Anthony Eaton's Blog: Musings from an Outer-Spiral-Arm , page 21

So today the Australian Productivity commission released its report recommending the removal of parallel importation laws for Australian books, effectively removing territorial copyright restrictions that protect Australian writers and publishers, and make it much easier for authors who write specifically Australian content to make some sort of a living off their writing, despite its lack of appeal for the giant US and European markets.

There are a lot of issues at play here. Check out Lili Wilki

And here, because I like you all, is Toby in the snow...

So, I spent last week up in the snow with my family. 3 Days skiing for me, 3 days of not skiing for Min. (She's not all that into skiing and with good reason – it's a long and horrible story involving a French chairlift…) She played in the snow with Toby, instead.

I've been addicted to snow skiing for about 22 years now, since my first trip to the Victorian snow fields as a 15-year-old on a school trip. Not a good addiction to have when you live in Perth, which is flat, at sea level, and really n

See... I promised two posts in the one day, and now I'm delivering. Though not on the promised topic...

It's been pointed out to me, very politely, as a follow up to my earlier post on accessibility, that one of the downsides of a Goodreads blog (and don't get me wrong, I'm loving Goodreads...) is that people who aren't members can't post comments. (I do realise that this raises the question of why anyone wouldn't want to be a member of Goodreads, but that's a whole other discussion...)

So, in the interests of addressing this issue, I've set up a mirror site over at blogspot where I'll post my blogs. I'll post them here too, though, for those who prefer.

And on that note, I'm going on leave for a week.

Bye.

So, this morning I posted over at Goodreads about my reasons for starting up a blog there. This was inspired by Adele's post this morning at Persnickety Snark, and dwelt largely with the question of accessibility.

It was soon pointed out to me, though, that the downside of a Goodreads blog is that people who aren't members, and don't necessarily want to become members, can't post comments. Which kinda undermines the whole accessiblity thing, really.

And so, therefore, in the interests of keeping t

Some blogger I turn out to be. Not so big on the regular updates. And when I do, they’re about 9 pages long and full of academic quotes. Apologies to anyone who cares enough to check regularly…

In all honesty, I’m finding the whole blogging thing something of an interesting (read: challenging) experience. Mainly because I’ve never been a big believer in putting stuff out there unless I’ve actually got something to say, and more often than not I don’t feel like I’ve got much to say at all, so better to say nothing.

But then, of course, what’s the point of blogging? Is it just to ‘say something’ or is there more to it than that? My friend Adele, in her blog Persnickity Snark has just put up a really thought provoking piece on the topic of Young Adult Author blogs, and why they do / don’t work, and it’s got me thinking.

I really like her point about accessibility. That’s the only reason I started this blog in the first place, to be honest. As a general rule, I’m not the sort of person who’s naturally at the cutting edge of things like web 2.0. I avoid Facebook like the plague. I don’t have an iPhone. When I hear the word ‘profile’ I still automatically picture someone’s face viewed from side-on. I have no idea how to post pictures to twitter. I had to get my wife to build my (insert shameless plug here) new website.

But, at the same time, I really want to be available so that people who invest their time and energy in reading my books have the opportunity to get in touch if they want to. Or to find out a little more about where I’m coming from. That’s why I took the ‘twitter’ plunge, and also why I set up ‘Musings…’

I’m also hoping that if I post updates here on how the final ‘Darklands’ book is coming along, that people will stop pestering me about it :) (This, of course, is just a joke. Please feel free to pester away…)

(actually, btw - I'm expecting the reader's reports on the final book to arrive sometime today. Depending on what they say, there might even be another post coming. Alternatively I might be throwing myself off a high ledge, somewhere. But that's beside the point...)

The cool thing from my point of view, is that even though I’m not proving to be the world’s most regular blogger, and even though I’m very aware that I’m still finding my voice and style – I’m actually enjoying the experience far more than I ever expected to. It’s been great having the opportunity to get involved in a couple of really important public discussions of my chosen field of work, it’s kept me in touch with a whole pile of people I haven’t spoken to for ages, and put me in touch with a whole lot more. It’s much more than just ‘being accessible’, it’s also actually fun. This has come as something of a shock to a cynic like me.

