Ah, the bedtime story. The little ones in their pajamas, all tucked into bed, getting ready to listen to yet another telling of a kidlit classic like Goodnight Moon… on their iPods?

Donna Vickroy, a columnist for Chicago-area newspaper Southtown Star, takes issue with AudibleKids.com, a new offshoot of audiobooks site Audible.com, which offers kids’ books for download.

There’s a popular children’s book that bears the title, “Let’s Talk About Being Lazy.”

How convenient that it may very soon be available in audiobook form.

Look, I agree that followers of attachment parenting can take that 24/7 lovey-dovey stuff too far.

And I believe that audiobooks are a refined arm of the technology craze.

But to expect parents to welcome the automation of their bedtime story reading duties is just plain cold.

[…]

And yes, something must be done to combat the reluctant reader phenomenon.

But when Audio Publishers Association president Michele Cobb says, “I hear lots of people talking, saying that when they put their kids to bed, they put them down with an audiobook,” you have to wonder whether virtual parents - today’s version of barbarians - aren’t knocking at the gate.

In the latest sign of the impending apocalypse, ABC News has posted a story about a new children’s book called My Beautiful Mommy, written by the Florida-based plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Salzhauer. The book is an attempt to explain (and to justify) plastic surgery to children.

My Beautiful Mommy focuses on a mother explaining an impending nose job and tummy tuck to her young daughter, who is scared that her mommy may look different. Mommy also undergoes a breast enhancement in the book, a fact depicted only through the illustrations so as not to get too graphic for child readers.

While some may jump to say that any tale about cosmetic surgery — breast, nose or tummy — isn’t appropriate reading material for young kids, many members of the plastic surgery community are welcoming the new-age bedtime story. Some say they just wish they’d thought of the book idea first.

And to give you a sense of the tone of the book, ABC recounts a choice bit of dialogue:

“Why are you going to look different?” asks the daughter of her mother in the car ride back from the doctor’s office.

“Not just different, my dear — prettier!” exclaims the mother.

From CBC.ca:

When Canadian troops liberated western Holland from Nazi rule in May 1945, a 21-year-old Dutch artist named Mart Kempers was among the cheering throngs who greeted them.

Before the year was out, Mr. Kempers would create a series of visually striking images that captured the moment of liberation for a children’s book, hi ha canada, published in 1945 by Rotterdam publishing house Luctor.

Because of paper shortages due to the war, hi ha canada probably had a print run of only a few hundred copies, making it a rare find. The ever intrepid Library and Archives Canada recently acquired a copy after a long and bloody hunt, and now everyone can go and have a read:

Members of the public can look at the book in a special reading room at Library and Archives Canada if they abide by the rules, which include wearing special gloves to protect its yellowing pages from natural oils on our fingers.

Library and Archives Canada will feature hi ha canada on its website Wednesday as part of a new program to better publicize new acquisitions and treasures in its immense collection of books, maps, newspapers, portraits and music.

Margaret Atwood, writing in The Guardian, offers a lengthy take on Anne of Green Gables. Aside from giving a brief intro to the book to those who haven’t read it – and those who haven’t “are most likely male,” she says – Atwood delves into the darker side of the Anne story that has helped give it such lasting power. She also takes a look at Anne tourism:

We didn’t buy any Anne dolls or cookbooks, nor did we visit the “Green Gables” facsimile farmhouse, which – judging from online accounts of it – is as complete as Sherlock Holmes’s digs on Baker Street, containing everything from the slate Anne broke over Gilbert Blythe’s head to her wardrobe of puffed-sleeve dresses to the brooch she was accused, wrongly, of losing. There’s even a pretend Matthew who gives you drives around the property, though he’s not described as running to hide out in the barn at the approach of lady visitors, as the real Matthew would have done. Now I wish I’d taken in more of these sights while I had the chance, though somewhere along the way we did check out the early 20th-century one-room schoolhouse where the high double desks were just like the ones Anne would have known.

Atwood also attempts to get to the bottom of the Japanese fascination for all things Anne. The answers she gets from Japanese fans are interesting, but don’t really illuminate anything, so she attempts her own explanation:

Anne has no fear of hard work: she’s forgetful because dreamy, but she’s not a shirker. She displays a proper attitude when she puts others before herself, and even more praiseworthy is that these others are elders. She has an appreciation of poetry, and although she shows signs of materialism – her longing for puffed sleeves is legendary – in her deepest essence, she’s spiritual. And, high on the list, Anne breaks the Japanese taboo that forbade outbursts of temper on the part of young people. She acts out spectacularly, stamping her feet and hurling insults back at those who insult her, and even resorting to physical violence, most notably in the slate-over-the-head episode. This must have afforded much vicarious pleasure to young Japanese readers; indeed, to all Anne’s young readers of yesteryear, so much more repressed than the children of today. Had they thrown scenes like the ones Anne throws, they would have got what my mother referred to as What For, or, if things were particularly bad, Hail Columbia.

