On Gender (Im)Balance in YA/ ChLit Awards

Posted on 15/10/2012 by clembeauvais

Salut, Simone! How’s it going up there? Not much has changed here since you left us, I’m afraid. Well, ok, some things have changed, but not as many as we’d wish – not as many as you’d wish. Still second sex in most things. Even in children’s and young adult literature, supposedly ‘our’ domain, as mothers, educators and homemakers… Here’s my latest little (big) annoyance on the matter. Ready for the rant?

Last week a wonderful blog post was published by lady business on gender balance in YA and children’s literature. It was written in response to the claims that ‘women dominate’ this type of literature, which you’d be forgiven for thinking if all you know about it is Harry Potter, Twilight and the Hunger Games, and that female protagonists dominate it too.

The blog post looks in incredible statistical detail at many awards in young adult and children’s literature and shows that in fact, not only male protagonists do exist in vast quantities in this type of literature, and male authors and illustrators are not unheard of, but also that this pretended rara avis is also overrepresented in the award industry.

In other words, there may be fewer male authors, but they win proportionally more awards; there may be fewer male protagonists, but they’re a pretty good predictor of whether a book will win an award.

I’m massively oversimplifying this: please go and look at the blog post in detail.

Anyway, as it happens, a year ago, I did exactly the same thing on my French blog. I’d long had an inkling that male authors and illustrators were disproportionately represented in awards and prizes for children’s literature. An analysis of the main French awards confirmed what I’d suspected. Children’s and young adult literature in France is written predominantly by women (2/3rds), but this proportion never applies to the most prestigious awards. One of them (a lifetime achievement award) has never been given to a woman.

I also looked at the representation of children’s authors in specialised media, and noted that men are disproportionately more likely to be interviewed and their books disproportionately more likely to be reviewed.

At the time, many of my author and illustrator friends supported me, and the blog post was shared by the French Children’s Authors & Illustrators Association, but many people were extremely shocked and infuriated by it. A number of Anonymous ~~supporters of patriarchy~~ readers commented that (old chestnut alert) ‘You should look at race and class imbalance, that’s the real problem!’ or ‘You basically hate men!’ or even ‘Why do we need to be so ridiculously punctilious about statistics??’ (of course if I’d just said what I ‘felt’ was true, I would have been accused of giving no evidence.)

One of them, a prominent male children’s author, shared the link on his Facebook page (I’m not friends with him, but a common friend helpfully screencapped it for me) saying that it was ‘the stupidest thing he’d seen in a long time’. Many of his friends ranted about it until he put a stop to the conversation: ‘Hey, wait! I looked her up, and she’s hot! I take back what I said!’.

Yes, Simone, I know. 2012.

Anyway, the important things are:

1) People don’t want to believe that this is true. Especially authors and editors, who in a female-dominated environment cannot imagine that there could still be institutional sexism. Even when given clear, uncontroversial evidence, they will still say that it’s not true.This applies to men and women.

2) No one here is arguing that anyone is doing that on purpose. It would be a ridiculous thing to argue. Rather, we are saying that there is still a bias in favour of male authors and illustrators, even when most judges are women. In fact, perhaps, in some way, because most judges are women. It’s not the fault of one particular person and it’s not the fault of ‘men’. It’s definitely not the fault of all the wonderful male authors and illustrators who win prizes.

3) The reasons for male domination in children’s and young adult literature are complex. Some people in the comments to my blog post noted that women writers are more likely to be perceived as ‘hobby’ or ‘part-time’ writers, and are more likely to be still in charge of much of the household tasks. Male writers, well, it’s their job. Men are perhaps better at selling themselves to a female-dominated world. They stand out.

4) As lady business points out, this is about asking questions, not providing answers. Institutional sexism is not a monolithic monster. It has countless ramifications. It’s a hydra. Cut one head and six new ones appear. Like Herakles, we must find a strategy to prevent them from growing back.

Blogging about it, sharing blog posts about it, talking about it are some of these strategies.

Clem x

P.S. for those who are interested, here’s the translation of my hypotheses for the overrepresentation of men in children’s literature awards.

– Men are simply objectively better than women in writing and illustrating children’s books. Whether it’s natural talent or just better artistic education, their books on average are better than women’s books. As you may have guessed, I don’t adhere very much to this explanation.