I’m also having a lot of fun doing #twitlit.

So, the point of all this? I guess what I’m saying is that, if you’re one of those who has read my rather convoluted ramblings and random musings to date, then thanks. Many and grateful thanks. For your patience, if nothing else.

Warning: This one’s long, and kinda heavy in places…

I’ve been buried completely in marking, for the last couple of weeks, and have more or less been ignoring the blogosphere, but I’ve surfaced (briefly) and have been a little taken by surprise to find myself at the centre of a (very thought provoking and polite) discussion going on at the moment on the nature of “Young Adult Fiction”, particularly with reference to ‘Into White Silence’. (The first post I found on the subject was at Adele's blog Persnickity Snark though it looks as though the whole discussion started here at the CMIS Fiction Focus Blog

I’m going to go out on a limb, and offer my thoughts on the subject.

Firstly – as pretty much everyone involved in the debate has acknowledged – it’s a vexed question. A very, very, very vexed question. The nature of writing for children and teenagers is that there are an awful lot of people with vested interests in what literature our young people are exposed to – readers, writers, publishers, parents, librarians, religions, politicians, book councils etc etc etc…

The result of this is that there are a lot of people with similar, but often slightly differing ideas about almost every aspect of the children’s and young adult book industry. Including the thorny question of defining young adult literature.

So, for what it’s worth, here’s my 0.02c…

I suspect that, at the moment, my view of what constitutes ‘young adult’ is going to be somewhat at odds with the majority of opinion. And that’s fine. To be quite honest, I’m not a hundred percent certain that my take on the subject actually has any merit.

Some background: I’ve been interested in this topic for a while now, actually. A few years ago I had a discussion with my editor, Leonie Tyle, about this very subject. This was a year or so after Zusak’s The Messenger had been awarded the CBCA Book of the Year for older readers. His protagonist, Ed Kennedy, was 19 and living in a world well beyond school and teenage concerns. In his own words, Kennedy was “decidedly crap at sex and doing my taxes.”

In that same year (2003), Ian Bone’s Song of an Innocent Bystander, featuring 19-year-old Freda Opperman as protagonist, was also short-listed. The following year Dave Metzenthen’s Boys of Blood and Bone – with two 18 year old, above-school-age protagonists – made the list, as an honour book and the year after that, my own Fireshadow – with both protagonists out of school, one of them fighting WW2 and the other 18 years old – was similarly honoured.

It wasn’t just the age of the protagonists, though, that got me thinking. That was more of an indicator – a symptom, if you prefer. What got to me was the fact that, for all intents and purposes, as far as I could see each of these books functioned equally as well as adult novels as they did as ‘teenage’ novels.

In our discussion, I proposed the notion to Leonie that the very idea of ‘young adult fiction’ was one currently in a state of flux – that within both the Australian and worldwide contexts, the very meaning of the term itself is shifting to encompass a new readership – or at least, a different readership – which extended further up into the more traditional realm of adulthood.

The conversation got to me, and so I did my PhD dissertation on the subject, looking at the blurring of adolescence and adulthood in Australian ‘Young Adult Fiction.’ In it I studied in great detail the works of Zusak, Hartnett and Metzenthen – trying to find some sort of shift in the context of ‘Young Adult’ fiction. The PhD was submitted and passed, and I’ve spent the 18 months since trying to refine the rather heavy-handed argument within it. It’s still (like so many PhD’s) a work in process. I suspect it’ll take me the rest of my life. I’m not even going to try to explain it all here, but I’ll shoot for a potted summary:

My current take on ‘Young Adult Fiction’ originates from a paper by Nadia Wheatley, written back in 1994 and published in the book The Written World – Youth and Literature (edited by Agnes Nieuwenhuizen). The title of Wheatley’s paper was The Terms They Are a’ Changin’ and in it she considered the notion that the term ‘Young Adult Fiction’ was currently undergoing a high degree of re-conception. She concluded her argument thus:

“An extraordinary shift in both the biology and the sociology of adolescence is currently happening; we are still too close to measure this, let alone fully understand it. It is out of this social and economic change that the YA novel is developing – just as the novel itself developed out of the social and economic changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” (Wheatley, cited in Nieuwenhuizen [ed:], (1994) p.13)

“What the hell…” I thought “…it’s been a decade since Wheatley pronounced us ‘too close to measure’ the change. I’ll do it myself!” I’ve been trying to do it ever since.

The part that interests – and influences – me is the notion that the shift in our concept of ‘Young Adult Literature’ is the result of social and economic change. To some extent, I think that Wheatley’s thesis has been bourn out by looking at those ‘young adult’ novels and writers which have come in for critical acclaim in the intervening years:

Taking the CBCA ‘Older Readers’ shortlists as an example, an increasing number of selected works deal with readers above school age, living in adult worlds and dealing with adult concerns.(A couple of examples in addition to those already mentioned would include Caswell’s Double Exposure, McDonald’s Love Like Water, and a couple that really skate the line, like Bill Condon’s No Worries.)

My current area of investigation on this is to do with Wheatley’s observation that the sociology of adolescence is changing. Bearing in mind that the genre under discussion here is not ‘Teenage Fiction’ but rather ‘Young Adult’ Fiction, I’ve been wrestling with the notion that, in fact, the shift in complexity, thematic approach and narrative structure of much of our recent ‘young adult’ fiction is more to do with a shift in our understanding of what, precisely, constitutes a ‘young adult’ to encompass something separate from our traditional concepts of the field.

Sociologists Johanna Wyn and Dan Woodman, in their 2006 paper Generation, Youth and Social Change in Australia, critique what they consider to be the key flaws in the ‘transitional’ conception of adolescence and youth – (ie: that ‘youth’ is and should be regarded as a time of transition between the two more concrete ‘ages’ of childhood and ‘adulthood’, and one which is primarily shaped by bio-developmental and psychological norms which remain more-or-less constant from one age-based-generation to the next). They argue instead in favour of an approach which considers the notion of youth, against the socio-cultural and political forces that have shaped it during a particular time period – a ‘generational’ approach;

A sociological framework for conceptualising youth starts with the recognition that the experience of age is shaped by social conditions, including the operation of the state (among other facets such as civil society and globalising processes), and that both individuals and the state actively contribute to its meaning.
(Wyn and Woodman, 2006, p.497)

In a similar manner to Wheatley, they make the argument that notions of youth are shaped by both societal forces, as well as by the ‘youth’ themselves – citing a broad range of supportive sociological research in favour of this argument;

…it is also important to understand the role that young people themselves play in constituting distinctive features of their generation. For most young people today, the state operates invisibly and often incoherently (White & Wyn 2004). Young people are left to negotiate new economies (Ball et. Al. 2000) and to make their own decisions – often against the grain of the knowledge that their parents have gained through their own experiences.
(Ibid, p.500)

Their case for a ‘generational’ approach to our conception of ‘youth’ rests upon the notion that changes in social, economic and political circumstances over the course of the last thirty years has led to a reshaping in the ‘meaning of youth’ – a similar idea to that argued in the literary context by Wheatley – and that a key aspect of this reshaping is a new conception and understanding of the meaning of adulthood itself;

Changes in labour markets, in the relationship between education and employment and in workplace relations, and in the actions of the state, have altered the significance of the traditional ‘markers’ of adult status in industrialised countries.
(2006, p.500)

They support this case with a particularly interesting statistical analysis of some of these ‘key markers of adulthood’, comparing key sociological trends for Australians in their late 20’s in 1976, and those in 2001. They point to increases in the proportion of people in their 20’s holding some form of tertiary qualification, (especially so in the case of women, whose proportion increased from 24% to 45%, to the marked increase in the average age of women at their first births (10% of ‘Baby Boomer’ women had their first child in their 30’s, compared to 48% of women in the post 1970 Generation) and changes in the status of marriage and the living arrangements of people in their 20’s;