From Reuters:

Billionaire Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling would feel “exploited” if a fan’s unofficial encyclopedic companion to the boy wizard series was published, she said in court papers made public on Thursday.

Steve Vander Ark has written The Harry Potter Lexicon – a 400-page reference book based on his popular fan Web site (www.hp-lexicon.org). Rowling and Warner Bros. are suing RDR Books, which planned to publish the book last November.

“I am very frustrated that a former fan has tried to co-opt my work for financial gain,” Rowling, 42, who wrote the seven hugely successful Harry Potter novels, said in a declaration filed in U.S. District Court this week.

We’re not copyright lawyers, but we’re pretty sure that lexicons, literary guides, book-length exegeses, annotated editions, and literary companion volumes existed long before little Harry took his first trip aboard the Hogwarts Express.

(And note how Rowling dubs Ark a “former fan” – zing!)

Ha’aretz reports that a children’s book published in Germany has been facing criticism for its alleged anti-Semitic content and anti-religious approach.Germany’s federal ministry for family affairs wants to ban How Do I Get to God? Asked the Piglet, which features a cover illustration of a hedgehog and a piglet. The German government and media have argued that the book depicts Christianity, Islam, and particularly Judaism in a degrading manner.

The book, which came out in October, describes what happens to the hedgehog and piglet, who one day discover a poster at the entrance to their house stating, “If you don’t know God, you’re missing something.” The two animals, who until then had not felt that anything was missing in their lives, begin searching for God. Along the way, they meet a rabbi, a priest and a mufti, who are depicted as violent and frightening figures.

The rabbi, who looks similar to the way Jews were portrayed in Nazi propaganda, threatens the two animals and tells them that God destroyed the world during the flood. The mufti turns out to be a hate-filled preacher, and the fat priest might seem to some like a potential child abuser.

“I think that God doesn’t exist at all,” the hedgehog concludes at the end of the book. “And if he does, then he certainly doesn’t live in a synagogue, a church or a mosque.”

The book’s publisher is protesting the German government’s move to potentially blacklist the book, which would make it illegal to sell or advertise the book to children. The federal department that reviews youth literature will meet in March to decide whether the book should be considered “dangerous” for children.

From the Calgary Herald:

After a hiatus from library shelves, a controversial novel is being welcomed back into Calgary Catholic School District schools.

The Golden Compass, a decade-old novel by Philip Pullman, was pulled from local Catholic schools two months ago as a film adaptation of the story was released in theatres.

Following a review of the book – the first installment in Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy – school board officials have decided to use the novel’s counter-religious themes as a teaching opportunity for Catholic students.

“There is no doubt that the text is harsh in terms of its language about organized religion and that it presents a consistently negative view of church, clergy and faith-based institutions; however, there are glimpses of light with opportunities for positive reflection,” the review stated.

Interesting that the ban is reversed only after everyone has pretty much decided the movie version’s a dud.

From EarthTimes.org:

A German children’s book can be published in the United States after a publisher there dropped its demand for the genitals on a picture of a statue in it be air-brushed out, it was revealed Thursday. The German illustrator of the book had angrily complained of censorship and withdrew it from the US market last summer after being told that shoppers might object to the nudity.

[…]

The offending male organ is a tiny squiggle in the picture: the male statue itself is only 7.5 millimetres high on the page.

[Emphasis added]

All we can say is, whoever got upset about this in the first place is a bit of a tool.

The Washington Post is reporting that Windsor, Ontario, resident Christopher Paul Curtis has scooped up his third Coretta Scott King Award for Elijah of Buxton, his YA novel about a free-born child in an Ontario farming community of escaped slaves (for Q&Q’s review see here). The book also received a Newbery Honor at the American Library Association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia.

Laura Amy Schlitz took home this year’s Newbery Medal for Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, a collection of dramatic monologues about a medieval village. The Caldecott Medal, which usually goes to a conventional picture book, was awarded to Brian Selznick for his genre-bending tome The Invention of Hugo Cabret, aimed at eight- to 12-year-olds.

Reportedly, Selznick was caught off guard by the win.

Selznick won the Caldecott Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a 500-plus-page category-buster that the author has called “not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things.” The judges decided that Selznick’s tale of an orphan who lives in a Paris train station was driven primarily by its elegant black-and-white drawings, which qualified it for the picture-book award.

Selznick said yesterday that the questions about his book’s genre were “part of what makes this [award] such a surprise.” His young protagonist ends up getting involved with one of the pioneers of the cinema, and Selznick said he chose a picture-heavy form “because I saw that it connected with how a director tells a story through a camera.”

From United Press International:

Several people sidelined by the Hollywood writers strike said they are penning children’s tales to pass the time while they wait to go back to work.