– In children’s literature like in many other domains, men are the norm and women the Other: in other words, everyone can identify with the masculine, but women are the only ones who can identify with the feminine. As a result of this unconscious prejudice, male creations are perceived as the most representative and normative examples of human experience, even when women are the ones judging them.

– Another prejudice may be that men are seen as more intelligent and more serious than women. Awarding prizes to male author and illustrators may be an unconscious strategy to help validate children’s literature in the eyes of everyone else. If men do it, it must be an art form, not just a hobby.

– Whether or not it’s conscious, men may be better at imposing themselves than women; they may know better how to put forward their work, may be more ambitious and competitive, optimise their networks, and may be less likely to be falsely modest.

– Moulded by an educational system where male thinking is valued, and entrenched in a society that perpetuates that myth, women may be simply convinced, unconsciously, that male productions are better than perhaps their very own.

Kid You Not! there’s a new episode

Posted on 14/10/2012 by clembeauvais

Happy Sunday! as you may or may not know, my friend Lauren and I do a monthly podcast on children’s literature called Kid You Not Podcast. I’m the children’s literature criticism person, she’s the voice of publishing.

And it’s been a year already! and episode 12 is out, and it’s with the wonderful Sita Brahmachari, the author of Artichoke Hearts and Jasmine Skies, who agreed to cohost our anniversary episode. In which we discuss multiculturalism in children’s literature.

Click here to get to the website, where you’ll also find the link to subscribe to us on iTunes…Enjoy!

Clem x

Debut Author: Top 10 Questions You Will Get Asked

Posted on 01/10/2012 by clembeauvais

Hello, debut author! Congratulations on the book deal! While you’re busy getting Vistaprint to produce acceptable promotional bookmarks (next time you’ll know better and use Moo), finding ways of getting better known on the Internet (don’t worry, no one actually has any idea how to), practicing answering ‘so what do you do?’ with ‘well, I’m a writer’ (seriously, it’s ok), and fervently noting down what every single author, agent and editor blog says about what you should be doing or else, here’s my little contribution to your constant migraine: the 10 questions you will get asked by everyone, from complete randomers to your grandmother, within your first year of publication.

Oh you will have fun. Here we go.

10. ‘But like, how many, I mean like not exactly, but more or less, how many books have you sold, like, approximately?’

This question can occur at any time, including the day after publication. And you cannot be vague: even if the questioner is otherwise incapable of adding three and four without frantically reaching for a calculator, s/he wants numbers. Not sure why; but it is absolutely vital. Saying ‘Oh, it’s going well, I think’ will only drag you into a labyrinth of subdefinitions of the adverb ‘well’ associated to specific numerical values.

The assumption, you see, is that part of the induction ceremony into the Great Publishing Sect consists of implanting a magical chip in your brain which permanently connects you to every single online and brick-and-mortar bookshop in the whole world. Every time they sell one of your books, a little ringtone goes off in your skull. You can personalise this ringtone (I have the first few chords of Supermassive Black Hole). The latest version synchronises with your iPhone5 and compiles the data into easily understandable statistics. This is why all debut authors seem to be affected by chronic incontinence. They’re not actually going to the loo – they’re surreptitiously checking their sales.

How to get out of this tricky situation without having to reveal the latest figures? The only solution is to say, with an expression of disdainful detachment which you shall practice in front of your mirror, ‘Not enough to pay for your Frappucino, you cheapskate.’

9. ‘Why aren’t you on an intergalactic promotional book tour?’

O friend, I share your perplexity. I too wish I were wanted from Johannesburg to Santa Monica by armies of fans with bellies and chests tattoed with my (probably misspelt) name. Unfortunately, this isn’t normally what happens to the debut author. Unless you are Pippa Middleton (in which case, please leave a comment explaining why Pilates doesn’t do to my body what it does to yours), you are relatively low on the list of people whom your otherwise lovely publisher would like to send on a first-class trip around the world. You might be invited to a few book fairs, bookshops and schools, but the probability that it will be Melbourne, East Anglia rather than its rather more glamorous Australian equivalent is large (unless you are from the suburbs of the latter).

The relentless questioner will not take this for an answer. Instead, offer the following explanation: ‘Because I would have missed the chance to be with you today.’ Then bat your eyelids.

8. ‘When will you be on the Oprah Winfrey show?’

(I don’t know if that thing still exists, by the way. I don’t watch much TV. Please suggest acceptable equivalents in the comments.)