Both men and women are marrying later and living in their parent’s home for longer. In 1976, 40 percent of 20-somethings were living as couples with children – the most common living arrangement for their age group – and only 21 percent were living with their parents. But in 2001, only 16 percent of 20-29 year olds were living as couples with children, while 30 percent were living with their parents... In 2001, nearly all 20 Year olds had never been married (97 percent) compared to 76 percent in 1976. This is partly because young people in 2001 were more likely to be studying and not financially able to get married, but also because of the trend towards de facto relationships.
(Ibid, p.503)

A similar, statistical assessment of the changing nature of ‘youth’ from an economic point of view is proposed by sociologist Kitty te Riele in her essay Youth Transition in Australia: Challenging Assumptions of Linearity and Choice;

“Young people now find themselves in a situation of ambiguous dependency (Ahler and Moore, 1999). The changing youth labour market and policy emphasis on gaining further educational qualifications have contributed to a prolonged dependency of young people on education and on their parents. For example, the age with which more than one-half of Australian young people are in full time employment rather than in full time education has risen from 18 years in 1981, to 22 years in 1997 (Wooden, 1998).”
(2004, p.244)

The conception of ‘youth’ as a distinct period marked not by age-specific ‘markers’ but by consideration of the broader social context within which various generations of ‘youth’ exist is both a useful one - in that it provides some support for the suggestion by Wheatley that ‘an extraordinary shift in both the biology and sociology of adolescence is happening’ - and a troubling one, in that it has, some argue, also led to a degree of critical difficulty when considering the role and place of ‘young adult’ literature. Australian academic Heather Scutter, in her 1999 text Displaced Fictions suggested that;

“…this confusion in the use of the buzz term ‘young adult’ – sometimes a synonym for teenage, sometimes implying a subset somewhere between the senior teenage and the junior adult, and sometimes referring to a new kind of financially dependent adult infantilized by economic rationalism – leads to much critical confusion.”
(Scutter, 1999, P. 280)

It appears to me that there are compelling arguments for, and evidence of, an ongoing ‘re-conception’ of our ideas of ‘youth’ and ‘young adulthood’, both in the Australian context, and in the industrialized world more generally. And as with any re-imagining of a particular demographic or readership, it can be suggested that the literature ‘for’ this group – in this case that which we commonly refer to as ‘young adult fiction’ - might in some way demonstrate and reflect these changes. I wonder if what I can see as the increasing acceptance of novels such as Into White Silence in awards such as the CBCA is perhaps an indicator of this shift. Of course, I’m also certain there’s a ‘chicken and the egg’ argument to be dealt with here somewhere, too.

But, as I said earlier, I’m really not sure. To be quite honest, I’m not sure I should even be putting all this out there, but given the debate at the moment, it seemed like the intellectually responsible thing to do.

I can say this: When I wrote Into White Silence, I never for a moment doubted that it would be published as ‘young adult fiction.’ This belief was, in part, because of the realities of the publishing world and the joys of having a profile as a ‘young adult’ author, but also, to a large degree, because it was the sort of story I’d have connected with at 15 or 16 years of age. I didn’t write it for teenagers, though. Nor did I write it for adults. I wrote it for myself, purely and simply.

Since it’s been published, the book has been reviewed in various media under both ‘adult literature’ and ‘young adult literature’ headings. It was entered (spectacularly unsuccessfully) in the Miles Franklin Award, which doesn’t accept ‘YA’ fiction and also, (with far more success) in the CBCA awards.

When it was shortlisted, I’ll admit I was surprised. Not because I didn’t think it suitable for the awards, but because I really thought it wasn’t the type of book which would get up there. (But then, I think that about everything I’ve written.) I’m gratified that it was, though.

Where does all this leave us?