“It’s kind of a nice way to do something creative at a time when we’re having a hard time doing our bread-and-butter work,” David N. Weiss, a Rugrats writer and WGA official, who recently turned in a first draft of the children’s book Carl the Frog, told The Hollywood Reporter.

The UPI piece goes on to name two other upcoming kids’ books by writers for That’s So Raven and Comedy Central’s The Root of All Evil, but since all three books are being published by the same company – Worthwhile Books, a new imprint of the ultra-corporate entertainment company IDT/IDW – it’s maybe a bit misleading to imply that this is a widespread new trend.

The film adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman is almost as inescapable at this time of year as Rudolph and Charlie Brown and the Grinch. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the wordless and – come on, admit it – touching film; the stage version turns 10, and the book itself will turn 30 next year. Briggs, not known for being a particularly touchy-feely kind of author, is a little baffled at the staying power of the book and the film, according to icBerkshire:

“I can’t understand it. It just goes on and on. We don’t see a quarter of the spin-off merchandising in this country. In Japan, everything you can think of has got a snowman on it – socks, pyjamas, duvets, toothbrushes, tooth mugs, electric lamps, everything under the sun.” The wry author sighs as he admits:

“I did a piece in 1997 saying I was never going to say a word to anybody about it ever again, yet here we are. You can’t ignore the 25th anniversary, or whatever it is.”

Briggs is also profiled in The Times, which provides a glimpse into his (mostly unhappy) creative process:

To use his own words, the business of putting together a strip cartoon book is “fiddle-arsing beyond belief”.

“It’s rather like making a film. You have to write the script, then become the director. People don’t realise how complicated it is. You have to decide who is coming in from the left, who from the right. Who speaks first – the maddening thing is that the person on the left always has to speak first, which is often very awkward.

“Then you have to become the set designer, and ask ‘Where are they in this scene?’ Is it a kitchen? Is it the sitting room? What is the view from the window? Then you become the lighting person. Is it evening? Have they got any artificial light on yet? What’s the light like outside? Then you are the costume designer. What are they wearing? What did a woman’s pinny look like in the 1930s?

“Then, when the ‘film’ is finished you have to put that to one side and become a book designer – do the typography, lay out the pagination, design the number of pages . . . in film or theatre you would have hundreds of people doing this for you. But you have to do the whole bloody thing yourself.”

And on that cheery note, Quillblog rests for the holidays. We’ll be back in the new year with more stories from the mad, manic, upside-down world of … well, more stories about books, anyway.

Happy holidays.

Q&Q’s Deals page is on a holiday break, but we would be remiss if we didn’t mention this deal, from The Globe and Mail’s “The Biz” column:

Rebecca Eckler has signed a deal for two novels with Key Porter Books. The first, Private School Confidential, is due in 2009. Eckler and Erica Ehm are also collaborating on a children’s book, Mischievous Moms, for Key Porter.

Is it just us, or do both Private School Confidential and Mischievous Moms sound like titles of books kept at the back of the store, just beyond the beaded curtain and the “Adults Only” sign?

A handwritten book of fairy tales by J.K. Rowling was auctioned off for more than $4-million (Cdn) yesterday, and U.K. newspapers were full of speculation this morning as to who the deep-pocketed buyer was.

As The Times Online reported:

An anonymous collector, bidding through a dealer who usually specialises in Old Masters, paid £1.95 million for The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a 160-page Potter spin-off of five “wizarding fairytales” that relate to his final adventure. The proceeds will go to the charity Children’s Voice. […] The Tales was estimated to go for between £30,000 and £50,000.

[…]

As the Sotheby’s auctioneer opened the bidding, a white-gloved porter held up the book at the front of the room. There were five or six players, all concealing their identity by bidding through someone in the room or through a member of Sotheby’s staff on the phone. At £1 million, there was applause from the room, and murmurings of astonishment as six-figure increases were tossed around the rooms.

A few children in the saleroom jumped with excitement as the hammer came down on the final bid, but the man at the back who bought it could not have looked more miserable as he scurried off into the street muttering “no comment”.

After most of the U.K. papers went to press, however, the buyer was revealed as none other than Amazon.com. As the CBC reports:

Amazon revealed later on Thursday that it had crossed over from the sales side to become buyer for the rare tome, with a spokesman saying the company is planning to take The Tales of Beedle the Bard on tour through libraries and schools.

The company has also posted on its website a host of large, close-up photos of and from the book — for which Rowling also created the illustrations — as well as staff reviews of the tales inside. Staffers will also answer questions fans have about the book via an online discussion board.

