New job, new book, new blog schedule

Posted on 30/08/2013 by clembeauvais

The holidays have ended; I am now all splattered with freckles and full of salmon oil and maple syrup and scarred everywhere from fighting grizzly bears with my bare hands. Guess where I went to?

My holidays.

I am now looking forward to October which is going to come into my life with the sole intent of modifying it completely. This is because the following things are going to be happening in it:

1) New job!

I am starting on the 1st of October my very first job as an Emerging Scholar, which is a newspeak way of saying mini-researcher-playing-with-tiny-shovel-in-the-corner-of-the-big-research-beach. I’m going to be a Junior Research Fellow at Homerton College, Cambridge. It entails doing research on my own like a grown-up, having lunches with other fellows like an adult, and still teaching the lovely undergrads (and also the unlovely ones) the mysteries of children’s literature and of the philosophy of education.

So I’m moving out of my flat, and beginning my new life of maturity as a non-student (!). In the meantime, the hardback version of my thesis, with corrections, will have been submitted to the University Library! Don’t rush there all at the same time to read it; I don’t want to cause a riot. I decided to get it bound in pretty wacky colours because every boring scientist picks red, black or blue, and what’s the point in being a Humanities student if you don’t take advantage of the fabulous freedom of submitting a baby pink thesis to the UL?

Funky coloured theses

In my new job I’ll basically be starting a new research project, but also finishing what I’m currently working on, which is turning my thesis into a proper academic volume – to be published next year. This is proving very tricky and interesting – I’ll write more blog posts on the subject. The new project involves researching the concept of child precocity, and I’m sure I’ll write a bunch of things about that in months to come.

Another new thing I’ll be doing for the first time in October is go to a French conference and presenting my work in French. Easy, right, since I’m French? NO. French people terrify me, and I’ve completely lost my academic French. I’ll keep you updated, should I survive.

2) New book!

‘GGAWOL’, as it is affectionately known

But that’s not all, because October also brings the release of the second book in the Sesame Seade series, Gargoyles Gone AWOL! more to come, of course, on the matter. I’ll also be doing my first big event – a talk to kids at the Bath Literary Festival.

I’ve been working on tons of projects recently. I’ve got two picturebooks in French coming out next year, as well as a YA book. In the UK as well, projects are bubbling but still in the top-secret category. It sounds exciting, but basically it’s a sexy way of saying there are no contracts yet.

3) New blog schedule!

And to celebrate all this – new life, new job, new books, new projects – and fight existential angst, I’ll be trying to stick to a new blog schedule. Since I feel slightly schizophrenic on this blog – I’m interested both in the academic and the writing aspects – I‘ll be doing one post per week, alternating each week – one roughly for the interests of academics and academic-minded people, or people who’d like to know more about research; and one about writing and specifically writing children’s books, which will probably appeal more to other authors, readers and students of creative writing. I’m thinking Wednesday, and all in a partnership with the French side of myself.

Also, I’ve been getting quite a few emails recently, from students of children’s literature in particular – either about the course at Cambridge, or about studying children’s literature in general. I’m always happy to help, so do email me at clementine at clementinebeauvais dot com (but please don’t ask me to write it for you…!)

Meanwhile

A bientôt!

Clem x

Getting published: France vs UK

Posted on 16/04/2013 by clembeauvais

This is a variation on the obligatory ‘How I Got Published’ post. Just like every honeymooner in Thailand must recount the two weeks in tedious detail to seemingly interested friends actually entertaining murderous thoughts, it is absolutely necessary for the Debut Author to explain in blog form, at some point before Book One comes out, how they went from manuscript to agent to publisher. In my case, this post is long overdue, so here it is.

But I thought I’d take this opportunity to offer a little comparison of the publishing systems in France and in the UK, since I’ve been published in France for three years, and that the two systems are interestingly different. I don’t claim that my experience is entirely representative (but whose is?), so take this with a pinch of salt (or with a pair of pincers, as the French would have it).

FRANCE: Alone in the jungle

In France, I started sending stuff to publishers when I was nine years old, because I was already joyously self-confident and deluded. I got dozens of adorable rejection letters. You get really nice rejection letters when you’re a kid; it’s when you turn 14 or so that the standard rejection letters start coming in. Anyway, I continued sending story after story after story for eleven years.

Eleven years during which our pet tortoise George-Alain grew from matchbox-sized to shoe-sized.