Your persecutor is here hunting for a Claim to Fame to disclose at the watercooler on Monday when Amanda of the green miniskirt is passing by. ‘I know a girl who knows *person on TV*’ is indeed guaranteed to saturate the ambient air with pheromones. They will not be happy to hear that you have given an interview to the (cutely keen) work experience boy at the local newspaper. It will not satisfy them to know that people have blogged about your book. They want names. And yet, in my experience blogs are the best way for books to get known and promoted, and the local press can do a lot for debut authors, remarkably more efficiently than national magazines and papers.

But your questioner will not believe this. Your best bet is to mention offhandedly that ‘Judy’ liked the book a lot, and you’re hoping she’ll do something with it. No one needs to know that Judy is your aunt’s dog-walker.

7. ‘So I went to Waterstones the other day and your book wasn’t there. That means it’s out of print or what?’

Yep, it’s only been a year but people hated it so forcefully that the publisher discontinued it, burnt all the stock and issued a public apology.

Your questioner is here betraying their vision of bookshops as a land of magic with unlimited storage space, very much like Mary Poppins’s bag or its newer Hermionesque equivalent. It would be very cruel to shatter their lovely reverie with dull considerations of the fact that the number of books currently in print divided by the available squared metres in your average bookshop results in an imaginary number which spontaneously creates dangerous amounts of antimatter if it is written down or spoken.

What you want the person to do here is to order the book: that way, the bookshop will know that it’s wanted (and order more) and you will have sold another copy. But you don’t want them to know that your book isn’t still the number one favourite darling of said bookshop. So the only way is to say, ‘Oh dear, tell me about it. Every time they restock the shelves, they’re empty again within the next half hour. I would recommend ordering it; only way to make sure you can have it.’ Win.

6. ‘When’s the next one coming out?’

That one’s easy if you’ve got a multiple book deal, because it’s written in your contract. If not, it is a considerably stressful question, because of the vaguely existential sense of vertigo it triggers in your insecure psyche. You are not allowed to take this as an opportunity to confess that you are terrified that your editor might not like the next one and stop loving you and that as a result your agent will slap you in the face and worst of all that the people who once ‘Liked’ your Facebook page will ‘Unlike’ it. This is not an acceptable response. You are not on a psychoanalyst’s sofa. This is war.

The perfect answer is a lie: ‘November 7th, 2014’. Repeat this to everyone who asks. Tell everyone who doesn’t ask. Write it on your blog. That way, there’ll be so much pressure to do it that you’ll actually write that second book. No choice.

5. ‘Do you Google your name everyday to see what people are saying about you?’

No need. I’ve installed a piece of software on my iPhone5 connected to the aforementioned chip in my brain and whenever my name appears in any corner of the world wide web another special ringtone reverberates through my skull (Lensky’s aria in Eugene Onegin).

People seem to assume that finding reviews of your books is always the most wonderful experience. And of course it is when they’re good, and of course there are (many) writers who get completely obsessive-compulsive with looking up reviews. But for me, if I do start looking for them, there’s always that horribly stressful feeling that you just don’t know what you’re going to end up finding.

It’s as if you could google your kid’s name and find reviews of the dear child. Of course, a lot of the time it’s all going to be ‘Sharon’s adorable little boy is a charming example of toddlerhood with perfectly rosy cheeks under an avalanche of cherubic curls’. But once in a while you’ll get the occasional ‘Scrawny-looking and relatively indistinguishable from a tiny piglet, Billy suffers from a worrying lack of vocabulary for an eighteen-month-old’. Maybe that would make you think twice before asking Larry Page what his disciples think of your progeny.

Your questioner will not agree with that, of course, so just evasively mention that you don’t need to because your mum and dad do it for you and select which ones they tell you about, haha! (and tragically it’s probably true, too.)

4. ‘Why don’t you translate your own books into French/ Chinese/ Martian to sell them abroad?’

(This isn’t a question asked to the chronically monolingual: lucky, lazy you!). This one primarily betrays a forgivable lack of knowledge of how the publishing industry works on an international level (clue: not like that).

But the more worrying (and frankly annoying) assumption is that any bilingual person can translate anything, including their own prose. What is the point, quel est le point, I ask you, of studying translation? Absolutely none. Bilingual people are naturally endowed with the gift of translation; fact. Any Jean-Pierre Dawson born of an English dad and a French mum can write with equal velocity and Booker/Goncourt-winning quality in both languages.Therefore, they can translate their own work, of course, since they wrote it to start with. The assumption is strengthened, of course, when you do write in both languages.