You can see the Amazon reviews here, but if you think they’re going to have anything remotely critical to say, you’ve got another thing coming. Just a sample:

So how do you review one of the most remarkable tomes you’ve ever had the pleasure of opening? You just turn each page and allow yourself to be swept away by each story. You soak up the simple tales that read like Aesop’s fables and echo the themes of the series; you follow every dip and curve of Rowling’s handwriting and revel in every detail that makes the book unique – a slight darkening of a letter here, a place where the writing nearly runs off the page there. You take all that and you try and bring it to life, knowing that you will never be able to do it justice.

From The Telegraph:

She wrote her first self-help book at the age of nine. Now, at the grand old age of 12, Libby Rees has completed her second.

She finished At Sixes And Sevens, which helps pupils survive the move from primary to secondary school, between schoolwork, acting as a youth ambassador for the charity Save The Children and sitting on the youth board of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service.

Libby, from Christchurch, Dorset, said: “Like my first book, I wrote it from my own experiences because I was moving from primary to secondary.

“Changing schools is a really big event. I went from a class of 20 to one of 30, which was daunting.”

Her latest guide, to be released in the New Year, is part of a three-book deal she signed with Aultbea Publishing.

Rees seems to have a good head on her shoulders, at least. Let’s hope she never has to write Didn’t You Used to Be Somebody?: What To Do When You Peak Too Soon.

Many of you faithful industry watchers have probably already heard tell of the short documentary that Indigo CEO Heather Reisman commissioned earlier this year about the “crisis” in school libraries. It’s called Writing on the Wall, and while it spends a fair amount of time showing us how truly, appallingly neglected most Canadian school libraries are these days, it spends an equal amount of time trumpeting Reisman’s attempts to address the problem with her “Love of Reading” campaign. Over the past year or so, Reisman has been screening the film for publishers and politicians and anyone else who might want to support her cause, but as far as we’re aware it’s never been screened to the broad public.

Now, however, you can see it for yourself here, on Indigo’s website.

It’s fairly lengthy – more than 10 minutes long, by our estimate – but it’s worth a look, if only to see the maudlin denouement. After a straightforward – if predictably cheesy – first half, which simply documents the poor condition of most library collections and the lack of funding for teacher-librarians, the second half is like a reality TV game show. Reisman and her board pore over hundreds of school applications – they get most excited for the submissions with macaroni art and sparkles – and then we cut back and forth between two different schools that both desperately want and need one of the 10 $150,000 Indigo grants. The filmmakers actually put cameras in the two respective principals’ offices when the notifying phone calls come in, so not only do we watch and listen as Reisman informs one school of its win (accompanied by the expected tears of joy and laughter), but we also watch as one of Reisman’s monotone employees informs the other school that they have not been selected. In this latter case, the principal is alone in a gray, claustrophobic-looking office, and she nods sadly as she is told to try again next year. Ugh.

And on it goes: another school board has pulled Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass from its shelves following a parental complaint – this despite the fact that the book was published more than 10 years ago, and thus has been quietly corrupting youth ever since.

From The Globe and Mail:

The Roman Catholic school board in Calgary has followed the lead of a Catholic school board in Burlington, Ont., in pulling the children’s fantasy book The Golden Compass off school shelves.

Board officials said their decision followed concern voiced by parents and recent publicity surrounding the release of a movie version of the book, starring Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman.

“Our children are exposed to a wide range of information,” said board spokeswoman Judy Mackay. “One of our responsibilities is to help them understand how that fits with their belief system and to equip them with the skills so that they understand how they can fit that into their own belief system.”

It should be noted that, though these Catholic school boards seem to have the intestinal fortitude of a wounded llama, most Catholics are not quite so easily spooked. From the same article: “Calgary Bishop Fred Henry said there are more pressing issues facing Catholics than debating a children’s fantasy novel.”

In a similar vein, Toronto Star Books editor Dan Smith wrote a brief piece about the book in this past weekend’s edition (not online), stating that: “in our practising Catholic household, The Golden Compass remains a treasured read. It spurs kids to think and question. Good. That’s what great books are for.”

Philip Pullman keeps running afoul of Ontario school boards.

In what is looking like the most effective publicity campaign ignorance can buy, Pullman’s The Golden Compass has been pulled from the shelves of school libraries in two Catholic School Boards in Peterborough, Ontario.* According to the Peterborough Examiner, “all three books in the trilogy were taken from school libraries this month after two parents complained.”

This follows hard on the heels of similar action by the Halton Catholic School board. (More details here.) A boycott of the movie version of the book is being urged by the Catholic League in the U.S.

What’s the author’s take on all this? In an interview with CBC Radio’s Writers & Company this weekend, Pullman said that “the thing they should do if they don’t want people to read the book is to say nothing about it…. If you want people to read a book, then make a fuss about it, make it controversial. Tell your children they are not to read this book under any circumstances. What is more likely to make them go to the shelf and take it down and read it from there?”