Eleven years during which our pet tortoise Georges-Alain grew from matchbox-sized to clog-sized.

Then something funny happened. When I was 20 I was interning for a French publisher over the summer, and I was beginning to know their list by heart. So I thought I’d tailor one or two little stories to their editorial line. I wrote two, sent them to the publisher under a pseudonym, and was therefore there when they opened them, discussed them, and accepted them. It all happened in the office, in front of me.

It’s only when they started going, ‘Oh, it would have been good to have her phone number, she hasn’t written it anywhere’ (I’d made up a pseudonymous hotmail account, though!) that I said, ‘Well, guess what! you can talk to her LIVE!’ and it was all very theatrical and amusing. That’s how my first two books got published, and then the third one was published with the same publisher as well but a year later.

My first three: Samiha et les fantômes, Les petites filles top-modèles, La plume de Marie

But see, in France the issue is that there aren’t any literary agents, at least not for unpublished writers. It’s not the way it works. Authors have to fend for themselves. They have to send manuscripts to publishers (they all accept unsollicited manuscripts, of course), and they have to negotiate their own contracts. This makes them much more vulnerable than in the UK.

Authors in France are rarely tied to a specific publishing house; many publish lots of different books with lots of different publishers, sometimes at the same time, because they have to make money and that, well, being published in France isn’t exactly the most comfortable position financially. Ok, I’ll be honest, it sucks. You’re paid very little, unless you’re remarkably famous, or remarkably good at negotiating. Volume is thus key if you want to make a living out of writing – or you can do lots of school visits, which are well-paid.

Since I don’t want to make a living out of my writing and don’t write very much in French (1 to 2 books a year, which is nothing compared to my French writerly friends), this isn’t my main preoccupation. Personally, my biggest problem is that in France, even when you’re already well-published, you can rarely guarantee that what you’re working on now will ever get published. You have to go through the whole process every time: writing a full manuscript, editing it thoroughly, sending it to publishers.

Of course, you might want to send it in priority to people who’ve already published you, as you have their personal email addresses and it might get read more quickly – but most of the time they’ll just be like, ‘No’. Rarely do editors say to you, ‘Let me read the first three chapters and I’ll tell you if it’s worth keeping writing’. Even more rarely will they give you a contract and a deadline just on the basis of that. So it’s extremely precarious (and discouraging). You pile up manuscripts that never find a publisher.

And when, conversely, you’re in the happy/ terrifying situation when more than one publisher wants your book, as happened with my latest YA novel La pouilleuse, well, you have to make a decision on your own. It’s tough, because you have very little actual knowledge of what the different publishers may do to your book.

So you weigh prestige against edginess, enthusiasm against advance money, and finally you make a completely uninformed, rushed decision. Not that I’m unhappy with my chosen publisher, mind you – I’m hopefully about to publish another 2 books with them next year. But in no way can I claim that my choice was either rational or business-like.

As a result an author’s relationship to publishers is always ambiguous, and a bit unhealthy. These are people you’re wrestled with, battled with. You’ve asked them for more money, for more author copies, for more consideration. They’ve rejected your stuff, sometimes harshly. They might reject what you’re writing now. They’re also more prone to things like emotional blackmail, voluntarily or not. You’re very dependent on them. It’s not a comfortable position for people like me, who aren’t particularly good at separating professional and private discussions and who’d rather not get paid at all than have to talk about money – especially when you feel like you’re begging for an extra 50€.

UK: On the passenger’s seat

In the UK, getting published is a completely different story. Of course there are ways to bypass agents and submit directly to publishers, but for me, that was a huge no-no. I knew, from my experience in France, that I didn’t have the guts or the patience or the knowledge to deal directly with publishers. So when I finished my first novel in English in 2010, I immediately looked for an agent.

It was a YA novel called Hominidae, and the day I sent the first 3 chapters and synopsis to Kirsty McLachlan at David Godwin Associates (I’d only sent it to 3 agencies, I think), she asked me for the full manuscript. A few days later I talked to her on the phone; we discussed ways of modifying it, I did the editing, we met up in London and she offered representation. It was extremely painless and fast.

Not like the year that followed. Because Hominidae never got sold. That was heartbreaking. When you get an agent you think you’ve done the hardest bit, and that now it’s going to sell – but when you get letter after letter after letter from publishers saying that ‘although they loved this and that, the full thing didn’t work for this or that reason’, that’s pretty awful. Especially as you keep thinking, gosh, my lovely agent’s going to drop me. She didn’t, thankfully.

