Newsletter: October 2008

Greetings from the UK, and welcome to your monthly round-up of what's been happening in the wonderful world of books...

At the beginning of last month JK Rowling (below) won her legal claim that the Harry Potter Lexicon, published in the United States by RDR Books, lifted large portions of her work without adding anything new. At the hearing in New York, Judge Robert Patterson placed a permanent ban on the book's production.

 Photo: Richard Young

Perhaps boosted by this victory, Rowling was happy to donate £1 million to the Labour Party, in recognition of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's efforts to reduce child poverty. Rowling, a former cash-strapped single parent who is a close friend of the PM's wife Sarah, said she thought the Conservative Party's offer of tax breaks for married couples suggested 'a childless, dual-income but married couple is more deserving of a financial pat on the head than those struggling, as I once was, to keep their families afloat'.

Richard Madeley & Judy Finnigan (below), chat show hosts and founders of the UK's most influential 'Oprah-style' TV book club, have recently moved from terrestrial to cable TV. Publishers, booksellers and the authors selected in the latest season are all waiting to see whether the likely reduced audience figures will mean reduced book sales.

 Photo: Channel 4

Publishers might be more worried to learn that, according to a survey carried out by the charity Booktrust, only one in three parents in the UK read to their children daily (two years ago the figure was nearly one in two). It will probably come as no surprise to learn that most four to five-year-olds apparently spend twice as long watching TV every week as they do reading with their parents.

Those youngsters who are reading (or their parents) might be pleased to hear that Children's Laureate Michael Rosen has launched the Roald Dahl Funny Prize to celebrate humour in children's writing (often ignored by prizegivers, according to Rosen). The shortlists have been announced, in two categories, and the winners will be announced in November.

The shortlist for children aged six and under:
Stick Man by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler
Elephant Wellyphant by Nick Sharratt
The Great Paper Caper by Oliver Jeffers
The Witch's Children Go to School by Ursula Jones, illustrated by Russell Ayto
There's an Ouch in My Pouch! by Jeanne Willis, illustrated by Garry Parsons
Manfred the Baddie by John Fardell.

The shortlist for children aged seven to fourteen:
Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear by Andy Stanton, illustrated by David Tazzyman
Paddington Here and Now by Michael Bond, illustrated by RW Alley
Stop in the Name of Pants! by Louise Rennison
Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce
Aliens Don't Eat Dog Food by Dinah Capparucci
Urgum and the Goo Goo Bah! by Kjartan Poskitt, illustrated by Philip Reeve

The biggest topic of conversation in the UK at the moment is of course the all-pervasive 'credit crunch', and publishers are not slow in responding. Delia Smith's publishers Hodder are bringing out an updated version of her 1970s classic Frugal Food, complete with the original 'Cheap Charter', which promotes thrifty shopping. Someone on Radio 4 apparently pointed out that really frugal readers might want to get hold of a copy of the original book (priced at £8), rather than the new one (£17). Ahem.

The contenders for the bi-annual Dylan Thomas Prize, worth a hefty £60,000, have been announced as: Caroline Bird for Trouble Came to the Turnip, Ross Raisin for God's Own Country, Ceridwen Dovey for Blood Kin, Edward Hogan for Blackmoor, Nam Le (below) for The Boat, and Dinaw Mengestu for Children of the Revolution. The prize, sponsored by the University of Wales, is open to authors under the age of thirty, writing in any genre in English. The winner will be announced in November.

 Photo: Joanne Chan

A whole bunch of translation prizes were handed out at London's Southbank Centre recently. The Scott Moncrieff prize went to Holiday in a Coma and Love Lasts Three Years translated by Frank Wynne; the Premio Valle Inclán prize was awarded to The Past by Alan Pauls translated by Nick Caistor and Selected Poems by Luis de Góngora translated by John Dent-Young; the Schlegel-Tieck prize was won by Snow Part by Paul Celan translated by Ian Fairley; the John Florio Prize went to The Greener Meadow by Luciano Erba translated by Peter Robinson; the Hellenic Foundation for Culture Translation Award to A Levant Journal by Giorgos Seferis translated by Roderick Beaton; and finally the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize was won by The Butterfly's Burden by Mahmoud Darwish translated by Fady Joudah.

And finally, just along the rover from the Southbank Centre, two Nobel Prize-winning poets, Derek Walcott (below) and Seamus Heaney are collaborating to bring the world premiere of a new musical interpretation, The Burial at Thebes, to Shakespeare's Globe in London. The epic Greek tragedy has been updated as a modern day investigation of politics and power, and sees Walcott making his directorial debut. There are two performances only, on 11th and 12th October, if you want to catch it.

 Photo: Nigel Parry

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