Here we go again. From the Toronto Star:

Halton’s Catholic board has pulled The Golden Compass fantasy book – soon to be a Hollywood blockbuster starring Nicole Kidman – off school library shelves because of a complaint.

Two other books in the trilogy by British author Philip Pullman have also been removed as a precaution, and principals have been ordered not to distribute December Scholastic book flyers because The Golden Compass is available to order.

“(The complaint) came out of interviews that Philip Pullman had done, where he stated that he is an atheist and that he supports that,” said Scott Millard, the board’s manager of library services.

It’s not like there’s never a valid reason to keep a particular book out of a school library – no one blinks at the fact that middle-school kids can’t sign out The Story of O, for example – but haven’t school boards been burned enough by this kind of thing to know not to do something so drastic and negative-publicity-generating without a little sober second thought?

Oh well, we’ll let you know when the book is – inevitably – allowed back on the shelves by some red-faced administrators. I’m sure their phone lines are already feeling the burn.

According to a release from Sono Nis Press, author Nikki Tate was relieved to learn that Elizabeth School in Kindersley, Saskatchewan, which had previously banned her children’s book Trouble on Tarragon Island, has reversed its decision and “un-banned” it after a new school principal re-evaluated the content.

Sono Nis told Q&Q Omni this summer that the book had been deemed a problem because it contains a scene of bullying and because the bullying includes words that may be offensive to women.

Tate’s book, the third in her Tarragon Island series about protagonist Heather Blake, depicts a battle in Blake’s B.C. community over clear-cut logging. Blake’s grandmother joins an anti-logging activist group, and poses naked with them for a calendar, embarrassing her granddaughter. At the beginning of the book’s first chapter, several boys in Blake’s school taunt her about her grandmother’s breasts, calling them “bazoongas” and cupping melon-shaped areas around their chests.

The scene, Tate told Q&Q Omni, “sets up the central conflict of the book, which is asking the question, ‘when you step outside the rules of society … what is the impact on your community and on your family?’” Tate said the description shows the pain experienced by Heather as a result of the bullying. “It’s pretty obvious these kids aren’t being held up as an example of fine behaviour,” she said.

Elizabeth School administrators now seem to have come around to seeing it that way too.

Trouble on Tarragon Island has been nominated for a Diamond Willow Award in Saskatchewan, and Tate is participating in a TD Canadian Children’s Book Week tour in the province this month. As a part of the tour, she had planned to give away copies of her book to elementary students in Kindersley, and she says she will still go ahead with the give-away now that the ban has been reversed. She will sign copies of the book and chat with students at an informal event at the Kindersley Mall on Nov. 19.

The Toronto Star reports on two Canadian philanthropists who have traveled to Africa to see how their donations to an Ottawa-based literacy agency are being used in the fight against AIDS.

Bill Burt and Judy Thomas – a retired couple from Toronto – are following up on their donations to CODE (Canadian Organization for Development through Education), which advances the idea that improved literacy leads to improved living conditions for people in developing countries, and hence a reduction in the level of HIV infection – or, as AIDS activist Steven Lewis puts it, “Drugs help keep people alive. Books help keep people from contracting HIV.”

The charity also funds the “fledgling” book industries of developing nations like Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Guyana.

The group works with about 400 authors and 65 illustrators in Africa and the Caribbean each year and has published 503 titles in local languages like Amharic, Kiswahili and Chichewa since 2001.

Their average book costs $2.50 to write, illustrate, publish and distribute. Plots include anything from healthy living and sanitation to science and micro-financing.

Nearly 100,000 children read the books in libraries and classrooms across Ethiopia.

While the report is hopeful, it ends with this caveat.

But the correlation between literacy and development, and development and HIV/AIDS is not clear. South Africa, arguably the most developed country in Africa, has a higher prevalence of HIV/AIDS than other African nations.

Still, activists say there’s merit in CODE’s efforts. “There are loads of billboards about HIV/AIDS in Eastern Africa,” says Will Postma of Save the Children. “It’s a huge boost just to have kids with the ability to read them.”

Now that some time has passed since the publishing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it looks as if J.K. Rowling is ready to start discussing its contents more openly, without fear of spoilers. The MTV website has posted the highlights of a press conference she held earlier this week in which she discussed the fairly blatant Christian imagery of Deathly Hallows. (There are no spoilers in the passage below, but be warned that there are many in the full article.)

Harry Potter is followed by house-elves and goblins — not disciples — but for the sharp-eyed reader, the biblical parallels are striking. Author J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books have always, in fact, dealt explicitly with religious themes and questions, but until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, they had never quoted any specific religion.

That was the plan from the start, Rowling told reporters during a press conference at the beginning of her Open Book Tour on Monday. It wasn’t because she was afraid of inserting religion into a children’s story. Rather, she was afraid that introducing religion (specifically Christianity) would give too much away to fans who might then see the parallels.