In the summer of 2011 I had another idea and wrote the first Sesame book, which at the time was called Sesame Seade Is Not A Swan and is now called Sleuth on Skates. Kirsty liked it, and dropped Hominidae (which wasn’t going anywhere) and started shopping Sesame. And then, interestingly, the same thing happened with Sesame that had happened with La pouilleuse: namely 3 publishers wanted it. And it was fascinating to see how differently it went.

Firstly, in France I had about two hours to make a decision, and had to make phone calls to French publishers on my own. I had virtually no useful information to decide and no one to consult. Here, Kirsty set up the process of decision and auction for Sesame to last over several days. I went down to London and we visited all three publishers together. They gave me sesame seed chocolates and sesame snaps. We talked for over an hour every time about potential illustrators, further books in the series, modifications to the manuscript, etc. They were selling themselves too – that’s what struck me the most. They were telling me what they would be bringing to the book concretely, not just saying that they liked it.

Then they made their offers and the amazing, cool-headed Kirsty dealt with all that, which meant I didn’t even have to utter the words ‘advance money’ or ‘royalties’. Although it was still eminently stressful, it was a hundred times better than being alone in making that decision. I was on the passenger’s seat: I gave my opinion and expressed preferences but Kirsty was the one who was doing all the hard work.

I know that this account might make some UK authors cringe. They’ll say that even though we have agents, we have to be proactive and shrewd and take charge, that I’ve fallen into a trap and am just being lulled into a false sense of security. I agree, of course, to an extent – but believe me, when you’ve been through the jungle of the French system, you appreciate the comfort, albeit illusory.

This comfort extends to relationships with editors, too – I can talk to them and be friendly with them and plan things, knowing that whenever we start talking about money and the details of a contract Kirsty will be there. I don’t have to worry that I’ll be short-changed. The author-editor relationship, as a result, is über-professional, less tainted with ambiguous friendliness-eneminess.

Well well well, as usual I have written a blog post the size of my PhD thesis (which I’m almost done with, by the way!). I hope it’s a little bit instructive even by just reading the sentences in bold. Oh dear, I haven’t even shown what I wanted to show, i.e. pictures of my author copies of Sleuth on Skates which have just arrived in my pigeon hole!

There are flaps with ducks doing manic things, courtesy of Sarah Horne

There’s a map of Christ’s College, in which Sesame lives for parent-related reasons…

And here’s the pile!

Coming out May 2nd. Fun, busy times. Crazy crazy busy. But I promise you, random reader, that I’ll try to update this blog more regularly. You might not care; but then maybe you do.

Clem x

Should children’s writers like children?

Posted on 27/02/2013 by clembeauvais

That author

Every time I do school visits or go to a book fair, there’s always a grumpy paedophobic author somewhere. S/he’s been writing for longer that I’ve been alive and s/he’s seen it all. S/he’s sipping coffee in the teachers’ common room and ranting about those damned kids and their unimaginative questions. S/he’s in here for the €€, not the experience. S/he’s going on and on and on about ‘that annoying kid who always asks how long it takes to write a book and where I get my ideas from.’

And me, meanwhile, young, enthusiastic and naive and rather a fan of younger humans, I’m all like ‘Oh my! Goodness me! How can you possibly say that, you monster, you ogre ? Surely it is the greatest happiness in the world to talk to little readers, however dumb the questions! Surely the marvelous feeling of profound and inexplicable bliss that fills one when one is faced with children is universally shared!’ and I put my hand on my heart and I think of the cute freckles, dimples and missing teeth, and I swallow back tears of shock and fear and I wonder if this clearly deranged author should really be allowed to roam the school premises.

Slight exaggerations may have found their way into the previous two paragraphs, but the question’s not a stupid one. Should children’s authors actually like children? I don’t mean just tolerate, but actually like them? Should they feel increased levels of happiness, a certain special sense of connection, when in the presence of the kawaii beings? After all, there are dozens of misanthropic adult authors who don’t give a damn about their readers. And no adult author will ever be asked to confirm that they like adults.

