Sue Bursztynski's Page

SO, WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR THE NATIONAL YEAR OF READING?

2012-01-07T00:42:00.000-08:00

First published on The Great Raven.

This is the National Year of Reading in Australia. There arediscussions going on all over the web and ideas thrown around for how to dostuff to encourage reading. I don’t think I can add to these discussions, but Ican talk about what I’m hoping to do andmake suggestions for things that can be done in a school library with a tinybudget and limited staffing.

A library like mine.

I’ve experimented with most of these suggestions and amplanning to have a go at the others. My book club had better watch out, becauseI am going to ask them to give a hand.

There are the obvious ones, which any school can do if theyhave time and/or money. The Premier’s Reading Challenge, for example. Reader’sCup. MS Readathon. But all those are team efforts. They need to be a schooleffort, not just that of the teacher-librarian. If you can arrange that, fine.

However, I’m going to make a few suggestions that you can dowith limited staff help and funding, though they do rather rely on studentsco-operating. But hey, the students are what it’s about and who it’s for and ifyou can’t get student co-operation you might as well not bother!

These things all need effort. There’s no way you can getaround that. But they work, as long as you’re prepared to be obnoxious and makea fuss till you get some support, however little. Here they are, in no specialorder – if you have some more you’ve tried out, why not add them here?

Offer to do book launches for new writers. In this era of internet contact, it’s not hard to track down a new writer who might be willing and able to have a go. It’s win-win. It gives the author promotion and practice in speaking to young readers and they can bring books to sell. Students get to meet a writer at the start of their career You have to have some copies in the library and promote like mad for days before the visitor arrives for the launch. Call the local press. That’s good for everyone. When my book Starwalkers was being launched in a school library, I persuaded my publisher to give us some goodies and a few dollars towards the lollies and cordial. The TL called the local press and did a space-themed trivia quiz before I arrived and held the final round during the launch. I signed copies of the book for all four students. It was very successful. Since then, I’ve had a number of launches myself.

Start a book or library blog, if you don’t have one already. You can review new books, which can then go to your library, and you can invite students to review books on it. If you’re planning on doing something for IYR, you probably have a blog of one kind or another anyway.

Start a lunchtime book club. Yes, it can be exhausting and you need to work out what it will involve, with your students, but believe me when I say it’s well worth the effort. And these students can become “reading ambassadors” and help with activities you might plan and choose books for the library.

Join YABBA (Young Australians Best Books Award). This is CHEAP! Even I was able to afford it last year. You get posters and stuff and the students can nominate and vote for Australian books they like. It helps to have the support of English staff for this one, but you can also get your reading ambassadors to encourage their fellow students to nominate and vote.

Why not check out Banned Books Week? It’s amazing how many books in your library have been banned at one time or another. Last year I experimented, doing it myself and putting it up on Youtube, but how about encouraging students to do this? Even if it doesn’t go on Youtube, why not film it anyway and have a festival of readings in the library? Have a prize – it doesn’t have to be big and you’ll probably have some review books put aside anyway. There’s also Teachertube, which is less likely to be blocked!

How about a book trailer competition? I haven’t had the opportunity to do it in the library yet, but last year I did it with my English class. I got the idea when Random House, my publishers, ran their annual teenage book trailer comp. Teachertube has a very good book trailer presentation that gives you information about Creative Commons web sites that will let you use the images, music, etc, free. Check it out. My English students were given the chance to prepare a book trailer as a creative response to their Literature Circles books. These were so very good that I put them together on DVD and will be showing them to other staff. I gave all my class members a copy to take away as a souvenir. Teenagers are better at this sort of thing than we are, being familiar with the software. The trailers can be shown in the library during Book Week, perhaps, or Banned Books Week. You do have to model this, though, and I prepared my own trailer for Wolfborn, which I expected them to laugh at, and go do a better job, but they liked it. You can also go on-line and find trailers made by students to show them. I used Teachertube. We had everything from Morris Gleitzman’s Once as a sort of PowerPoint with music to a performance of a scene from Wuthering Heights done as a modern American soap opera!

How about a Book Week lunchtime trivia quiz? Prizes can be small. You can buy bags of fun-sized chocolate bars for $3 to $5 at the supermarket. I’ve done this many times and it always works, though last year I gave up on Book Week altogether when my book club helpers all went off to camp. Oh, well. The beauty of this is that you can create a quiz that can be varied a bit each year, but doesn’t have to be completely new each time. Sometimes, I grab students in the library and invite them to think up a question for the quiz. Only one each. That way they only know the answer to one in advance. ;-) You will need a barrel girl/boy to mark and record the scores of each group on the whiteboard, but there’s bound to be a staff member who is happy to give a hand.

How about an on-line interview with a favourite write? Check out the ones I’ve published on The Great Raven. All but the interview with Miffy were done by my students. They have been among the most popular posts on the blog. I sat down with them and had a chat about their questions. I gave these questions a light edit before submitting them to the author, but otherwise the questions belong to the students who wrote them. Not all authors will be willing or able to help. Sometimes they’re just too busy writing and we do want them to get on with producing more for us to read. Sometimes they don’t include a contact email on their web sites. Sometimes you get a response from an agent who sees your request, not as an opportunity for promotion, but as a nuisance.