Long-reigning kidlit champ Robert Munsch has taken up a new hobby to fill the three or four weeks between releases of new books of his. According to The Globe and Mail, Munsch’s current exercise regimen consists of “bicycling around his neighbourhood and the City of Guelph. Daily hour-long walks with his two dogs. Climbing big white pine trees on the walk.”

Munsch was orginally intending to build an office/tree fort up there, but those plans were quashed when it was discovered that illustrator Michael Martchenko is afraid of heights. Plus, he would have had to eat a gross worm to gain entry.

Though the new “Special Illustrated Edition” of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi isn’t due out from Knopf Canada until November 17, the Guardian has put together a short slide show of Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanac’s full-colour oil-paintings. You can see them here.

For the most part, the images are fairly literal-seeming representations of events from the book, which is fine, but they’re maybe a little too reminiscent of those illustrated children’s bibles a lot of us grew up with. Come to think of it, the illustrations actually make the book look kind of like a kid’s book. Maybe that’s the intention, though, who knows?

You know you’re big when not having accomplished something is considered news. Not that J.K. Rowling needs any reminder of her fame.

Rowling is the focus of a story in The Guardian about the most popular children’s author of all time – who turns out to be Roald Dahl. But before we’re told who else beat Rowling in the survey, which was conducted in the U.K., we’re informed of Rowling’s poor showing:

JK Rowling, whose first Harry Potter book sparked a publishing sensation when it hit the bookshelves 10 years ago, is only the fourth most popular author.

Second and third place were taken by CS Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia series, and Peter Pan creator JM Barrie.

Interestingly, the survey purports to represent “young adults,” but only readers between the ages of 16 and 34 were polled. The discrepancy can perhaps be explained by the fact that the survey was commissioned by ITV3, a British television channel that is hosting a Roald Dahl weekend later this month. Thanks to the survey, the network can now advertise that Dahl is not only the most popular children’s writer in the U.K., but also that he is more popular than Harry Potter.

According to The Guardian, a new poll has revealed that Britons want to be writers more than they want to be anything else.

A YouGov poll has found that almost 10% of Britons aspire to being an author, followed by sports personality, pilot, astronaut and event organiser on the list of most coveted jobs.

The Guardian speculates that this surge in literary interest is due mostly to J.K. Rowling, who is generally perceived to have made gobs and gobs of money by simply scribbling away in cafes over cups of tea. Judging by the fairytale content of the rest of the preferred professions list – which essentially amounts to playing sports, flying, and throwing parties – it seems that Britons are actually just saying that they don’t want to work for a living at all. Which is understandable enough.

However, according to our calculations, if all the wannabes follow their dreams, Britain will soon have 6 million authors storming the doors of the nation’s publishing houses. Good luck to ‘em, we say.

Meanwhile, The Guardian has also posted the results of yet another poll, this one from the U.S., which found that a quarter of Americans read no books whatsoever last year. And of those who did, the average tally was four books, with the Bible and romance novels named as the top picks. So we’re guessing that “writer” would not beat out pop idol, motivational speaker, and heiress as the preferred professions in the U.S., but hey – different country, different dreams.

Christopher Hitchens on Harry Potter in The New York Times:

For all this apparently staunch secularism, it is ontology that ultimately slackens the tension that ought to have kept these tales vivid and alive. Theologians have never been able to answer the challenge that contrasts God’s claims to simultaneous omnipotence and benevolence: whence then cometh evil? The question is the same if inverted in a Manichean form: how can Voldemort and his wicked forces have such power and yet be unable to destroy a mild-mannered and rather disorganized schoolboy? In a short story this discrepancy might be handled and also swiftly resolved in favor of one outcome or another, but over the course of seven full-length books the mystery, at least for this reader, loses its ability to compel, and in this culminating episode the enterprise actually becomes tedious. Is there really no Death Eater or dementor who is able to grasp the simple advantage of surprise?

Stephen King on same in Entertainment Weekly:

One last thing: The bighead academics seem to think that Harry’s magic will not be strong enough to make a generation of non-readers (especially the male half) into bookworms … but they wouldn’t be the first to underestimate Harry’s magic; just look at what happened to Lord Voldemort. And, of course, the bigheads would never have credited Harry’s influence in the first place, if the evidence hadn’t come in the form of bestseller lists. A literary hero as big as the Beatles? ”Never happen!” the bigheads would have cried. ”The traditional novel is as dead as Jacob Marley! Ask anyone who knows! Ask us, in other words!”

Um, let’s call it a draw….

There should be a word for a book review that exists only as a venue for the reviewer’s own particular hobbyhorse – religion in Hitchens’ case, “bigheads” in King’s.

The me-view?

This week’s shot comes courtesy of a friend of Q&Q, and depicts her daughter concentrating furiously on finishing the new Potter.