The only appeasing answer you can bring to this question is, ‘If I’m asked to, I might.’ But you might not. Because nothing, of course, guarantees that you are the best translator of your own words.

3. ‘Did you choose the illustrator/ the title/ the layout/ the cover/ the chapter headings font/ the ISBN/ etc?’

Niet. Nein. No. Non. … [I’ve run out of other languages]

This will not satisfy your well-intentioned questioner. ‘What!?! but it’s YOUR book!?! How come?!?’. They will think your editor is Really Mean. Then they will think you’re a Loser who only had Bad Ideas. Then they will laugh at you in secret. It will be the beginning of the end of your social respectability.

The problem here is that once again the writer is envisaged as a prodigy multitasker who must by definition know everything about what a book is. ‘Of course I chose the exact paper texture I wanted, 68.9g/mm and ivory-off-white with a tinge of cerulean’. The editor is just the person who makes the money. S/he has no experience and no right to interfere in the great creator’s vision of the work.

The truth is that making a book, for the editor, is about n-ego-tiating the author’s ego with the actual reality of the fact that the book has to sell and that their vision of a full-colour picture of a Murakami sculpture with the elliptic title ‘Albeit Capricious’ will not be the most efficient way of reaching out to the average Waterstones customer. And they will very probably be right.

You don’t want your questioner to ruin your professional life and career by spreading rumours about how powerless you are, of course, so the only acceptable answer is, ‘Oh of course I had a say’. And to be fair, you probably did.

2. ‘Which authors are you friends with now?’

This assumes that other authors are by necessity your best friends forever, just like all accountants flock together and all academics only have friends who are academics. Ok, that last one may actually be true.

The fact is of course that there are many authors you are now friends with because they’re actually nice and others that you really can’t stand because they’re terrible people, however adorable their picturebook series may be. You are not automatically on the same wavelength as someone who writes in the same genre. It is also possible that you are not the kind of person who can bear the frequently disproportionately huge ego of other writers on top of your own equally impressive self-confidence.

But the myth about birds of a feather must be maintained, so name all the writers that you’ve met, from the loveliest to the most unpleasant, and with a generous smile, tell your questioner that ‘They’re all amazing, what can I say? We’re like a big family.’

1. ‘Yeah ok so you write children’s books, right, but when are you going to write, like, real literature?’

When the rest of the world starts to understand that children’s literature is real literature.

Clem x

Harry Potter and the $tudios of $ecrets: a day out at Leavesden

Posted on 23/09/2012 by clembeauvais

So yes, I’m supposed to be writing the thesis, but when a friend calls me to say that she’s going with her boyfriend to the Harry Potter Studios at Leavesden and do I want to come along? then the only thing to do is to stop writing the t. and jump into the car, Leavesden-bound.

For those of you who haven’t heard of that new brave new world of Pottermania (and I was one of them), here’s the elevator pitch: while sipping caviar milkshake on the shore of their artificial lake of liquid gold, the Warner brothers reflected that now that the Potter films were all filmed they had all those props and sets and costumes lying around in their attic gathering dust and that they should really give them all to Oxfam. Or alternatively, stack it all in half a dozen gigantic hangars and ask people for £28 in non-Leprechaun money to come and look at them. They thought about it for about half a second, and settled for the latter option.

Now, Harry Potter is more or less the most important thing to have happened to me in my late childhood and for all of my adolescence, but I’m not a huge fan of the films at all. And I’m even less of a fan of enormous American money-making corporations such as WB. So I wasn’t expecting to love the visit: I was expecting to have fun superficially while grinding my teeth at what they’d done to Jo’s universe and remembering what it was like when no one but me had read the books in my school and now all those untrue fans of the series who discovered it through the films are pretending that they know it better than me. It’s a hard life, you know, having to constantly prove that you’re a better fan than the people who call Emma Watson ‘Hermione’. (‘Have you heard, Hermione’s going to Brown University!’ ‘No she isn’t, and you’re a troll.’ ) (Childish, me?)

But against all odds, I loved it. I absolutely adored every moment of it. Here’s why.

