Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

What we're reading

Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

Flip

1 2 3

Original poster

What were the big hits this summer for your 8-12s (books)

74 replies

roisin · 27/08/2007 11:03

DS1 (10) has particularly enjoyed:
Hive by Mark Walden
Tunnels by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams
Shade's Children by Garth Nix Ds1 has not read Garth Nix before, but enjoyed this one. Definitely 'top end' of this age-range though, and eminently suitable for young teenagers.
Troll Fell by Katherine Langrish (Third in the series has just been published - Troll Blood)
Over Sea and Under Stone by Susan Cooper - this is an old one actually, but a new one to us. The sequel "The dark is rising" is being released as a film later this year, and ds1 saw the trailer at the cinema.

We are eagerly awaiting the next HIVE book and the new Charlie Higson (Young Bond) book which are both due out next week, also the latest Alex Rider book which is due out in November.

So what have your children been reading this summer?

OP posts:

seeker · 30/08/2007 16:56

Sorry - Caddy Ever After

UnquietDad · 30/08/2007 16:58

You see, this is what I don't get. My DD reads. Her friends read. Loads of parents I speak to in real life and on here have kids who read voraciously. And not just the obvious, marketed stuff - children love anything with a good story, no matter who's written it. And yet I know at least three professional published writers established in adult fiction who can't get their children's books looked at, with editors left, right and centre telling them how difficult it is these days. If they can't even be considered (and I'm one) what hope have newbies got?

Once again I get the feeling that editors don't have a clue, and, rather than being the conduit between what writers write and what readers read, are the barrier that comes between them.

I thought the upside of Pottermania was that it had opened up legions of children to the joys of reading? Doesn't it work like that? Publishing in general is tougher than ever, but you'd have thought children's fiction was undergoing a bit of a boom.

Kathyis6incheshigh · 30/08/2007 17:07

UQD, from writers I have met in the past I have got the impression that children's editors tend to be wedded to mythologies about what children will or won't read. I knew someone in the 80s who was told her children's book was unpublishable because it was in the first person and 'children won't read books written in the first person'. And sorry to bring her up, but wasn't JKR famously told by a lot of publishers that children aren't interested in reading about magic?

Are your/your acquaintances' books falling foul of some imagined restriction in what children are prepared to read? Or is it just a refusal to consider new writers?

lemonaid · 30/08/2007 17:20

The film of The Dark Is Rising has apparently changed three things from the book

They have changed the main character from English to American
They have changed his age from 11 to 13
They have changed the rest of the plot .

Really, I almost weep to read the interviews. Will's family in the books is a beautifully portrayed close family (not sickeningly so, but nicely captured) and the story is rooted in the countryside he's grown up in and knows like the back of his hand. The books show very well the sadness of the fact that he can't share what's happening to him with his family and that his status forces him to be in some way separate, and the fact that he sees a new side to familiar places. In the film they think it's important to make him "more of an outsider" so his parents are now cold and distant, his older brothers bully him, and he's only just moved to the place he lives in. Gack.

And the series of books is filled with pagan and Arthurian imagery and references that get stronger as the series progresses. They've decided to cut all that out, too. Double gack.

Whywhywhywhywhy?

[Sorry, will stop ranting now]

UnquietDad · 30/08/2007 17:22

Yes, it goes in cycles - in 1996 you would have been crazy to put money on a bestselling series about a boy wizard. It would have seemed too twee for words in that landscape of urban dystopia - editors were fixated on Melvin Burgess-type stuff about 12-year-olds shooting up in stairwells.

I get the feeling that few children's editors have children themselves or even have much contact with them. They want easy, repeatable series with minimum effort - how else does one explain the success of Those Endless Bloody Rainbow Fairies? (I can't be the only parent hoping that Rachel and Kirsty very soon discover boys, get piercings and a crystal meth addiction and laugh derisively about the days when they believed in all that fairy shit.)

UnquietDad · 30/08/2007 17:23

lemonaid - I saw the trailer and thought much the same. The only good thing seems to be that Chritopher Eccleston is in it, and they'll probably manage to cock that up too.

Kathyis6incheshigh · 30/08/2007 17:24

Yes, also it's important to leave space in the market for the really talented writers like Madonna and Jordan.

lemonaid · 30/08/2007 17:35

Oh yes. The Rider is no longer just the Rider. Oh dear me no. He's living in disguise as the village doctor [sobs quietly into keyboard].

UnquietDad · 30/08/2007 17:36

To answer your original question, Kathy, I think they are falling foul of their agents telling them, for whatever reason, that the stuff they come up with is enormously difficult to sell. My agent says such things about the children's market too.

It's a head-against-a-brick-wall environment: you do something with cosy/familiar elements and you are told it can't be sold because it has Been Done and The Market Is Too Crowded, and you do something outrageously new and different and you are told that it's too off-the-wall to find a readership.

Bink · 30/08/2007 17:54

UnqDad - you are of course absolutely right about the "multiples" and "repeat consumer" aspects of children's marketing - as of course makes perfect cold commercial sense. It's overt, too - if you have a proposal you need to be able to show how you will keep feeding your market share once you have got it - ie you have to propose a "product", not a book.

