Meet Kids Book Award Finalists at Shirley Library

Are you a young writer who wants to improve your writing? Do you love to meet authors and hear how they write their books?  We’ve got two events coming up at Shirley Library just for you!

On Saturday 8 August Shirley Library will be hosting some of the wonderful authors who are finalists in this year’s New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. Karen Healey is a finalist in the main book awards and both Desna Wallace and Natalie King are finalists in the Children’s Choice Award. There are two events for kids and teens that you can come along to for FREE:

• Writing Workshop with Karen Healey, 10:30am-12:00pm, Saturday 8 August – Join Karen Healey, author of While We Run, for a young adult writing workshop. Recommended for ages 10+.
• Fast Track Fiction, 5:00-6:00pm, Saturday 8 August – Join Karen Healey, Joanna Orwin, Desna Wallace and Natalie King as they unlock the secrets of their success as writers. Recommended for ages 10+.

You need to book for both of these events but they are free. To book phone 03-941-7923.

You might like to read the finalist books from these wonderful authors so check these out:

• While We Run by Karen Healey
• Canterbury Quake by Desna Wallace
• Awakening by Natalie King

Honey, Hives and Hierarchy

I don’t believe I have ever read a fantasy book before, science fiction sure, but not fantasy.  After a long reading hiatus, I was perusing a list of books nominated for various recent awards to kick-start me into reading again.

I must confess it was the cover of The Bees by Laline Paull that hooked me in – embossed and golden. Only when I started reading did I notice ‘fantasy’ on the spine. I always think about witches, dragons and ‘far away lands’ when I think fantasy, so a book about a plucky and rather magical bee and the hive she lives in didn’t fit the narrow idea I had of the genre.

The book is a debut novel for Laline Paull, a playwright and screenwriter, and was shortlisted for the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, with judges calling it “an Animal Farm for the 21st century”.

We meet Flora 717 at her birth, fighting her way out of her hive cell.  She is of the worker class, destined to clean and tidy after others for her short life. But this wee worker is different. She speaks, unlike others of her class, and she has an intelligence that soon sees her crossing antennae with those in the hive of higher classes. As the seasons progress, changes in the hive bring on new challenges to both Flora and the hive.

As Flora’s tongue unrolled toward the head of nectar, tiny particles of orange pollen tingled against her fur. The taste of the nectar was so bright and the energy release so sudden that she almost fell off the flower head.

I didn’t think I’d find myself rooting for a humble bee, but I was willing her on to achieve, find joy, survive the horrors of wasp attack, disease and resentment from those who believed she was getting above her station.

Well written, tense in places and tender in others, it’s a great read. I recommend you add it to your list. Oh and it gave my husband and me an excuse to have silly pun duels. “Honey, I’m hiving trouble bee-lieving you.” “I shall wax lyrical.”

 

All about Yves – a passion for fashion

I love fashion, and am glad to see the New Zealand International Film Festival has a trio of fashiony movies:

Saint Laurent

The latest French biopic of the iconic fashion designer is a heady experience, stunningly realised without official YSL approval, and concentrating on the decade that culminated with a triumphant collection in 1976

The library has the other recent YSL biopic Yves Saint Laurent. I watched in the weekend – the actor who played Yves nailed his fragility and fierce glamour.  Find more YSL stuff at the library.

Iris

Colourful fashionista Iris is one of my style heroines. Big glasses, accessories piled on.  Check out the book Rare bird of fashion for a closeup look at her fabbo gear, and Advanced Style (book or movie) if you want to see some more older style goddesses.

Iris talked to Noelle last weekend on Radio New Zealand Saturday morning.

Women he’s undressed

Gillian Armstrong’s doco celebrates the colourful Orry-Kelly, the Australian-born designer who dressed Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca, Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot and Bette Davis in many of her greatest roles.

We have the splendid looking book on order.

Fashion docos and movies in our collection you might like to watch include:

• Valentino
• Coco avant Chanel
• Bill Cunningham New York (street style photographer supremo)

And just to tantalise your fashionbuds – here’s some new books to swoon over:

• Check out our pages on Fashion and New Zealand fashion.
• Read more NZIFF blog posts.

Cool stuff from the Selectors: history and intrigue

As a book selector I am constantly purchasing books that seem so interesting, so compelling, and I know I should read them – but I don’t.

Two recent books sparked my interest; I know that someone will love them but probably not me. I will have to live vicariously through others’ enjoyment.

Driving home last week I heard an interview of Piers Dudgeon, the author of The Real Peter Pan: The Tragic Life of Michael Llewelyn Davies. Michael was the fourth of five brothers who were the inspiration behind J. M Barrie’s Peter Pan. The author described a tragic story: both parents died and the children were in the guardianship of Barrie. He paradoxically saved them from a life of poverty, yet there have always been questions about his relationship with and domination of Michael. In the wrong hands this book could be salacious gossip, but by all accounts the author gives a balanced account.

Willoughbyland is another title that took my attention.

Willoughbyland would become a place of terror and cruelty, of sugar and slavery. As Matthew Parker reveals, the history of Willoughbyland is a microcosm of the history of empire, its heady attractions and fatal dangers.

A group of exiled Cavaliers have established a new settlement in the Amazon led by their founder Sir Francis Willoughby, a man of extremes who is set to have a spectacular rise and fall.  A book that seems to have it all, wild locations and equally wild “natives”, seduction, spies, planters, mercenaries and political dissidents. What more could you ask for?