People who think that this exhibition is just for Harry Potter fans are wrong. It isn’t. As a Potter fan, you will have a lot of fun; but even if you haven’t read the books or seen the films, even if you’re not even that interested in children’s literature, you have to go. Because it’s not just about Harry Potter, far from it: it’s an incredible, exhilarating celebration of cinema.

Even though you’ve been told again and again that making a film takes a lot of time, money and people, even for tiny details that only appear on screen for a few seconds, I don’t think you can actually believe it until you see it. That’s exactly what the Studios exhibition does. In the three to four hours that it takes to visit it, you get to see the unbelievable variety of objects, costumes, sets, special effects which you’d never noticed on screen, but which were necessary for the whole thing to function. The incredibly detailed architects’ drawings which preceded the building of the models. The conception of the clothes, wigs, make-up, accessories down to the merest sleeve button. The thought that went into the design of each wand, each wand box. The oil paintings full of private jokes among members of the crew. The wonderful handmade objects of the Room of Requirement which you barely see before they get destroyed by Fiendfyre. The handwritten books and handbooks, the handprinted newspapers and magazines, the handlettered Marauders’ Map.

So many hands.

Everything is beautifully, neatly presented; the aim is to make the visitors feel that they’re walking not from one set to the next, but from one room of Hogwarts to the next. The organisation of the visit is a bit dictatorial: you have to book a timeslot in advance, and don’t you dare arrive late. The exhibition is packed, even in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day. Barely any children, but hundreds of 20-45-year-olds. Yes, it’s a big Disneylandish from time to time, but by no means all the time. Generally, the quality of the materials used – real stone, real wood, beautifully-textured fabrics – prevents it all from looking like the Haunted House.

By definition, I don’t think you can get a good idea of what it truly feels like just by looking at pictures, since even the films didn’t do that. But here’s a bit of what we saw that day – thanks Zahra for most of the pictures- :

Drink-driving the Ford Anglia.

The wand boxes, all individually handlettered with names of the thousands of people who worked on the films

A Potter named desire

The letters we all wish we’d received on the day of our eleventh.

The Knight Bus, without even needing to call it.

Privet Drive. Or, Any British House.

The amazing interior of the Weasleys’ house, with all the details you never spotted.

An uncommon look at the Gryffindor Common Room

Up and down Diagon Alley

Now what, you also want to know how much I spent that day? Here’s a breakdown:

Ticket: £28
Audioguide: £4.50 (don’t take it, it’s not worth it; there’s too much to see to bother with it)
Sandwich and coffee at the cafeteria conveniently placed halfway through the exhibition: £5
Two chocolate wands at the shop conveniently placed at the end of the exhibition: £7

That’s almost £45, and not counting transport, nor the indispensible glass of Butterbeer, which my friend treated us to:

Ka-shing!

So yes, the Warner brothers are doing great, thank you very much. And I’d understand if it bothers you. But really, what a shame it would be to miss this completely disproportionate, extremely well-thought-out, immensely enjoyable look at the secrets of the eight Potter films.

Clem x

A Work Day

Posted on 20/09/2012 by clembeauvais

Today, I worked hard with my editor, Ellen Holgate, and the illustrator of the Sesame Seade series, Sarah Horne.

And by working hard I mean that they both came to Cambridge on a mission to take pictures of all the places in town that Sesame goes to so that they could be adequately rendered in Sarah’s illustrations.

It was hard work.

We had to visit Christ’s, Sidney Sussex, Gonville & Caius, Trinity, Auntie’s Teashop, Michaelhouse Café, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Anchor pub, and walk up and down the streets of Cambridge, all that while taking lots of pictures (well, Sarah did) and talking about work (and food. And holidays. And boyfriends. And books.).

Sometimes being an author is all about sacrifices. When I think I could have been at home writing the thesis! But duty was calling.

On the way, Ellen and Sarah met my good friend Charlie Darwin:

And after a long day of research, here’s the three of us near the river… and yes, I know, it looks like the girls are trying to conceal an intimate part of my anatomy with the rough cover of Sleuth on Skates.

Sarah, me, and Ellen

Anyway, all this research will allow Sarah to produce perfect pictures for Sleuth on Skates and the other Sesame books, such as this fabulous one of Sess roller-derbying around the First Court of Christ’s!:

Right. Back to work. The other kind.