Have you recently attended a book reading, library event, or author appearance? Have some interesting book-related pictures you want to share? If you’ve got photos of the Canadian book scene, we’d love to see them. Send them to us or sign up through Flickr and submit your images.

In today’s obligatory Harry Potter update, CNET News (via Reuters) is reporting that a 16-year-old in France has been arrested for posting three chapters of a French version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the Internet more than two months before the official translation will be released. The French-language book will come out on Oct. 26; in the meantime, while French bookstores are free to sell the English version, this kid will be fighting the law.

The lesson: keep your hack translations to yourself; Harry Potter will have only one official French word for “hallows.” Bungling the translation of that term is definitely an arrest-worthy offense.

According to a website called China View, Malaysian readers are scooping up pirated editions of the final Harry Potter installment in droves.

Cashing in on the popularity of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pirates have mass-produced paperback editions which are retailed at 48 ringgit (14 U.S. dollars) each, the New Straits Times reported.

They are available at selected news vendors and bookstores, some of whom are selling the books at 60 ringgit (18 U.S. dollars) but with a 20 percent discount.

Checks at several news vendors and bookstores showed that the pirated book copied the original version wholesale, from its front and back covers and publisher’s logo to even the barcode.

Apparently, the pirated editions are selling like hotcakes, especially among the country’s student population. No word yet if the book’s Malaysian publisher will be cracking down on this, but we’re sure that Bloomsbury and Rowling herself are feeling very disappointed with the Malays right about now.

Potterphiles, you can breathe a sigh of relief, because The Onion has your back with an important spoiler warning. Apparently, that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book gives away the ending of everything and everyone to do with Potter!

“The whole experience is completely ruined for me,” said 25-year-old fan Ethan Clay, adding that the book builds up suspense, and then, without warning, gives away vital, plot-altering information. “The least [Rowling] could have done was put a spoiler alert or something on the front cover.”

Nothing is safe anymore. Avert your eyes!

According to The Guardian, the Borders bookstore chain in Great Britain has decided to move copies of Tintin in the Congo from the children’s section of its stores to the adult graphic novels section, after being pressured to do so by a human rights group.

The Commission for Racial Equality said yesterday it was unacceptable for any shop to stock or sell the 1930s cartoon adventure of the Belgian boy journalist because of its crude racial stereotypes.

The book, which includes a scene where Tintin is made chief of an African village because he is a “good white man” and a black woman bowing to Tintin saying: “White man very great … white mister is big juju man!” was highly offensive, a spokeswoman from the commission said.

She added that the only place the book was acceptable was in a museum - with a sign accompanying it saying “old-fashioned, racist claptrap”.

As The Guardian explains, however, the book already includes a foreward acknowledging the colonial stereotypes, which you would think would mitigate the problem. In any case, this spokesperson from the Commission for Racial Equality might come off a little more reasonable if she didn’t shrilly pronounce the entire book “claptrap.” How about Moby Dick? How about The Birth of a Nation? How about the entire endless litany of artworks that contain outdated values and beliefs? Let’s put ‘em all in museums and never engage with them again! That’ll make the world a better place…

Kudos, however, to Borders for not buckling to the Thought Police and banning it altogether.

The latest and last Harry Potter book (did you know there was a new one coming out?) will not be available at western-Canadian outlets of Mac’s Convenience, according to a story in The Globe and Mail. Raincoast is barring the chain – and possibly others – from receiving copies of the book in advance of publication, citing security concerns. (Raincoast sought and won a restraining order after the previous Potter volume, Harry Potter and the Annoying Embargo, was sold in advance of the pub date by a few convenience and grocery stores, including at least one Mac’s location.)

That’s right: the sales outlook on this book is so good that Raincoast can afford to not sell it. Won’t all those Potter fans be surprised when they finally get the book, only to discover it’s a 40-page novella that kills off every major character, padded out with 800 pages of Rowling’s journals, letters from fans, some of her favourite recipes, and an unpublished collection of her poetry.

(Note: Jamie Broadhurst, Raincoast’s vice president of marketing, told Q&Q he would “not discuss specific details about customers, logistics, or security,” but did confirm that, at least theoretically, stores not able to stock the book before the pub date of July 21 could do so after.)

Lloyd Alexander, the author of the cult favorite U.S. children’s series The Chronicles of Prydain, has passed away. According to the obituary that The Guardian posted today, Alexander actually died several weeks ago, on May 17, but the news appears to be getting out only now.

His first novels were for adults but, in the 1960s, despairing at the state of adult fiction, he switched to writing for children, an activity he described as “the most creative and liberating experience of my life.” It was certainly a hugely successful transition. He went on to write more than 35 books for children, attracting a passionately committed following and winning numerous awards. These included, in the U.S., the 1969 Newbery medal for The High King (1968), the penultimate title in his Chronicles of Prydain series, the 1971 National Book award for The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian (1970), the story of a poor fiddler who saves a princess from an unhappy marriage, and the 1982 American Book award for Westmark (1981), the first title in a series of the same name.

