Centre of the Earth, The Shrinking of Treehorn
*Setting: Outside Over There, The Horror of Hickory Bay, The Black Island
There is only one time that is important: Now. – Tolstoy
Tolstoy’s Twenty-Three Tales (1903) inspired me in my youth and today I still love the wisdom of his folk tales. The classics are How Much Land Does a Man Need (very little, naturally); and The Three Questions (Eg, What should I do with my time?). One of the unsung tales is A Grain as Big as a Hen’s Egg, an environmental metaphor that has gained in power. This is the only colour photo of Tolstoy (here aged 80), from 1908. Download a free ebook of Twenty-Three Tales by Tolstoy
He who saves one life, it is as if he saved an entire world.– Babylonian Talmud
The Righteous by Martin Gilbert is a record of the very best and the very worst of human behaviour. These are remarkable stories of ‘Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust’ who risked their lives to save Jews during the 1940s. We all know of Schindler’s List, but that is one page of 500 similar acts of courage – helping Jews carried the death penalty in occupied countries. Historian Gilbert spent many years researching these well documented accounts – many from the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ archive (link to stories and interviews) which lists 19,000 non-Jews who stood up to the Nazis, local authorities and their neighbours.
I was surprised to learn of the extent of anti-Semitism in wartime Europe, eg. in Lithuania, Ukraine and Eastern Poland the SS were actively assisted by local populations in murdering tens of thousands of Jews (in addition to the concentration camps deaths). The heroes in the book are clergy, farmers, businessmen, families, royalty, city officials, and soldiers. Their motivations ranged from God, hatred of German occupation and racism, morality, love and above all, a sense of decency. It’s estimated that to save one Jewish life required at least 10 people working in a fragile chain of courage.
Once introduced into public life, evil easily perpetuates itself, whereas good is always difficult, rare and fragile. And yet, possible. – Tzvetan Todorov
A Bee in a Cathedral by Joel Levy is a fascinating book of science analogies and astonishing numbers. Suitable for all ages, only the physics section is a bit complex. A few of my favourites factoids:
Every day 1 million meteoroids strike the Earth.
Travelling in a rocket at 250,000km/h, it would take you 18,000 years to reach the nearest star, Proxima Centauri.
Most of the living cells in your body are less than a month old.
About 50 million neutrinos are passing through you now.
Every molecule in a glass of water is changing partners billions of times a second.
How hard does your heart work? Empty a bathtub in 15 minutes using only a teacup —do this without stopping for the rest of your life.
If an atom were blown up to the size of a cathedral, the nucleus would be no larger than a bee buzzing about in the centre.
The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a superb fable about a pilot who crashes in the desert and meets a wise child. It’s one of the world’s most translated books (in 250 languages) and the top selling French book. It also has perhaps the most intriguing sentence in all children’s literature:
What is essential is invisible to the eyes. (L’essential est invisble pour les yeux.)
What is ‘essential’? Is it Truth, Love, God, or Uncertainty? These are the sort of questions the story evokes over and over. The opening chapter about following your dreams is brilliant. Saint-Exupéry was a pilot who also wrote great adventure books (eg. Wind, Sand and Stars ). His delicate watercolour illustrations are near perfect too.
I love black and white (b/w) film – the dream-like, yet oddly documentary aura. In her novel Fosterling, Emma Neale observes that the ‘yearning’ feeling of b/w film is ‘The melancholy recognition of how inaccessible and mysterious the past is.’ It’s those deep shadows in b/w movies that charge the atmosphere – watch Night of the Hunter – because it’s the unseen that fires our imagination. Perhaps the effect also applies when we read text (which is black and white) – the brain is encouraged to imagine what the words describe. The early Dr Who had a huge influence on my imagination. The opening theme had me pressed into the sofa in happy terror. Here are the creepiest five seconds of TV ever (electronic music by Delia Derbyshire):
The Awful Warning carried to the point where Awe topples over into helpless laughter.– Harvey Darton
Struwwelpeter (Pretty Stories and Funny Pictures) by Dr Heinrich Hoffman (1845) is a classic of gleefully gruesome cautionary rhymes about naughty children. Hoffman was a psychiatrist who founded an influential Frankfurt asylum and pioneered counselling as an alternative treatment to cold baths (his life was novelized in Clare Dudman’s 98 Reasons for Being). The characters in Struwwelpeter were inspired by his child patients – he’d tell them stories and draw pictures to calm them down. Hoffman was looking for a book for his three year old son and could only find ‘stupid collections of pictures, and moralising stories’, so he created Struwwelpeter. It was one of the first picture books designed purely to please children – before then children’s books were mainly religious or moral lessons with titles such as An Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy Lives and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children. Read more about ‘shock-headed’ Peter here.