But most of the writers wequeried were simply wonderful. Every one of the interviews we received wasbetter than we could possibly have expected.

Some publishers will actuallyoffer an interview. This is where I got the idea; Juliet Marillier’s publishersaid she was doing interviews that month and as I’d only read one of her booksat the time and I had a student who was a passionate Marillier fan, I asked ifshe could do it. “Sure!” said the publisher. The rest is history.

If you have any ideas of yourown, do respond here. Library folk have to look after each other and whyreinvent the wheel?

Comments

2012-01-02T16:32:00.000-08:00

I'm still trying to work out why this blog doesn't seem to have a comments option. It's laid out exactly the same way as The Great Raven, which doesn't get many comments, but does have the option there. I've sent in a feedback to Google, but that's not very helpful - they have "forums" but don't actually answer your question themselves. Meanwhile, if you want to say something about a post, feel free to email me and I'll put up a special comments post.

Boxing Day memories

2011-12-25T12:56:00.000-08:00

Until about two years ago, my family had a tradition of getting together on Boxing Day for breakfast. No special reason except Christmas was over and it was a fun way to start the day before checking out the sales. At one time, my mother, my sister and I used to go out to breakfast at the Treble Clef restaurant at the Arts Centre. Then the restaurant stopped doing breakfast (and then it was gone altogether), so we went to my place and I had fun looking up breakfasts in the London Ritz Book of Breakfasts and using some of the recipes. I would get up at 5.30 to bake soda bread, brew coffee and sometimes make extravagant hot chocolate with real melted chocolate in it, make a jug of orange juice and lay out plates of smoked salmon and fresh summer fruit. The breakfast ended up with a large chunk of the family attending - first Dad and my brother-in-law Gary, then my nephew David and sometimes my middle nephew Mark and then David brought his children Dezzy and Rachel, in Melbourne for the holidays. I would have liked to invite my brother and his family too, but with four of them and a table and chairs only for eight, I was full up.

And then my father died. The last time I did this it was just for my friends Bart and Siu, who were with me that time, two days before Dad passed away.

It just wasn't the same any more, and we'd always remember.

So here I am at 7.50 am on Boxing Day, at my messy table, writing this instead of greeting my family as they arrive. David and the kids, as well as my brother and his family, are off on holiday anyway.

So before I do a household clean-up, something I've been promising myself for weeks, I'm going to make myself a yummy breakfast. No soda bread, alas - the oven is still out of action - but some pikelets and fresh fruit and a big pot of tea. And I'll remember Dad, who loved this tradition.

The Year's End - Reflections

2011-12-24T06:54:00.000-08:00

And in the end, we couldn't get the school to write a cheque for our $531.60, too late, so Jasna and I spent Tuesday afternoon in the last week of school going to the local shopping mall to find a way to do a money order and post it. I'd decided it was going to go registered mail, to avoid being lost in the Christmas rush. The kids put months of work into this and deserved to have every last penny reach its destination. The PO wouldn't take our huge number of coins (all but $94 was in coins!) and I suppose I can't blame them, so we went to the local NAB to see if they'd change our coins to notes. "Do you bank with us?" asked the teller. No, we didn't, so she told us they couldn't help us.

There was a Commonwealth bank across the road and I do have an account there, so we tramped over there with our heavy bags of money. There, we met a helpful bank officer who took us to a money-counting machine where you could have the fun of throwing coins into a hole and watching the machine count it all up for you (it spat out a New Zealand ten-cent coin!). Then you take the printout to the counter, where they can put it into your account or give you notes. Of course, we took the notes back across the road and bought a money order. The lady at the counter had an arm injury which she discussed with Jasna while making up the money order for Greenpeace.

We posted it and, much relieved, went for a nice cuppa in the food court before returning to school.

It was a good project - a grand project. The kids believed in it and nobody was reluctant to have a go. Well, almost nobody. One student - like last year - did absolutely nothing. I suspect that, like last year's student, he regrets it. He was not a part of the final celebration, though he was there. I told him quietly that he had let his team down, which meant something to him, as he's a passionate sportsman. He protested, "But I wasn't there!" Exactly. And it wasn't illness.

Everyone else at the very least had a go. If their project didn't work, they were only too happy to try something else.

I don't think we'll do a lolly jar next year, it just hasn't worked, two years in a row. Truffles did, though. Everyone likes chocolate and they had a lot of demand for it - they did it twice. It has to be given to reliable students, though, perhaps as an alternative to making cookies, which cost money for ingredients - MUCH more than truffles - and then you have to spend the whole day baking and distributing them.

We'll see the calibre of the students we have next year before I recommend anything in particular.

Welcome Art Bebe!

2011-12-24T06:32:00.000-08:00

Welcome, Art Bebe, otherwise known as Frank. This is my general blog, though, where you will read about what I'm doing at work, what my students are doing and such. If you want books and SF, most of that is going on over at The Great Raven, my other blog.