Clem x

Pseudonymous: The secrets of writing under a pseudonym

Posted on 16/09/2012 by clembeauvais

French writer Romain Gary wrote under a pseudonym in order to win a second Goncourt prize, the French equivalent of the Booker, which in theory cannot be awarded more than once to the same author. He managed it, and his pseudonymously-published Life Before Us became an unputdownable timeless classic, as they say.

Meanwhile, there are other people who wouldn’t mind the Goncourt, but who choose to write under a pseudonym for different reasons. Here is the tale of my short experience of pseudonymous writing (and no, you won’t know what I wrote or what my pen name was): why I did it, what I learned, and how I feel about it now. Wow, said like that it sounds like I’m going to start telling you it was a journey of self-discovery. Don’t worry, I’m not.

Once upon a time, about two years ago, thanks to an illustrator friend, I was asked to write a couple thousand words as a test for a series of children’s novels to be published alongside a magazine. I did it not really thinking I’d get it, but I did, and suddenly there I was signing a (very good) contract and agreeing to follow an absolutely unbending set of rules specifying a set number of words per chapter and a set number of chapters per book and the age of the protagonists and no sex or violence let alone a swearword.

Without getting too much into detail, it was a shamelessly, intensely, voluptuously commercial series of novels. The main issue was the theme. It’s the kind of theme that, in my area of study at least, everyone would label trashy without a second look at it. Ballerina stories, football stories, that sort of thing. So in order not to compromise my future applications for Junior Research Fellowships and postdoc positions (*cough* if you have one of those that needs filling contact me I make very good chocolate cakes *cough*), I decided to take a pen name. I didn’t want the Google Gods to bring up that kind of sulphurous secret on page 1 of ‘clementine beauvais’ just under my Academia.edu profile when I’d become Professor Dame Empress of Intergalactic Children’s Literature at Harvard.

Now, as everyone who knows me knows, I’m a feminist and an active member of the League Against Bunnies and Unicorns in Children’s Literature and it was out of the question for me to stop having convictions just because the cover of the book didn’t mention my real name anywhere. It was genre fiction ‘for girls’, but nothing that was intrinsically sexist – I would have refused immediately. And in fact, following my mum’s advice (what would one do without one’s mum’s advice?), while writing those books I had a lot of fun with the conventions of the genre, respecting some and transgressing a lot. Sometimes the publisher said no, but most of the time they said yes. I ended up writing something I’d never thought I’d write: super-commercial but semi-subversive children’s fiction.

I learned a lot writing these novels. You have to write fast. You have to make your descriptions short, compact and evocative. You have to find new things for the protagonists to do, all the time. And above all, you have to plan ahead. Plan, structure, scaffold. Find ways of solving three problems while creating a new one in just one chapter.

I also learned to get rid of many of my prejudices on this type of literature (damn, that’s definitely starting to sound like I’m saying it was a journey). When I started writing them, I found the whole experience stressful and even weirdly humiliating. But then I started to enjoy it. And now I can see that it was an incredibly helpful and enriching experience, and I even wonder if I could have written Sesame without it. Sesame isn’t really genre fiction, but it’s action-packed and borrows a lot from different genres. Without the practice of making up adventures and misadventures that fit into 14 chapters of however many words each, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to write it.

And above all I’m quite happy with these little books, which is all the more surprising as I’m generally übercritical of what I write. It is, I think, good genre fiction. Doesn’t mean I’m going to reintegrate them into my bibliography, once again for university-related reasons.

Unfortunately or fortunately, the series didn’t last very long. The novels were sold in plastic wrapping with a magazine, and the cover art and the magazine design were frankly hideous and the magazine completely uninteresting. Can’t say I was too bothered about it – it meant that I was able to stop writing them discreetly at the faculty library and start working more on my thesis and on more ‘intellectual’, ‘gratifying’ fiction-writing. Not to mention it was extremely good money which paid for a completely lovely holiday touring the Loire castles with my boyfriend of the time.

Azay-le-Rideau. Thank you, commercial fiction.

Yet I still have a lot of tenderness for these little books and I’m really happy to have had the chance, pseudonymously, to try new techniques of characterisation, description, structure, and dialogue.

Clem x

NB This is a translation/ adaptation of a post previously published on my French blog.