‘The book has long oscillated between being accepted as harmless hilarity and being condemned as excessively horrifying’- Humphrey Carpenter
The first step towards being a writer is to hitch your unconscious mind to your writing arm.– Dorothea Brande
The 1934 classic Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande, is a practical book which is remarkably in tune with current brain science. Brande believes the writer’s unconscious mind should ‘flow freely and richly, bringing at demand all the treasures of memory’, while the conscious mind does the hard word work to ‘control, combine and discriminate’.
Photo: Moria cave, Karamea
Writing is will and imagination; it depends both on unbidden impulses and on careful, considered dedication to the tools of language. Malcolm Bradbury
But the unconscious can be a reluctant creature, resisting the discipline that writing requires. Brande has some intriguing exercises to achieve the interaction between will and imagination. Here are three exercises designed to ‘tap’ the unconscious:
Writing immediately after you wake up before any associations invade the mind (I feel the resistance already).
Writing at a prearranged time every day.
Meditation to improve clarity (this fits with current neuroscience ideas).
Brande also suggests our unconscious is the source of our most original stories, and most importantly, that every writer has something unique to offer:
There is just one contribution which every one of us can make: we can give into the common pool of experience some comprehension of the world as it looks to each of us.
At last! The original Moomin book has been released in an elegant hardcover English edition for the first time. Moomins and the Great Flood (1945) is a junior novel that reveals the Moomin’s origins. Moominmamma and her son leave the world of humans (where they lived behind stoves) and become refugees, seeking their lost beloved, Moominpappa, who has been swept away by a flood. We meet the characters who will populate the later novels: Sniff, the Hemulen, the Antlion and the surreal Hattifatteners, who “did not care about anything except travelling from one strange place to another.” This poignant story was Jansson’s response to the Second World War that had interrupted her painting career. The book has her beautiful atmospheric watercolours.
Reading this book in the light of the suffering of the Finnish people in 1939 as they were caught up in the turmoil of their Winter War casts a different glow over what is essentially a classic adventure story.– Esther Freud
Why Does The World Exist? by Jim Holt is a fascinating book that asks the question, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ Holt looks at all sides of the question, interviewing scientists, philosophers, atheists and believers (Richard Swinburne, John Irving, Roger Penrose, Adolf Grunbaum…). There are three types of theorist:
The “optimists” hold that there has to be a reason for the world’s existence and that we may well discover it. The “pessimists” believe that there might be a reason for the world’s existence but that we’ll never know for sure… Finally, the “rejectionists” persist in believing that there can’t be a reason for the world’s existence, and hence that the very question is meaningless.
Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason says that ‘For every thing there must be a reason for that thing’s existence‘, which is the basis of our scientific worldview. Holt does a good job of summarizing some knotty philosophy, physics and maths (understanding it is another matter!). Although he offers no firm answers, the book left me feeling “optimistic”; and it’s oddly comforting that after picking the brains of the world’s greatest thinkers, Holt concludes,
No one can confidently claim intellectual superiority in the face of the mystery of existence.
Photo: Solar eruption, Dec 31, 2012 – courtesy of NASA Images
The Hobbitand The Lord of the Rings are the work of an obscure Oxford professor whose specialisation was the West Midland dialect of Middle English, and who lived an ordinary suburban life bringing up his children and tending his garden. – Humphrey Carpenter
My holiday reading is Humphrey Carpenter’s wonderful book, J.R.R. Tolkien – A Biography. The account of his early life is quite moving, and the evolution of his stories is fascinating (as Tolkien said, “Stories tend to get out of hand”). Some quirky influences on his writing include:
The attack on the toddler Tolkien by a terrifying tarantula in South Africa (1895),
Tolkien’s language teacher who trained his dog (to lick its lips) with a Gothic command, “smakka bagms”,
His ‘fellowship’ of young writers at college which is broken by the Great War.
The vital inspiration of the Kalevala, (Land of Heroes), the mythology of Finland.
A trip to a ‘nasty little suburban resort’ where he wrote a poem about a slimy cave creature named ‘Glip’ (1922).
