Wondrous Words Wednesday 30/5/12

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a fabulous weekly meme hosted by Bermuda Onion, where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our weekly reading.  

I found my words all over the place this week. This first word comes from my recent listening to Cleaving, a memoir by Julie Powell of Julie/Julia fame. 

1. Contrapuntal (Adjective)

A musical term meaning of, relating to, or incorporating counterpoint. The Free Dictionary

It was somewhat sobering as I entered this word into my iphone to keep note of it to find that my iphone's predictive text knew contrapuntal when I didn't. 

My second word comes from reading the winning story of the inaugural Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer Award. 

2. Cosplay

And having an unusual name in Ken Livingstone Comprehensive made him as much a target as the four-eyed kids, or the stuttering kids or even the cosplay kids. 


Cosplay is a contracture of Costume play. Wiki tells me it is popular with young people who like anime and manga, and big on the internet and in Japan. 

Picture source

The third word this week comes from blog reading. I came across a book on poop (or poo depending on where you live).

3. Frass


Frass is a form of insect poo. It is the fine powdery material that plant eating insects pass. Wiki

Picture source

Adelaide by night

This time last week I was in Adelaide soaking up the atmosphere at the Children's Book Council of Australia 2012 Conference. It was grand. Also grand was being back in Adelaide. I hadn't been there since the 1980s! I didn't have much free time, but did enjoy my all too brief visit.

I arrived after dark one evening, so went out for a stroll to sort out where I was and where I would be going the next day for the conference. I was staying on North Terrace so walked about there for an hour or so. It's one of the major streets in the city, lots of old buildings (old for Australia) and universities, the State Library and Art Gallery, Parliament, the Convention Centre. All in easy walking distance.

I know this is next one is out of focus but I think it looks cool. The purple building changed colour.

Saturday Snapshot, is a wonderful weekly meme from at home with books

Wondrous Words Wednesday 23/5/12

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a fabulous weekly meme hosted by Bermuda Onion, where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our weekly reading.  

I've been reading this series out loud to my 11 year old son. He loves them, me, not so much. I think he got a bit bored with this one, it took quite a while to get through. The Sorceress is Book 3 of Michael Scott's The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series, and moves the main action from Paris to London. Once again we are dropped right into a good versus battle with new monsters. Too many monsters I think. Still it gave me lots of new words.

1. Parvis (Noun)

Standing on the parvis in front of the cathedral in Paris, feeling the raw power flow through his body, watching the animated stone gargoyles shatter to dust, he had realized just how powerful he and his sister were.

i) An enclosed courtyard or space at the entrance to a building, especially a cathedral, that is sometimes surrounded by porticoes or colonnades.
ii) One of the porticoes or colonnades surrounding such a space. The Free Dictionary.

The faithful filling the parvis of Notre Dame

2. Mottes (Noun)

3. Barbican (Noun)

There are mottes and baileys, outer wards and an inner ward, a barbican, towers and keeps.

Mottes

i) (Historical term) A natural or man-made mound on which a castle was erected.
ii) (Texas) A copse or small stand of trees on a prairie
iii) (Upper Southern US) A tuft of human or animal hair standing up on the head or body. The Free Dictionary.

I love how all three usages are quite similar. Windsor Castle is a motte and bailey castle.

Picture credit

Barbican

A tower or other fortification on the approach to a castle or town, especially one at a gate or drawbridge

Picture credit

4. Buckram (Noun)

Leather bindings stood beside dusty buckram and yellowed vellum were shelved side by side.

A coarse cotton fabric heavily sized with glue, used for stiffening garments and in bookbinding.

5. Sepulchre (Noun)

Although he'd known about its location for decades, he'd never had a reason to venture down to face the Sleeping God before, and everything had happened so quickly yesterday that he hadn't had a change to examine the sepulchre.

A burial vault, tomb or grave.

I know I've seen this word before, but it's not one that sticks.

6. Triune (Adjective)

Others changed with phases of the moon or the seasons, while still other triune goddesses were simply different aspects of the same person.

Being three in one. Used especially of the Christian Trinity.

This one was reasonably obvious from context, but I still thought it was an interesting word.

The Book of Everything

A few months ago I hadn't heard of this book, or the author, Dutch writer Guus Kuijer. Then he won the Astrid Lindgren Award. Naturally I sought him out. Sadly there is little that has been translated into English. Apparently he feels that The Book of Everything is his best work, and this has been translated, and is readily available. Hopefully even more of his work will now be translated after winning such a major award. 

The Book of Everything is an amazing book. Although I'm not really sure that I really understand it. A slim volume, a mere 123 pages. The story begins with a short prologue explaining that the author, an old man, wanted to write a different book, a book about his happy childhood. Instead he had a visit from Mr Klopper, who showed him a book that he had written when he was nine. Mr Klopper had not had a happy childhood.

Nine year old Thomas Klopper lives with his parents, and older sister Margot, who "went to high school and was as dumb as an ox." Thomas's father is rather a fire and brimstone man, who rules the roost in his small family, with force if needs be. He reads the bible every evening, and likes the wooden spoon and his fist to guide his family. It is Amsterdam, the summer of 1951.

Thomas is no ordinary boy as we learn from the very outset. 

Thomas saw things noone else could see. He didn't know why, but it had always been like that. He could remember a violent hail storm one day. Thomas leapt into a doorway and watched the leaves being ripped from the trees. He ran home. 