Well, for my part, the further I dig into this, the more convinced I am that Wheatley was right: the very concept of ‘young adult’ is shifting. A multitude of factors are at play here, and even now, more than a decade and a half on, I think she was also right in her assertion that we’re still too close to measure it. All I can do as a writer is write my books – as honestly and well as I can – and let the wider forces at play decide where they fit.

I hope this hasn’t come across as defensive – it’s certainly not intended to be. It’s an area of debate and discussion that fascinates me, both as a practitioner and academic, and it’s great to see it being talked about.

Okay. Enough of me babbling. Back to my marking pile…

I’m in the process at the moment of wrapping up the unit I’ve been teaching this semester – Literature Studies: Reading for 0-18. We’ve covered the construction of ‘the child’ (no, not in biological terms…) fairy tales and the role of the fantastic, ‘classic’ children’s literature, picture books and postmodernism, the problem of ‘fiction’, poetry for children, the construction of ‘Australian Identity’ in young adult literature, issues relating to the portrayal of Indigenous culture in children’s and young adult literature, and numerous other side topics along the way. All in 15 weeks.

In the final lecture, last week, I wrapped up by making ‘the case for children’s literature.’ It’s something that most people who write for children or young adults have to deal with from time to time – the perception that your writing is somehow ‘not real writing’, or the assumption that you’re only writing ‘kids stories’ until you find the time and inspiration to produce an ‘adult novel’. One of the driving outcomes of the course is breaking down this assumption and giving a new perspective on the value and importance of writing in this field. Along the way we do a lot of literary theory, some sociology, a smattering of educational psychology and, of course, a lot of reading and discussion of various books.

Anyway, a few people asked, so here’s a slightly modified version of my final lecture, edited down somewhat for blog purposes…

One of the common problems that students of this and similar courses face is that of definition: what is ‘literature for children’? How might it be defined or categorised. Is it even valid to identify it as a ‘genre’ or ‘field of study’, or do the numerous ‘grey areas’ that we have considered and looked at over the course of our studies mean that the very notion of ‘children’s literature’ as a distinct field of cultural discourse is flawed?

In considering these issues, a good starting point might be to look at the argument posed by Canadian scholar Perry Nodelman in his recent book The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature:

“The simplicity of texts of children’s literature is only half the truth about them. They also possess a shadow, an unconscious – a more complex and complete understanding of the world and people that remains unspoken beyond the simple surface but provides that simple surface with comprehensibility…. That something might well be identified as nonchildlike or beyond the ken of childlike consciousness… so children’s literature can be understood as simple literature that communicates by means of reference to a complex repertoire of unspoken but implied adult knowledge.”
(Nodelman, 2009, p.206)

In his book Nodelman argues against the common thesis that children’s literature isn’t a distinct ‘genre’ in and of itself, but rather is a conglomeration of different writing types and styles. He suggests that the defining features of children’s literature need some reconsideration: He argues against the notion that ‘simplicity’ – of form, narrative, function etc… is (or should be) even considered to be a defining feature of ‘children’s and young adult literature’ (indeed, he argues that one of the key defining features of children’s literature is that it is not simple).

This is not, in and of itself, a new idea: back in 1976, in his paper The Case for Children’s Literature, Clifton Fadiman argued against the notion that its apparent ‘simplicity’ was in any way a valid ground for the dismissal of children’s literature as a field of academic study;

“The man in the street puts it in simple terms: children’s literature cannot amount to much because ‘it’s kid stuff.” The assumption here is that by nature the child is ‘inferior’ to or less than the adult. His literature must be correspondingly inferior or less. Give the kid his comic, while I read grown-up books. But does not this amiable condescension shelter a certain insecurity? As racism is the opium of the inferior mind, as sexual chauvinism is the opium of the defective male, so child patronage may be the opium of the immature adult… in certain ways the child is patently inferior but…as an imaginative being – the being who does the reading – he is neither inferior nor superior to the adult. He must be viewed as the structural anthropologist views the ‘primitive’ – with the same unsentimental respect, the same keen desire to penetrate his legitimate, complex symbol-system and idea-world.”
(Fadiman, 1976)