His friendship with C.S.Lewis, on whom he based Treebeard’s ‘hrooming’ voice.
The Hobbits are just rustic English people. – Tolkien
Saint Nicholas was born about 280 AD into a rich family. When his parents died he used his wealth to help the poor and sick, often giving gifts in secret. He became a Christian bishop and was imprisoned by the Roman Emperor, Diocletian. Nicholas is the Patron Saint of Greece and the model for Santa Claus. Saints were known as ‘Divine Bees’ because honey was a symbol of God’s grace – honey was often given as a gift to children on St. Nicholas’ Day.
Everything in the tales appears to happen by chance – and this has the strange effect of making it appear that nothing happens by chance, that everything is fated. – A. S. Byatt
Two hundred years ago today, the Brothers Grimm published their Household Tales. One of the appeals of the tales is how random events seem connected; as A. S. Byatt says in her excellent essay (online here). They are stories of princesses, simpletons, brothers and sisters who meet with good or bad ‘luck’ on their quest, yet are bound by the rules of the fairy tale world – a kind of guided randomness – usually with a happy ending. Perhaps this is the way children see the world: capricious, sometimes scary, but in the end, a hopeful place. As a child I loved how the characters meet the forces of their fickle, often gruesome world with kindness and cunning. (Illustration by Arthur Rackham; more Grimm illustrations here).
Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.– G.K. Chesterton
The Science Delusion by rebel scientist Rupert Sheldrake challenges the current scientific dogma that life is mechanical and purposeless. His chapters ask: “Are the laws of nature fixed? Is nature purposeless? Are minds confined to brains?” The title is a bit misleading but perhaps it’s a dig at Richard Dawkins (of ‘God Delusion’ fame), who describes living things as ‘machines’. The US edition title is Science Set Free, and it’s Sheldrake’s aim to break free from rigid materialistic science. Anyone who has ever had a pet, kept bees or grown a tree, knows that plants and animals are living organisms with a sense of purpose, not just an assembly of chemicals:
All living organisms show goal-directed behaviour. Developing plants and animals are attracted towards developmental ends…Even the most ardent defenders of the mechanistic theory smuggle purposive organising principles into living organisms in the form of selfish genes and genetic programs.– Rupert Sheldrake
Even the smallest entities seem to have a form of consciousness. He describes remarkable single-celled swamp creatures, called Stentor (photo), which have a memory despite having no nerve endings (synapses). Sheldrake writes most lucidly about science and philosophy, and he’s not afraid to theorise about fringe science events (which he explains with his rather cryptic theory of ‘morphic fields’). Read a review.
This is not the end of the book is a fascinating conversation between two great bibliophiles, the author Umberto Eco and film-maker, Jean-Claude Carriere. They discuss the history of the physical book and our digital future. It’s a rambling, wide-ranging conversation (as the best are) and the enthusiasm of these book lovers swept me along. And there’s an especially fine chapter on book censorship.
The Internet has returned us to the alphabet … From now on, everyone has to read… Alterations to the book-as-object have modified neither its function nor its grammar for more than 500 years. The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved.’ – Umberto Eco
Five years old, and terrified, my first day at school. I sat on the hard mat and the teacher read Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr Seuss. I became so engrossed I didn’t notice my mother slip out. Horton the elephant, who suffered so much on his mission, helped me get through that day.
Six years old, and absorbed in Calico the Wonder Horseby Virginia Lee Burton, a cowboy adventure. Gripped by an image of the Stewy Stinker, crying in remorse for his wickedness – aware of my own naughtiness perhaps?
Seven years old, and Tintin was my role model for courage and integrity. His stories ranged across sci-fi, supernatural, humour, history, politics, and war; all in realist comic style.
Eight years old, and The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster opened the world of word-play to me, an addiction that remains today.
Nine years old, and Willard Price books were devoured as pulp adventures with erupting volcanoes, balloon rides and killer anacondas. First inkling I wanted to write books as exciting.
Ten years old, on the ultimate journey with a small hero facing all the forces of evil the universe can muster. The Hobbit kindled my imagination more than any other book. It was, as Tolkien said,
‘an escape to a heightened reality- a world at once more vivid and intense.’
Here’s the 1966 version that I had, with a cover drawing by Tolkien himself (link to all Hobbit covers).