One of dd (who's 6)'s books this summer was Carbonel, and it's patently obvious that that was written as a one-off - the sequel (Carbonel's Kingdom) appeared years later and has rather a wonderful sequel-forestalling end. Though I know there was yet another (Carbonel and Calidor) ... haven't found it yet.

Issy · 30/08/2007 18:05

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ at OP's request

Kathyis6incheshigh · 30/08/2007 18:10

Of course they were Issy. I distinctly remember my mum having exactly that conversation about Enid Blyton with my class teacher in top infants.
(I remember feeling quite put out that they would be talking about me in that way because reading seemed like such a personal, private thing....)

Original poster

roisin · 30/08/2007 18:12

Oh no - I'm devastated to hear that about the Dark is Rising film. DS1 has only recently read the first one, and I am about to buy the set. That's a shame about the film though.

Have you come across Chickenhouse publisher? They seem to publish slightly unusual, quirky materials - e.g. The Divide, Cornelia Funke, Tunnels. I was on their website today just browsing generally, and they seem to have a far more positive approach to submissions than most publishers I've seen.

OP posts:

Bink · 30/08/2007 19:57

Save that - wasn't the real issue on EB not that she was too fluently easy to read, derivative, repetitive (all things you could have said, of course) - as that she was petit-bourgeois snobbish & therefore common? That's the debate I remember my mum having with others (my mum was on the side of it not mattering so long as we read other stuff too & were not taken in by EB's social stance). It was a more substantial debate than is raised by the Fairy Franchise.

UnquietDad · 30/08/2007 21:03

issy - My DD pretty much cut her reading teeth on those fairies too, but thank goodness she is leaving them behind now!

"Daisy" is a committee, by the way. The books are produced by Working Partners and this is how they do all their series - their in-house writers provide the templates, writers do sample material and they commission from that, all under the generic name. The writers get a flat fee and WP pocket the huuuuge royalties. The sales of those books must be in the millions - if Daisy really existed she'd be the JK Rowling of pre-pubescent fiction...

My agent occasionally sends me some of their series ideas. I've not been inspuired by any of it yet, and what makes me livid is that I have had better ideas rejected.

UnquietDad · 30/08/2007 21:03

issy - My DD pretty much cut her reading teeth on those fairies too, but thank goodness she is leaving them behind now!

My agent occasionally sends me some of their series ideas. I've not been inspired by any of it yet, and what makes me livid is that I have had better ideas rejected.

UnquietDad · 30/08/2007 21:05

So true I said it twice. With typo correction.
I didn't think that was possible!

SueW · 30/08/2007 21:13

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ at OP's request.

UnquietDad · 30/08/2007 21:17

No, what "worked" for Eragon was being a feck-off rich precocious brat, not needing to get a day job and having an uncle who just happened to run a publishing company.

SueW · 30/08/2007 21:22

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ at OP's request.

UnquietDad · 30/08/2007 21:36

I don't know about the homeschooling thing, to be honest. But I know the family paid for it to be published and, yes, he did a load of self-promotion, but then he could afford to because he didn't have a job.

I've always found it a bit irksome that writers are expected to self-promote. Publishers have publicity departments - it's what they're for. But in practice, unless you have a mahoosive advance you get very little out of them other than a couple of newspaper features and some BBC local radio. You have to do loads yourself, which is tricky because writers are not all natural self-promoters in person - the two skills could almost be said to be diametrically opposed! I'm usually OK because I have public speaking and radio experience, but I've seen wonderful writers do readings and fall flat.

cremolafoam · 30/08/2007 21:41

apart from the obvious-H.Potter etc
My Family and Other Animals( read on Holiday)dd is 12 and loved it
Varjak Paw ( both books)
The Philoshophy Files( 1 and 2) which I got from The BookPeople
The Cat Mummy
Asterix books( the same ones in French and English)while we were on holiday in France

UnquietDad · 30/08/2007 23:26

Talking of prodigious writers has anyone read "The Haunting Of Alaizabel Cray" by Chris Wooding?

I picked it up a couple of years ago and read it very quiockly. Gothic children's fantasy set in an alternative Victorian world. Interesting-looking cover, intriguing blurb, not bad premise... utterly wretched in every other respect. Steaming, fetid pile of cow dung.

The plot is all over the place, characters come and go with no reason, and viewpointing is, for Mr W, something other writers do. The one really, crashingly irritating thing he does is to "head-hop" all the way through, which gets right on my wick.

It's got nothing but praise on Amazon, from which I must conclude that all the reviewers either know and like him personally or are on drugs.

He must be doing something right, though, as he is amazingly prolific!

EmsMum · 31/08/2007 00:15

My DD(8) would hardly read anything. But then Captain Underpants, Horrid Henry, Dr Who Annual, beano annual followed by me getting beano delivered weekly and - tara- while on holiday goes and devours Harry Potter 1 and is now halfway through HP 2. Think beano, far from distracting from 'proper books' helped establish a reading habit.

Whew, at last. And we didnt have to go through all the assorted fairies, unicorns and kittens.

Bink · 31/08/2007 09:53

I did read Alaizabel Cray, ages ago. I didn't feel as strongly as you do - I just didn't think it was especially noteworthy.

What is "head-hopping"? Is it where you get stuff from one character's perspective, then from another's? Is that a problem?

Flip

1 2 3