Children’s literature is laden with multiple ideologies, is shaped by a combination of market forces, political and social forces, vested interests. It is practiced by adults for children, moderated by adult requirements for social order, and the foundations of any given narrative for children or young adults often rest as squarely in the world of the adult as that of the child. Many of the canon texts of children’s literature are just as much cultural artefacts as they are narratives of pleasure, and from a scholarly viewpoint they can (or must) be read as much from an anthropological position – to give the scholar some contextual understanding of ‘the child’ over time - as they can (and must) be read in their role as a source of pleasure for children.

As with any other form of literature, children’s literature is as much shaped by the reader as the writer: the final narrative isn’t produced solely from the imagination or agenda of the writer, but is that produced by the meeting of reader and writer.

Making the links between what a children’s writer has experienced, has read, and is reacting to in his or her works (in both a literary and social context) is perhaps one of the key skills required to make some sense of the broad and often confusing ‘problem of definition’ with regard to children’s literature. It is from this sort of comparative analysis that similarities will begin to emerge, which will allow some insight into the extent that children’s literature both shapes social discourse, and responds to it.

And, in definitional terms, once we realises these links, these similarities which connect the various forms and styles of ‘literature for children’ to one another, we can begin to come to terms with the idea argued by Nodelman that children’s literature is not;

…just an indiscriminate body of quite different sorts of text grouped together by adults for convenience merely because of their intended audiences… Fictional texts written by adults for children and young people are enough like each other to be immediately recognisable as having been intended for their specific audiences – as children’s or young adult’s literature.
(Nodelman, 2009, p.81)

Given you accept Nodelman’s argument, that the field of writing for children (in which he includes the idea of writing for young adults) does in fact constitute a ‘genre’ in and of itself, and can therefore take its place in the broader field of writing and literary study, the next crucial question to consider is ‘What’s the point of studying this genre?’ What does it have to offer?

In a broad socio-cultural sense, I would argue that it is possible to suggest that children’s and young adult literature is, in many ways, the foundation upon which all ‘adult’ literature is built. Early understandings of language and culture are conveyed through the reading of books, by adults, to children. This is especially the case in western societies where oral traditions of storytelling as a means of passing on culture are less entrenched. If asked to, most people can easily construct a personal ‘canon’ of books from their childhood, and most can explain without too much analysis, the reasons for their selections.

This long lasting, deep impact is something that is by no means unique to children’s literature, but it is something adult readers and scholars often disregard when considering the role of children’s literature in cultural discourse.

Australian author Sophie Masson made this point in January of this year, in an article published in Quadrant, in which she explored the central question of “Why do you write for children?” She observed that:

…When The Australian magazine published, in late 1999, an issue on ‘The Greatest Writers of the Century / Millennium”, children’s authors were conspicuous by their absence in the lists. And yet the 140 years that had just passed had produced writers of the calibre of Hans Christian Anderson, Lewis Carroll, Edith Nesbit, Carlo Vollodi, George McDonald, Rudyard Kipling, A.A. Milne, Kenneth Grahame, J.M. Barrie, Tove Jansson, Herge, Jean de Brunhoff, St Exupery, C.S. Lewis, Leon Garfield, Alan Garner, J.K.Rowling, Patricia Wrightson and Ruth Park – to mention only a tiny fraction – writers who by any measure had produced some of the greatest, most timeless and most beloved classics in literature.
(Masson, 2009, p.94)

Masson makes the case, in emphatic terms and from a writer’s perspective, that writing for children fills many of the gaps in literary discourse which might be left by more esoteric and inaccessible ‘adult’ fiction. She continues her argument thus:

"In fact, in my opinion, children’s literature is the greatest and most important literary movement of the last 150 years. It has completely transformed the face of reading, and re-zested twentieth century literary culture, in particular, with its light touch, richness of invention, and haunting, subtle depths. And the crucial importance it attaches to story. Children’s writers, unlike all too many for adults, have never forgotten about story, which from Homer to Shakespeare to Dickens was at the very heart of the writer’s art."(Masson, 2009, p.94)

From my own point of view, suffice to say that the field of children’s literature studies is one which offers a tremendous amount of promise. As a writer it offers the opportunity to both contribute to cultural discourse, and also to be a crucial part of it, both in the present and down the track. As a student of the field, it is an often contentious area of academic debate, but this lends it a high degree of vigour and intellectual freshness which makes study in the field so exciting. Additionally it is a field of narrative so broad and diverse in scope that there are plenty of opportunities here for research into often unconsidered ideas.