This Quillblogger happily recalls reading Alexander’s The Black Cauldron as a child, immediately after having seen the Disney movie adaptation; it was then that I discovered, probably for the first time, that the book is almost always better than the movie.

The Guardian reports that Rome’s legendary Protestant Cemetery, which houses the graves of Keats and Shelley, is crumbling. Thanks to a lack of funding and maintenance, tree branches fell to the ground last Friday and cracked open a grave, barely missing Shelley’s tomb. Overgrown weeds and effects of pollution have also compromised some of the other stately gravestones of the non-Catholics buried in the shadow of the Aventine Hill.

The cemetery’s official website says that the family most affected has been informed of the damage, and that the 200-year-old site of many authors’ pilgrimages will be closed until further notice for repairs.

Although the secluded, beauteous area was added last year to a list of the World Monetary Fund’s 100 most endangered historical sites, monetary help has yet to arrive. In the meantime, the cemetery has no relief for the 1 million euros’ worth of debt it somehow racked up between 1999 and 2005. A sign on its gate reads, “Visitors are kindly requested to offer a contribution of at least two euros. We badly need it.”

In other news, J.K. Rowling has given the go-ahead to Warner Brothers Entertainment to open an entire Harry Potter theme park at the Universal Orlando Resort, since the book-based movies have earned the studio $3.5 billion U.S. so far.

According to The Guardian, Philip Pullman, bestselling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, has taken aim at modern children’s television programming.

Pullman castigated broadcasters for sacrificing high-quality programmes in favour of those that yield more marketing opportunities. “Children are regarded by broadcasters as a marketing opportunity at best, a dangerous and feral threat at worst, and an expensive nuisance otherwise,” Pullman said. “This social poison goes much deeper than broadcasting, of course, but it’s particularly visible there.

“There used to be … a sense of responsibility among broadcasters: a feeling that this extraordinary medium … should be used to make things better, richer, more interesting for those who made up the audience - especially for children,” he added.

He won’t get much of an argument out of us about marketing-driven kids’ TV, though we do think it would have been more effective had Philip delivered his rant to, say, Big Bird. Perhaps in song.

Next year, the world – or mainly just Canada and Japan, perhaps – will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first publication of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s beloved Anne of Green Gables. But the L.M. Montgomery Institute in P.E.I. might not be ready to party.

The group, which was established in 1993 to honour and promote Lucy Maud and to be a hub for research, initially received a three-year grant from the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada. Later funding came from the Macdonald Stewart Foundation and the telecommunications company Aliant.

In June 2004, Japan’s Imperial Highness Princess Takamodo became the Institute’s “international patron.” Furthermore, a long list of scholars, authors, and international figures – including Adrienne Clarkson and Jane Urquhart – grace its committees and board.

But the money seems to have stopped flowing in, according to CBC News Online.

Funding sources have dried up over the years, and the L.M. Montgomery Institute has struck a committee to try to source new ones.

“There is kind of this feeling that, you know, that there will always be funding there just because it’s so exciting and so great, how could there not be money?” Simon Lloyd, chair of the L.M. Montgomery Institute Committee told CBC News.

Lloyd added that he is confident they’ll be able to find enough funds to keep the lights on, so it’s not time to panic yet. Quillblog humbly suggests turning to the pages of Montgomery’s beloved tomes for fundraising ideas – Anne Shirley was pretty good at getting out of scrapes, after all.

Today Reed Exhibitions posted some much-awaited details on BOOKED!, the author festival that’s running just before the BookExpo Canada convention and trade show next month. The most notable event is a gala tribute to horror giant Stephen King on Friday, June 8 (which is also happening under the Luminato banner); according to the website, King will, incredibly, make his first public appearance in Canada to accept a lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Booksellers Association.

Things kick off on Thursday, June 7, with a “men of letters” panel featuring Barry Callaghan, David Gilmour, Stephen Henighan, and Ray Robertson. Friday will see a full day of children’s programming, featuring such authors as Barbara Haworth-Attard, Carol Matas, Martha Brooks, Deborah Ellis, Susan Juby, and Kit Pearson. On the Saturday evening, Christopher Hitchens, Naomi Klein, Daniel Levitin, and Linda McQuaig will convene for a panel discussion.

And it appears that at least two BookExpo Canada events, Saturday’s author breakfast and lunch, will be open to the public. Admission to the former (featuring Gail Anderson-Dargatz and Lesley Choyce) is listed as $35 and the latter (featuring Elizabeth Hay, Frances Itani, and Richard B. Wright) as $50.

The full events listing can be seen