Things Camus didn’t say

‘Oh yes, I love adults – I just love them. I love their happy faces when I sign their books, and they always come up with things that I find just wonderfully unexpected and marvelous… how can I explain it? It’s so mysterious. I can’t say why, but I’ve always been at ease with adults. Maybe it’s because I haven’t forgotten what it feels like to be an adult. I get on with them really well. They’re great, basically, and that’s why I write for them.’

We’d think they were bloody mental. What if some authors actually like writing for children because – like Philip Pullman – they think it’s a great experimental platform – which it is – but don’t really have anything to say to real kids outside of what they tell them through their art? How much of it is about the idea of childness, the ability to play with concepts, art forms, narratives that are particular to children’s literature – and how much of it actually has to be about real children?

That’s the crux of the matter, really. You can love the idea of children just as you love the idea of backpacking up and down the Andes, but you might suddenly find yourself a little bit less keen if you actually ended up parachuted into the montainous jungle. I think I love real children. I think I love talking to them, I think they make me laugh, surprise me and amaze me, and I think being around them makes me happy, but rationally, there’s no way this sweeping generalisation is possible without a preexisting idea of kids as a cool bunch of people, without a preexisting idea of childness as a special property for a human to have.

I like her

Because it’s a bit like saying ‘I love cats’. I do love cats. But in fact I don’t. I don’t love all cats. I don’t like the ones that scratch and bite, bizarrely enough; I prefer the cuddly ones that purr, thank you very much. And yeah, when I go into a primary classroom, I tend to prefer the enthusiastic little Hermione whose hand shoots up into the air all the time to the sexually precocious duo of boys who ogle me and snigger and scribble down things to each other on a piece of paper.

So we have to grant one thing to the paedophobic writer: at least they’re seeing the kids as humans. As fallible, annoying, boring and silly, but as humans. The blissful, all-loving writer who ‘just adores kids in general’ might as well be saying that they love cats. Or old people. Or gays. Or Tories. Or dyslexics. You get the idea.

There are people who just love writing and for them, going into schools to talk to real kids is one of those things you have to do in your day job but that you don’t particularly like, such as brainstorming the name of a new guava-and-tapioca shampoo or filling in an Excel spreadsheet with the office’s stationary budget for the year or whatever people who have real jobs do.

And then there’s the rest of us, bumbling around like a flotilla of fairy godmothers, hopelessly endeared to the little readers, envisaging our work as a sort of whole project of life and mission for and with children, and unable to understand that yeah, some writers may tailor every single one of their books for people whom, in reality, they don’t really care about very much.

Sesame Uncovered!

Posted on 10/12/2012 by clembeauvais

… or rather, here’s the cover of Sesame Seade book 1: Sleuth on Skates, out with Hodder on May 2nd, 2013!

My first ever book in English!

My first ever series!

My first ever book with a DUCK ON A SKATEBOARD on the cover!

(etc)

And it’s also got a spine! and a back cover! and FLAPS!

Yes, there is a duck sitting on the Hodder sign on the spine.

Yes, there is a moustachioed fish in the pond near the ISBN.

Yes, the blurb sounds like I’m arrogantly praising my own storytelling talent, but it was the publisher’s idea.

And YES, a team of young ‘uns got to read the manuscript and some their words are all over the flap! (the other ones are in my Box of Things I Will Treasure Forever.)

All of the amazing drawings are of course by Sarah Horne, and all the design is by the Hodder team under the supervision of my editor Ellen Holgate. What a cool early Christmas surprise!

I printed out a tiny version of it so that the other books on my bookshelf could get used to it being part of the clan soon…

Fluffy clementine approves.

See you in a little bit less than 6 months for the ACTUAL book!

Clem x

Book Battle #1: Lois Lowry vs Jacqueline Wilson

Posted on 19/10/2012 by clembeauvais

Dear friends, allow me to launch the most artificial way in the world of reviewing books: the Book Battle. Based on completely subjective judgements on my part as to which books are ‘similar’, I will, whenever I feel like it, ask two or more books to enter the ring, set a theme for the battle, and let them FIGHT. I will then name the winner. It’s a bit like Pokemon, but without the tedious slow-mo and psychedelic effects.

And today, ladies and gentlemen, please give us a big cheer for today’s contenders for the title of…

Best children’s book that parodies/ pastiches/ transforms/ readapts/ does something with much older children’s books (almost exclusively British and preferably of the Victorian or Edwardian era).