From all of this, I hope you come away with, at least, some sense that ‘Literature for 0-18’ years is not nearly so simple, or staid, a field as it might first appear. I hope you come away with an understanding that ‘literature for 0-18’ is in fact literature for all of us, regardless of age.

I hope that those of you studying education find yourselves evaluating the texts and novels that you will study with your classes not merely in terms of characters, themes and symbols, but in terms of their broader context, their contribution to cultural discourse, to the hidden and not-so-hidden ideologies that drive them, their relationship with the canon texts of children’s literature, and the ‘traditional’ genres of fairy tales and morality stories. I hope that you’ll use children’s and young adult literature in your classrooms as a living, vibrant thing, and not as the last remnants of a dying artform.

I hope that those of you engaged in writing degrees will seriously consider the full potential, the implications that come with the responsibility of choosing to ‘write for children’, and will see it as a contribution to a long and rich literary inheritance, rather than as a poor relation of ‘real adult’ literary writing.

Or, failing all that, if nothing else comes of this course I hope you all just continue to read kids books, both for yourselves and your children. Because there is much below the surface of writing for 0-18 years that speaks to the wider world.

Okay, so there are people all over the country currently blogging their experiences at the fantastic Reading Matters conference, which took place in Melbourne last weekend: James Roy for one, and my new friend Adele, for another.

I'm not going to repeat everything they've said (or, in Adele's case, are in the process of saying) here. Suffice to say that, as ever, the Reading Matters crew did an awesome job of putting together one of Australia's best conferences for those involved in the children's and Young Adult writing industry.

This is the third time I've attended RM, and each time I come away challenged, awed, and very fired up to get into some new projects. This year, with my Darklands books finally behind me, and Into White Silence now out on the shelves, I'm actually in a position to do something about this, and you can bet I'm going to. (Right after I mark and grade the 100+ essays which arrived in my mailbox while I was attending the conference.)

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not going to list my favourite parts here (see Jim Roy's Blog, if you're interested, because my list would be pretty much the same as his...) But if I had to pick a single highlight from the conference, I suspect it would be John Green's opening address (Tim Flannery's presentation coming in a very close second). John, an American, pointed out to us the utter stupidity of allowing our publishing industry, and the distinctly Australian 'voice' of our young adult and children's fiction (which was, let's face it, on glorious and prominent display at RM) to be gutted by changes to the parallel import laws for books in this country.

Much has been blogged on this topic in recent weeks, too (Including a brilliant blog post done by Lili Wilkinson, who was also one of the team responsible for Reading Matters), so I don't intend to re-invent the wheel here. Suffice to say, though, how terribly sad it is that even one of the USA's top Young Adult writers can see the inherent dangers involved in this policy change, and yet here in this country, there is still a strong movement to allow the proposed changes to occur.

Of course, just like John at RM, I'm really preaching to the choir, here. Still, good to get it off my chest.

Thanks to Paula, Mike, Lilli and the rest of the Reading Matters crew for a lovely, stimulating weekend. Toby enjoyed it a great deal, too!

Okay, so I'm supposed to be marking at the moment, but I have to vent. Seriously.

Our car went in for some mechanical work this morning (for the fifth time in a month, but that's another rant all together...) This makes for a pretty awful day for yours truly. It goes a little like this:

0630: Wake up. Out of bed. Shower, eat, load bike into car, be on road by 0700 so that I can get in to:

0700: Arrive at work. Drop off bike in office.