When Sarah Meets Sesame

Posted on 07/09/2012 by clembeauvais

I’m super thrilled to be able to reveal that the Sesame Seade series will be illustrated by the amazing Sarah Horne! Her artwork is perfect – bubbly, energetic and zany and the sketches she’s done so far have triggered many an exclamation of ‘that’s EXACTLY Sesame!’ at Beauvais Towers.

And this is what Sesame looks like now thanks to Sarah:

Fabulous, I know. Sarah’s worked on lots of chapter books and picturebooks with Hodder, Walker and Random, among others. Her blog is here, her website is there and her Facebook page is yonder. She also tweets ici.

I can’t wait to see the first book, Sleuth on Skates, all illustrated. The sketches for the cover and chapter 1 I’ve seen look phenomenal and it’s going to be full of quirky details and funny faces. And ducks.

Meanwhile, the first draft of Book 2, Gargoyles Gone AWOL, is all done and I’m going to start working on the edits soon. Book 3, Scam on the Cam, is slowly getting started. And the PhD thesis is also getting some attention, Maria, I promise (this is for my supervisor).

Sesame’s leaving soon for the US with the Hodder rights team, so please cross your fingers everyone that she doesn’t hit an iceberg on her way across the Atlantic… and optionally-hopefully that they’ll like her enough to want her to stay!

Clem x

Summer Summary

Posted on 01/09/2012 by clembeauvais

I’ve just come back from three weeks of epic family adventures and misadventures on the Transsiberian, from Moscow to Irkoutsk to the Baikal Lake to Ulan-Bator to the steppes of Mongolia. Eating clotted goat’s milk in a Mongolian yurt and pork liver dumplings in the deepest depths of the Russian countryside? Check. Sleeping on a tiny little train bed five nights in a row having not had a shower? Check. Still managing to talk to the rest of your family in a relatively peaceful manner? Check. Working on your Phd thesis? Hmm…

Here’s a little picture just to give you an idea…

While I was busy doing all that, my latest novel in French came out, La pouilleuse (The girl with lice). It’s a YA novel set in Paris, the short, dark story of a day in the lives of five über-privileged teenagers who out of boredom, idleness and other motives they don’t quite understand, kidnap a little girl outside a swimming-pool and decide to get rid of the lice in her hair. It’s published by the very cool Editions Sarbacane, who are famous in France for their award-winning contemporary urban fiction for teens.

Having a new book out is always half-exciting and half-underwhelming. It’s nothing like the thrill you get when the editor tells you that yes, they’ll publish it – that’s the big high. But the day the book actually comes out, and even if you’re not trekking through the Mongolian steppes, it’s not that incredible. Your local bookshop might not even have it yet. People you care about have already read it, because you’ve given them advance copies; other people are reading it but you don’t know about it. There might be a few reviews already on the internet, but that’s all. At least that’s my experience in France – I’ll let you know if it’s different in the UK.

But La pouilleuse has already got a few good reviews here and there and I’ve just learnt it’s been nominated for an award. Now it’s out, there’s nothing I can do about it apart from looking forward to seeing what happens to it.

On the Sesame side, things are getting very exciting and I’ll soon post a few updates. Meanwhile, back to the thesis…

Clem x

Sirius, Albus, Fortius: Children’s Literature in Olympic Shape

Posted on 28/07/2012 by clembeauvais

So I watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, and though I didn’t cry blue, red and white tears like, seemingly, absolutely everyone else on Twitter and Facebook, I was delightfully surprised by the central place occupied by children’s literature in Danny Boyle’s very short introduction to British history and culture.

If it had taken place in France (no hard feelings), I don’t think they’d have read an extract from the Little Prince, flown a giant inflatable Babar, or restaged the original Beauty and the Beast. They may have played around a little bit with Astérix, but most of the show would probably have been devoted to ‘higher’ forms of Gaulitude. ~~Belgium would have had Tintin, of course, but they’ve got less to choose from.~~

In Boyle’s wacky pyrotechnical spectacle, Jo Rowling’s lovely reading from Peter Pan leads to an army of Mary Poppinses avadakedavring a gigantic Voldemort. No cameo by Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, Jane Eyre must have declined on grounds of her slight dislike of fire, Mr and Mrs Darcy were enjoying a quiet evening at Pemberley, Oscar Wilde was probably tweeting away wry witticisms about his lost invite. But their little colleagues on the kiddie lit’ shelf got more than their fifteen minutes of fame.

