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

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.

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 Persepolis and Logicomix, about Bertrand Russell.

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.

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?

•  New Yorker essay about the book
• Vintage covers
• Video interview with the author
• My Accidental Masterpiece by Norton Juster

 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