You’ve written a wonderful story and identified a publisher. The next step is the most important: wait! Don’t send it off; instead, hide your story for weeks or even months. When you pick it up again it will be like turning on the light –you’ll see with fresh eyes all the lame bits glaring at you. Not waiting has been my biggest mistake as a writer – I always find things I should’ve fixed. When re-reading I often get a Miss Clavel feeling that something is not right; a scene doesn’t fit; the dream is broken and I’m jerked out of the story. A ruthless edit is needed. Illustration from the timeless Madeleine by Ludwig Bemelmans.
My first comic book love as a child was the Donald Duck series by Carl Barks, perhaps the greatest comic storyteller. Barks fleshed out Disney’s slapstick film characters and created 500 engrossing adventures for children, making him “the most widely read but least known author in the world”. The hunt for square eggs in 
The EU has banned the nerve agent that has been contributing to honey bee decline around the world. The scientific evidence against these extremely toxic nicotine-based pesticides has grown steadily. Honey bees have contributed to our survival for the past 20,000 years and it’s time we showed them similar courtesy. These banned pesticides are still widely used on NZ crops (eg.corn) and sold to the public in garden centres (eg. the Confidor brand). Bee photo by Sophie Huber.
Forbidden Planet is a classic sci-fi movie about an advanced society that has destroyed itself through technology. It shares elements with The Tempest (Morbius is Prospero, the robot is Ariel) except the movie uses science instead of the supernatural – recalling Arthur C. Clarke’s maxim about advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. The science is well grounded and the psychology even more so. I love this movie for the set design, the monster from the sub-conscious, the first ever all-electronic score (by Bebe and Louis Barron) and the melodramatic script:
How big is an atom? Picture a walnut sitting in the palm of your hand. If the walnut was an atom then your hand would have to be the size of the Earth.
It’s a myth (turned cliche) that science and faith have always been at odds. The superb book, God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam, shows how the medieval church supported the genesis of science. Early universities were church-sponsored and ‘natural’ philosophy (as science was called – the word scientist wasn’t used yet) was a core subject. European thinkers drew on ancient Greek and Islamic texts to develop scientific principles that we still use today. Hannam brings a warm appreciation to these unsung scholars (eg. Gerbert); debunks the myth of the ignorant ‘Dark Ages’ (eg. people knew the Earth was round) and that the church burned scientists; and details inventions such as clocks and spectacles.
Tolstoy’s Twenty-Three Tales (1903) inspired me in my youth and today I still love the wisdom of his folk tales. The classics are How Much Land Does a Man Need (very little, naturally); and The Three Questions (Eg, What should I do with my time?). One of the unsung tales is A Grain as Big as a Hen’s Egg, an environmental metaphor that has gained in power. This is the only colour photo of Tolstoy (here aged 80), from 1908. 
A Bee in a Cathedral by Joel Levy is a fascinating book of science analogies and astonishing numbers. Suitable for all ages, only the physics section is a bit complex. A few of my favourites factoids:
What is ‘essential’? Is it Truth, Love, God, or Uncertainty? These are the sort of questions the story evokes over and over. The opening chapter about 
Struwwelpeter (Pretty Stories and Funny Pictures) by Dr Heinrich Hoffman (1845) is a classic of gleefully gruesome cautionary rhymes about naughty children. Hoffman was a psychiatrist who founded an influential Frankfurt asylum and pioneered counselling as an alternative treatment to cold baths (his life was novelized in Clare Dudman’s 98 Reasons for Being). The characters in Struwwelpeter were inspired by his child patients – he’d tell them stories and draw pictures to calm them down. Hoffman was looking for a book for his three year old son and could only find ‘stupid collections of pictures, and moralising stories’, so he created Struwwelpeter. It was one of the first picture books designed purely to please children – before then children’s books were mainly religious or moral lessons with titles such as An Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy Lives and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children. 
Photo: Moria cave, Karamea
At last! The original Moomin book has been released in an elegant hardcover English edition for the first time. Moomins and the Great Flood (1945) is a junior novel that reveals the Moomin’s origins. Moominmamma and her son leave the world of humans (where they lived behind stoves) and become refugees, seeking their lost beloved, Moominpappa, who has been swept away by a flood. We meet the characters who will populate the later novels: Sniff, the Hemulen, the Antlion and the surreal Hattifatteners, who “did not care about anything except travelling from one strange place to another.” This poignant story was Jansson’s response to the Second World War that had interrupted her painting career. The book has her beautiful atmospheric watercolours.