0730: Arrive at Car dealership. Find gates locked (Despite assurances that there'd be people there from 0715)

0745: Gates opened. Drop off Car. Wait for the 0800 courtesy bus.

0825: Courtesy bus leaves. Jammed into back seat, hard up against a nice man from the Australian National University.

0825 - 0915: Driven to work via every possible point of the compass while dropping off other commuters all over Canberra. (We even dropped one guy off in a field, for pity's sake, A FIELD!!!)

0915 Arrive at work. Get out of courtesy bus. Get important phone call (more on that later) manage to leave glasses in courtesy bus which drives off, leaving me with only my prescription sunnies.

0916. Torn between happiness at good news from USA (My second niece born in Houstin - hence phone call) and generally high degree of unhappiness at the prospect of spending the entire day trying to work in dark tinted, polarised glasses.

0917: Call car dealership. No way to contact courtesy bus. They'll get onto my car immediately and call when done.

0930: Arrive in office. Squint. Turn on computer. Squint. Can't see anything on monitor. Check power. On. Realise that the polarizing on my sunglasses lenses means that I can only read the screen if I tilt my head to a 90-degree angle.

1030: Neck really hurting, now.

1130: Dealership call. Car ready. Get into cycling clothes, head off for Phillip, which is on the other side of Canberra from my office.

Side Rant: Usually, and for the most part, I enjoy the ride out to Phillip. Most of it is on cyclepaths by the lake, and along the picturesque creeks of the Tuggranong valley. Unfortunately, though, the first five kilometres or so (That's about 2.5 miles, for our metrically challenged American friends) is along the roads. (Or, more accurately, in the laughingly-titled 'cycling lanes' which are, in reality, the poorly sealed, rough-surfaced, broken-glass-littered soft shoulders of the roads.) The good thing about riding in the cycling lanes is that you get to see plenty of wildlife; on this ride alone I saw three kangaroos and a fox. Sadly they were all smeared across the tarmac and in various stages of decomposition.

But that's not the worst part. The worst part is altogether more human.

The drivers.

As much as I love my adopted city (and I really do, Canberra is beautiful: snow covered mountains, lovely lakes, Black Mountain with its iconic tower wreathed in winter fog...) We're sadly afflicted with the largest number of COMPLETE IDIOT DRIVERS in the entire country. I don't know why this is - perhaps it's because we host Summernats here (an annual car festival and our second biggest contributor to global warming after Tony Abbot), or perhaps it's just something to do with the climate. Either way, I've come across more bogan drivers in Canberra than anywhere else in the country. (Again, for our American friends, a 'bogan' is a little hard to define, but Wikipedia comes close.)

This ride alone, I was firstly almost run off the road by a moron in a hotted up Subaru, who passed within about 5 cm of my right-hand handlebar, before overcompensating in the other direction and almost taking out a little old woman an a tiny Nissan, and then, just a moment or two later, abused by the driver of a similarly worked up Skyline, who drove past, hand on horn, yelling at me out of his window. It was hard to make out precisely what he said, owing to the wind noise, road noise, horn noise, and the fact that he was doing about 110, but it sounded something like:

YAAAAAAARGERROFFITYAWANKAICAN'TFINDMYMANHOODWITH BINOCULARSEVENONASUNNYDAY!

Of course, I could be wrong.

When I caught up to him at the next set of lights, oddly enough, the spotty little boy driving (He looked about 15), was strangely reluctant to discuss the matter further. In fact, he wound up his windows and locked the doors. Pity. I just wanted to borrow his binoculars.

/side rant...

1200: Get to dealership. Pick up car. Load up bike. Back to work.

Which brings us to here.

So that's my little outpouring for the day. Apologies for the vitriol, but what's the point of a blog, if not to share the love around?

On a far, far happier note, welcome to the world, Katie Margaret. We're so thrilled to have you here, and can't wait to meet you in person later this year.

Now, I'm going to have my lunch. Then get back to my marking. Thanks for listening...