Thomas sees tropical fish swimming in the canals. He writes his thoughts and visions in a book, The Book of Everything. And he has a simple wish- to be happy when he grows up.

There are many biblical passages sprinkled throughout the book. The imagery is biblical too, the plagues of Egypt are invoked - rivers turning to blood, masses of frogs and swarms of gnats. This strange world of postwar Amsterdam makes for an intriguing read peopled as it is by Thomas and his family, their neighbour Mrs Amersfoort who all the local children believe to be a witch, and Eliza, a friend of Margot's who has a squeaky prosthetic leather leg, and is missing most of the fingers on one hand.

Mrs Amersfoort introduces Thomas to two classic children's novels- Emil and the Detectives, and Alone in the World (variably known as Nobody's Boy, or Sans Famille in the original French). I wish that I had read these two European classics to know more of what Guus Kuijer is telling me. I know that there's layers of meaning and symbolism that I'm too Australian to understand. A quick google tells me that Kamp Amersfoort was a Nazi concentration camp in Holland. I'm sure that this is no coincidence.

I know The Book of Everything would pay huge dividends to those that reread it. I hope I get the chance. I was thinking that I needed to reread it before I even finished it. Which isn't to say that it's a bad book, far from it, just a clever one that bears proper consideration.

I see in a happy coincidence that Guus Kuijer is in Sweden this week to celebrate his win, there are multiple events over the week leading up to the Award Ceremony on May 28 when HRH Crown Princess Victoria will present the award at Stockholm Concert Hall. 

I had a Favorite Dress

I came across this book a few months ago. It was a finalist for the 2011 Cybils awards, for whom my lovely friend Deb Nance at Readerbuzz is a judge. When she announced the finalists after having read 260 nominated picture books I was naturally intrigued. Sadly only a few of them were available to me in Australia at that time, but I sought them out. Happily my library had a copy of this book. 

And it's a fabulous book. 

A little girl has a favourite dress that she wears every Tuesday, because that's her favourite day of the week. 

One day the inevitable happens and her dress is becoming too short, so her mother tells her 

"Don't make mountains out of molehills. Make molehills out of mountains. "

And the girls favourite dress becomes her favourite shirt.  Until the sleeves rip...

If only we could all be as stylish as these kids

Fashion isn't my thing, but I love the lessons in creativity, adaptability and not sweating the small stuff that this book achieves with ease. It's like New Dress a Day for the picture book set. 

The illustrations are fab too. A mix of crayon I think, and water colour, collage and what looks like wool sewn through. 

CBCA 2012

I was very privileged to attend the Children's Book Council of Australia 2012 Conference in Adelaide this week. It was such an amazing experience. I hadn't been to Adelaide since the 80s, and I can't say I remember all that much, so it was nice to get back.

I really wasn't sure what to expect of the conference, or who would attend. Most of the 400 attendees were librarians or teachers, booksellers, authors and illustrators. Quite a female crowd, although there were a respectable number of men too. I didn't get to meet any other interested parties like me but I hope they were there too.

For me it was very much like a two day intensive writers festival. Normally at writers festivals, I have brunch, go to a session or two, lounge around a bit, then need to go out for a drink before dinner. Here we had two full on days, the second of which started at a 7.30 breakfast function. It was a cracking pace. Half way through the second day my brain was becoming quite full, but like a trooper I stuck it out to the end. Every session was enjoyable in it's own way, and I got many unexpected insights, and learned so many things.

I got to see authors who were familiar, some very big names, and authors who I had never heard of before, but probably should have and am now desperate to read. Yes, the TBR just got even bigger.

Some highlights:

Oliver Jeffers, the Johnny Depp of picture books. He mumbled a bit but all the ladies swooned at his Irish brogue anyway.

His tour blog

Eoin Colfer.  Such a funny, funny man. Yes he's kissed the blarney stone, but we all loved his delightful Irish brogue too. It was more a comedy performance than an authorly talk. Fabulous. I'm glad he had to finish when he did as I was about to slide under the chair in front due to overwhelming, fulminant mirth.

Davide Cali. An intriguing, clever, talented Swiss picture book writer, newly translated into English. 

Isobelle Carmody. Articulate, intellectual, amazing.

The glorious black swans of the Torrens

The lovely ladies from Tasmania.

There will be more about all of them.

Who Says Lightning Doesn't Strike Twice?

A few months ago I won the monthly subscribers prize from Good Reading Magazine. Naturally I was thrilled. I'd been subscribing since the magazine started. Early on I'd hoped to win, but as the years passed and I never did win and I forgot about it. Then 10 years of subscribing paid off, and I won the subscribers draw in November and got a wonderful box of books from Fremantle Press.

You can't imagine how surprised I was to receive a SECOND letter a mere 3 months later to say that I'd won the subscribers prize AGAIN! Nothing for 10 years then twice in 3 months! I have even more Good Reading stacking up ahead of me.

Women of Note by Rosalind Appleby
Equator by Wayne Ashton
Spider Lies by Jen Banyard
Spinner by Ron Elliott
The Moving World by Michael Heald
A Sausage Went for a Walk by Ellisha Majid and Peter Kendall
Not Drowning, Reading by Andrew Relph
Dress Rehearsal by Zoe Thurner

I'm not expecting a third, but would be more than happy to be proven wrong.

Saturday Snapshot, is a wonderful weekly meme from at home with books