(bit of a mouthful I know; thank goodness I’m not actually giving out engraved medals)

And the first fighter on the ring is The Willoughbys, by Lois Lowry! A heavyweight of children’s literature (she’s given us The Giver), Lowry’s crossed the Atlantic to be with us today with a tale of abandoned children, mothers and fathers lost and found, intertextual ecstasy and metafictional mirth. She’s also gone the extra mile and done her own makeup for this one. Aren’t the illustrations gorgeous?

But wait a moment before you put all your money on The Willoughbys, because it’s a sumo-wrestler of the publishing world that it will have to face: Dame Jacqueline Wilson herself with Four Children and It, an action-packed, fantastical-but-realistic family drama, just as self-referential and playful as its contender, and with even a few necessary readerly tears at the end.

Round of applause for our two brave fighters! Which book will win?

Make your bets!

And… they… are… fighting! The Willoughbys is the first to strike, and it seems to know where its strengths lie – humour. Just one or two pages in and the audience are already laughing their heads off. This parody of Victorian and Edwardian novels for children is packed with so many inconceivable disasters and misadventures that it’s almost impossible not to laugh at them… and at the ones it refers to. It’s not just referring to old children’s classics, it’s playing with them, laughing at them, mocking them. Four Children and It know it can’t quite match that – just a few smiles along the way, but it’s not its forte. We’re not trying to be hilarious! it seems to say…

The bell rings… and The Willoughbys get a point! Back to their initial positions…

But Four Children and It isn’t in the least discouraged. It’s now attacking The Willoughbys where it hurts: the social message! Look at Four Children and It – it’s not just a pastiche of E. Nesbit – it’s also saying something about the state of the modern family. Stepsisters, half-siblings, parents who don’t seem to care enough and others who care too much! How can The Willoughbys compete, when the child characters in the family are so stereotypical? And it’s done away with the parents completely – easy-peasy, anyone can do that. Where’s the reflection on family that really matters to children? The audience seems to approve, but…

… but The Willoughbys responds with the claim that it’s got a political message! It’s a feminist book, look at it – denouncing the hilariously traditional gender roles in the good old days. Four Children and It is a bit unsettled – it’s true that it says from time to time that boys don’t have to ‘act like men’ and that tomboys are what they are and it’s ok, but in other places the status quo is maintained – the general ideology is a little bit too ambiguous…

And the bell rings! The judges give one point to each book, and they’re back in their respective corners…

They’re looking at each other now, a bit shyly, hesitantly. Defensively. Why is that? Come on, attack! And it’s Four Children and It which launches the attack again, but not sounding very convinced. Ah, here’s why… They’re on the subject of whether kids who haven’t read the classic children’s books they’re both pastiching can still get something from the experience. Tricky question! And clearly they both have problems with it… The Willoughbys mutters and tutt-tutts, saying that come on, they’re classics, so kids will have heard of them, at least. And also the book has got a few pages at the end describing the stories of all the novels it talks about… and also, as an adventure in itself, it’s good, isn’t it? Four Children and It appears to its advantage – it’s only referring to one book, after all! But maybe that’s worse, retorts The Willoughbys, because then all the meaning is lost if the reader hasn’t read that one particular book. Four Children and It fights back: alright, alright! but it’s a good story too in its own right…

The bell rings, the judges are divided… After a few minutes of discussion, they decide not to attribute any points. The contenders are back to their initial positions. Their respective coaches, Lois and Jackie, feed them Powerade and wipe their front covers. And here we go – they’re back in the ring.

They’re both looking tired, their pages are a bit ruffled, but The Willoughbys strikes. The writing! Isn’t that the most important thing? It thinks it’s safe, on this point – after all, it’s full of splendid dialogue, wonderfully funny descriptions, and deliciously complex language, with a lexicon at the end. But Four Children and It dodges the blow. It can’t be attacked on dialogue – its dialogues are pitch-perfect, realistic, dynamic. And who needs complex language in a story set in the modern world? As for the descriptions, where in The Willoughbys can we find such mouth-watering enumerations of food, such sensual flourishes of delicate fabrics, such adorable depictions of tiny animals? It’s a child reader’s paradise, where The Willoughbys is so often talking to the adult above the head of the kid.

Ouch! That was a hard blow. The bell rings, and the judges attribute another point to Four Children and It. The two books are on their last legs now. The audience has never seen anything like it (books on legs, that is).