Her Majesty JKR

There were also kids everywhere. Kids reading – kids reading real books. With a torch. Under the bed sheets. Disgusting idealisation, Romanticisation and objectification of childhood notwithstanding (concession necessary for the children’s literature critics who may be reading this), it isn’t a point of detail. I don’t know how many millions of children were watching this ceremony, but the image of childness it sold them was one which legitimated, spectacularised, sublimated storytelling in books. The message was that children’s literature here is so important that it deserves to be featured, at length and at least half-seriously, in a huge, international show mostly watched by adults.

And sponsored by Coca-Cola, of course. But I’ll leave the dark undersides of this ideology of childhood to another blog post, another day. Having just watched Jo, I’m in too much of a good mood for that.

After we learnt, recently, that no children’s literature bookshop has closed this year, this was just another indication that children’s literature in the UK is in Olympic shape, thank you very much.

Clem x

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

Posted on 08/07/2012 by clembeauvais

Doing ‘research’ to write fiction, especially whimsical fiction for 9-year-olds, means you end up with a very strange browsing history. According to mine, this is what I’ve been asking Google recently (and yes, I treat Google like a real person when it comes to asking questions):

taking fingerprints on glass
when is hornet season
what’s the name of white fluff falling off trees
difference between cider and perry [for a French book]
do gargoyles often need to be repaired
horses falling off the rock of Solutré [French book again]
dormouse sleeping patterns
medicine to calm children down
weight of normal 9 year old girl
what time is evensong

and last but not least (though I should probably have chosen Bing for that one):

is google allowed to spy on you

Added to these are, of course, endless searches on these two Ali-Baba’s caves of infinite knowledge which I could not live without, Thesaurus.com and Urban Dictionary.

I quite like the idea that Google is getting a completely bizarre and incoherent idea of me due to my inexplicable browsing decisions, but unfortunately I’m sure it’s cleverer than that and has clocked that I’m a writer.

Anyway, once in a while you type in a seemingly innocuous little question and end up navigating a whole underground world the existence of which you’d never suspected. One such fine discovery happened to me when I started researching people who climb up buildings, specifically Cambridge and Oxford buildings. These people, my friends, are not only the hidden modern superheroes of our quiet little university towns, they also have a whole community on and offline, with its codes, handbooks and specific discourse.

I ended up buying this incredible little book which is always in the ‘Cambridge’ section of Waterstones in Cambridge and which I’d never thought would be of any interest to me: The Night Climbers of Cambridge. It has its own Wikipedia page, and so it should. Written in the 1930s by Noel Symington, who is now dead, it is no less than a handbook on roof-climbing in Cambridge.

You will learn how to climb up a pipe (with photographic examples) – don’t bother with square pipes, they’re no good. You will learn how to reach the top of King’s College Chapel (once again, fabulous pics); if you fall, you still have three seconds of life, so enjoy them. You will learn how to do ‘the leap’ between Gonville & Caius College and the Senate House. It really is quite simple, but some chaps get cold feet when they could easily jump such a distance if there wasn’t an abyss underneath!

The best thing about this delightful book is the jolly P.G. Wodehousey tone of it all, which takes you back in time almost a century ago in a Cambridge where all Porters still wore bowler hats, where the girls were confined to just a few colleges and where roof-climbing was a necessity in the middle of the night if you’d missed the time when the college closed down.

Anyway, not sure how much of this exquisite read is going to end up in Sesame Seade, but here are a few passages just to give you an idea of it:

‘On the other hand, consider those pipes in the New Court of St John’s, over the river. We know of no-one who has climbed any of the pipes on the outer north wall of the same court. They are the most forbidding pipes in Cambridge.’

‘On the north side a buttress leaves a recess into which a man’s body fits nicely. The chimney is too broad for comfort, and a very short man might find it impossible to reach the opposite wall, with his feet flapping disconsolately in space like an elephant’s uvula.’

‘Much more could be written about Pembroke if we had the information. Its stone is good, its climbs legion, and we can thoroughly recommend any night climber to pay a few visits to it. Its hospitality is lavish and sincere, and it breeds those strong, silent Englishmen who suck pipes in the Malayan jungle but do not pass exams.’

‘And so, with a good night’s work behind us, we go home to college or lodgings, telling ourselves that perhaps after all we will not attend that nine o’clock lecture to-morrow morning.’

That last one, of course, could have been written yesterday.

Clem x