Name that Chicken!

When I started this blog a month or so ago, it felt a little bare around the top. As I can't draw animate objects for beans, I begged my friend Rachel (and I feel sort of name-droppy saying "my friend Rachel" as she is in real life a brilliant cartoonist and the creator of the lovely Amy Unbounded comic-book series. But also she's my friend!) anyway, I begged Rachel to draw a chicken reading a book. And she very kindly came up with the literary fowl that you see up top to the right there, just above the "About" sidebar .

Immediately I felt more settled into my new blog home, with the companionship of this contented bookish coffee- (or maybe tea-) drinking chicken. (Rachel and I had a brief discussion about whether it was okay for the chicken to drink coffee in the library, and eventually agreed that she has checked out the book and taken it home to enjoy. In case you were wondering about that.)

She needs only one thing: a name. A literary one would be nice, but my mind is a blank; I can't think of a single literary chicken. But really, any name that just seems right will do.

So I am throwing this burning question open to the public, and officially announcing the book, book, book Name That Chicken Contest, to run from now through, oh, let's say March 24.

To enter, suggest a name for the chicken in comments below. If I choose the name you suggest, you win...a book! A completely non-chicken-related book called Father's Arcane Daughter, which is one of E. L. Konigsburg's lesser-known works and one of my favorites. It is sadly out of print, so I've been stockpiling copies and have an extra.

How often do you get the chance to name a chicken and win a copy of this family mystery about a funny, obnoxious, angry, sad boy and his two sisters, neither of whom may be as they appear?

P.S. Thanks to everyone for your thoughts below on the Amazon linking dilemma. You might have noticed that I'm still begging the question. Will write a real follow-up soon.

Updated to clarify: It doesn't have to be a literary chicken's name, though those are welcome. Just gaze at the chicken...look deeply into the chicken's eyes...and toss a suggestion in the comments.

Colour me Chuffed

As an Anglophile from way back, who cut my literary teeth on E. Nesbit's books about the Bastable Children, intrigued by their fascinating and mysterious world (Why did they have a pudding every day? And what was a pantomime? And who on earth was this mysterious "general" who seemed to be a housekeeper?) I was disgusted to discover, as an adult, that the U.S. editions of Helen Oxenbury's charming board books had obviously been bowdlerized and that the line that had surely been "Wave to Mum" in the original (because it rhymed with last word of the previous page--"thumb," or "plum," or something) had been stupidly changed to "Wave to Mom." I just used to read it "Mum" anyway. Same with U.S. versions of Shirley Hughes's "Alfie" books (also almost all out of print! Phooey Phooey Rats!).

Much has been written about the Americanization the Harry Potter books' U.S. editions (see this line-by-line analysis of the first book for details) but one of the happy side-effects of the Potter phenomenon is that publishers seem to be finally realizing that American kids are not stupid and can deal just fine with some exotic and unfamiliar words, and in the last several years there's been a flood of British kid- and YA-lit imports, generally quite lightly edited.

Some of my favorites (or favourites, I guess I should say) of these are Hillary McKay's books about the artistic and eccentric and troubled and hysterically funny Casson family. When the third title, Permanent Rose, came out a couple of years ago I couldn't wait for the US. publication and bought the British (well, Canadian) edition on a trip to Vancouver. Truth is, I bought the British edition because I just like British editions of British books better: you can be sure that you're reading the real deal, with all the hair elastics and lorries and car boots and single quote marks left intact.

The U.S. version I ordered for the library hadn't come in yet by September, so I loaned my copy to a kid who had loved the first two books, Saffy's Angel and Indigo's Star, and couldn't wait to read the new one.

She brought it back a couple weeks later. "It was good," she said, "but kind of confusing. Like, what's a biro?"

I thought back to the opening scene, in which Rose, the youngest and fiercest of the Casson siblings, opens the door to a friend of her brother's, who is nonplussed to see that she's been writing all over herself with the aforementioned article. "It's a ballpoint pen."

"Ohhhhhh." She nodded, satisfied at last. "Okay, that makes sense."

So, it's true, you can't necessarily catch everything from context. And I did notice that in the American edition that arrived a few weeks later the word had indeed been translated to "ballpoint pen."

This is all by way of a lengthy and meandering introduction to a link that might be of interest to other Anglophiles, literary or otherwise: Separated by a Common Language is all about the differences between British and American English. I found myself unable to stop reading the post and comments linming the differences between a "hair slide," "hairband" and "barrette." Check out the highly illuminating post on Types of Schools and School Years, too.

Found via Books, Words, and Writing.

Arnold Hanger Lives!

One of my very favorite moments ever in children's literature has got to be the author visit in Jane Gardam's A Long Way from Verona, in which young Jessica Vye is transformed by (fictional) writer Arnold Hanger's lecture at her prim, proper, pre-World-War-II British girls' school. After Hanger has spoken and read aloud from all kinds of books, one after another, "poetry and all sorts," he seems to be done, and the Head is just about to sweep him off for tea when he suddenly turns and bellows at the startled girls: "To Hell with school!" he hollers. "To Hell with school! English is what matters! ENGLISH IS LIFE!"

Jessica, of course, is never the same. It would ruin it for you if I gave too much away. (I know, the book is long out of print in this country, and hard to find, but damned if I'm going to spoil it. Go on! Protest! Storm the publishers in your quest to find out what happens! Buy it from amazon.uk! This one should be out there!) Suffice it to say that Jessica emerges from the incident and its aftermath convinced that she is "a writer beyond all possible doubt," and that this certainty drives the novel and Jessica's life thereafter.

While George Shannon didn't do anything that transgressive during his visit today (and I suppose that if he had I would have been in the unenviable position of the scandalized Head at Jessica's school), he did manage to fire up the kids about writing and literature in general. Jaded 6th and 7th graders who wouldn't be caught dead reading a picture book asked him serious questions about plot, pacing, and the writing process. Kindergarteners jumped into the "Maybe Maybe" game, suggesting possible adventures for a monkey who finds himself in a peanut shell. I sat at my desk taking notes and getting quietly inspired myself.

When I was a kid in the '70's, I don't remember any authors visiting my school, a mere bus ride away from the heart of publishing and writing in this country. Nowadays it's pretty standard to have author visits; I try to book one every year. I can't help but think that it's good for everyone: for the kids, for the teachers, for the authors (who get book sales as well as a source of income from the presentations), and for all of us readers who might in 20 years ago get to read some terrific books inspired by kids who got to see that the people who create books do exist in real life, and that they themselves can become writers beyond all possible doubt.