But The Willoughbys rises again. Let’s talk about the editing. Structure, structure, structure! Four Children and It is too long. It should have been edited down! (in the audience, a scandalised shiver traverses the Editorial Tribune). And look at it as object-book – it’s not illustrated, it’s big and cumbersome, nothing like the wonderful illustrations and all the editorial work on The Willoughbys. How can Four Children and It respond to that attack? It seems like it can’t. Honourably, it sits down again.

The bell rings for the last time, and the judges give another point to The Willoughbys!

The Willoughbys and its coach are jumping up and down. 3-2! By a very small margin, they’ve won! Confetti are raining down from the sky. Four Children and It quickly gets up again. Elegantly, the two ladies shake hands, and their books shake flaps. And it’s the Chief Referee’s role to announce that…

The Willoughbys has won the first Book Battle !

That will be all for today, dear readers. See you next time with other Books and another Battle!

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.

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

Discovering the New Book

Posted on 18/06/2012 by clembeauvais

It’s always an exciting moment: opening the parcel with the publisher’s stamp on it, and taking your first author copy out of the bubble wrap. Cool and relaxed writers not like me probably peel off the sellotape with a yawn, fish out a book while munching on an organic cereal bar, hmm-hmm their way through the pages, and put it down again as if nothing particularly more exciting than updating Firefox has happened to them recently.

Not so, let me tell you, on this side of author-land. I arm myself with a carving knife, ruthlessly eviscerate the cardboard box, and do not rest until every single book has been smelt, stroked and weighed. But I never open them, of course, for fear of finding a typo.

Although this time I did manage to restrain myself enough to take a picture of the box (though the blurriness shows a certain lack of control):

And here it is! my latest baby, a YA novel in French called La pouilleuse (Girl with Lice) which is coming out at the end of August. If you’re interested and well-versed in Gallic, here’s the French webpage for it.

I’m delighted with it – Sarbacane, the publisher, have done an awesome job. The cover and the pages are super thick, the blurb on the back cover is spot-on, and they haven’t forgotten the dedication to my little sis’. Gorgeous colours, too, on the front cover.

So my small family of books is growing, all French-speaking so far, but I can’t wait for Sesame Seade to meet its siblings and speak a bit of English to them.

Clem x

Just a Sprinkling of Sesame

Posted on 20/03/2012 by clembeauvais

Et voilà! first post on my new English author blog. I’ve never had an author blog in English before, because I’ve never been an author in English before – so my only author blog until now was in French, like my published children’s books. And like myself (it happens to the best of us).

But sacrebleu, last year to keep myself busy I knitted a little novel-looking sort of story with the finest English wool, with characters in it and a bit of blue and green background to make it look all geek chic on windy winter days, and lo and behold, the curiousest thing has happened that has made it absolutely completely necessary and tremendously compulsory for me to start an author blog in English: a book deal. I know, I wasn’t sure they existed either. But there you go, here it is, it’s with Hodder Children’s Books, and it’s a fairly good excuse for a first blog post, I think.

And this fairly good excuse is called Sesame Seade! (though bizarrely her parents are convinced that she’s really called Sophie). Sesame is an eleven-year-old roller-skating self-made superheroine with as many connections in her brain as there are stars in the universe. She’d quite like a pet duck. Her parents aren’t keen (they won’t even consider a duckling). Professor Seade (Mum) is a Pharmacologist and Reverend Seade (Dad) is a Chaplain, and both of them are ever so slightly baffled by their wunderkind. Especially when she turns super-sleuth to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Jenna Jenkins…

And all this happens in quite a nice little corner of the world called Cambridge (which I vaguely know, I looked it up on Wikipedia once), and it’s a series of humour, mystery and adventure (all at the same time) featuring happy ducks, a yellow boat, a flock of ballet dancers, a notable absence of tangy tangerine strings, strange professors, sleepy students, and above all a hyperactive heroine with two best friends and a sometimes dangerous cat.

The first book in the series will be published in April 2013! It’s mainly for fun-loving kids who blew out eight, nine, ten or eleven candles at their last birthday party – but I’m fairly sure that reading it won’t kill anyone with better- or less-well-lit celebratory cakes.

More soon! but I promise this won’t be a blog about solely Myself and Sesame Seade. Just like my French blog, there will be A Lot More about Children’s Literature In General. Because that’s what I love.