Hope you like this one anyway - I'm rather proud of my students and what they did this year. Literature Circles, book trailers, interviews with writers of books they were studying (those also over at The Raven) and fundraising for Greenpeace. In the end, it was a grand total of $531.60.

Round Midnight - student book trailers

2011-12-08T05:39:00.001-08:00

First posted on The Great Raven

I've spent the evening at the opera (and couldn't believe that parents would bring children to see an opera about a dying courtesan in 19th century Paris, but serve them right if they have to explain it). Now, I'm sitting here on-line, after midnight, loading my students' book trailers on to iMovie, adding them to the Literature Circles movie, so I can burn more discs. Today I showed my class the last of A Midsummer Night's Dream (they loved it! I hadn't intended to show them the lot, but they wanted me to, so...) and then, with a few minutes left, I showed them the book trailers done by some of them. They were interested and when I asked them who wanted a copy of these and the Literature Circles movie (they've seen bits of that before I edited it on iMovie) nearly every hand went up. So, because next Friday will be our last class together (sob!) I thought I'd present each student with a DVD.

And there were some nice trailers there, though everyone chose music which cut out before the trailer finished (but the music was appropriate in all cases). Andy and Amadeu did theirs on Dragonkeeper, using almost the same images and the same music, but they were different. Andy asked me if he could fix his up because he spotted some errors. He can, of course, though if he doesn't get it to me by tomorrow, I won't have time to add the corrected version to the student DVD - I want to do some on the weekend. Andy is our computer genius, but it was Amadeu who knew how to convert raw Moviemaker files to WMV(and then I converted them again, using Handbrake!). Michael's trailer for Once was beautiful. Minh had done his on the novel his group read, Cirque Du Freak (Darren Shan). I watched him research it, looking for pictures of freaks from freak shows. They aren't exactly the ones in the novel, but impressive all the same, with a good musical soundtrack. Taylor kept looking through Google Images for just the right pictures to use to represent Wolfgang and Audrey and families for her trailer of Justin D'Ath's Pool (and I will be sending Justin a copy at some stage, as promised). Emily did a very good trailer of Marianne De Pierres' Burn Bright, with music changing abruptly when she got to the bit about Ixion, the isle of Evernight, to a loud rock beat, appropriate for a place where teenagers party all night. "Hey, I did one on Burn Bright!" called Brittany and I suggested she gets it to me so I can add it to the DVD. It was supposed to be a part of the assessment. She was actually studying Pool, but loves Burn Bright. Elizabeth and Rana did A Ghost In My Suitcase, but it was too late to add music. I'm putting on the silent trailer anyway.

I will be adding Paige's lovely, if short, trailer for Fallen, because the rest of the class admire it.

Gotta go to bed, guys! I still have to be up at six, but Amadeu's trailer is taking ages to load.

2011 Student Fundraising Activity Nearly Over - O Joy!

2011-12-03T00:52:00.001-08:00

This is a wonderful unit of work and I believe in it utterly, but I am so glad it's nearly over. One more activity - in the library again, Monday and Tuesday lunchtime - and the last of the money will be raised and I can get in touch with Greenpeace to ask them how we go about putting in our donation and whether - perhaps - they might have a certificate or some such thing to thank the kids for what they have done.

And they have done very well, despite the ones at whom we rolled eyes because, despite what we asked them not to do, they did it - such as spending money on stuff without discussing it with us first, the boys' group who planned a dodgeball game in the gym and then charged $2 per team rather than per player! - and then GAVE the players icy poles because that was what their poster said, despite the fact that the poster also said it was $2 to play. There was also a team of girls who bought a rather large supply of lollies for the lolly jar guesses when I could have done it for them, much cheaper, and then didn't make enough to get back the money let alone a profit. But the thing is, they wanted to be of help and we made sure they could redeem their errors. The boys got to SELL icy poles bought by my colleague Jasna, who got back the money and still they made a profit in about ten minutes of work. One of them commented on this, with wonder, and rather sheepishly, as he took money from yet another customer. :-) The girls were even luckier. We had a donation, a fabulous donation of a $30 movie voucher from a teacher-librarian friend from another school, who had come to visit my school and been impressed with what the students were doing. She even supplied the raffle tickets! We didn't have the time to sell as many tickets as we would have liked, we just wanted the girls to have a chance to do something they could be proud of, and the raffle was drawn at a school assembly at which the Year 10s graduated - that Year 10 was the first Year 8 group to do this project, so it was nice. But there was still a profit, even discounting the fact that someone else had paid for the voucher.

There were kids who finished their activity and then insisted on doing another one, just so they could raise some more money. We had to gently tell the disco-ers and the truffle-sellers that they had done just fine and it was time to rest, but the disco-ers sold jelly and choc frogs, making a decent profit, and the truffle-sellers made another batch and ended with a profit of $65!

So, despite all the hassles we had this term - kids making mistakes, us having, unexpectedly, to compete with Year 9, one of whose teachers had decided suddenly and without warning to have THEM raise money for charity (and they knew how - they did it with us last year!) - we had to rearrange our timetable to cope with this - we will, by the time the last activity has happened - have raised near on $500 for Greenpeace. Last year's group raised $635, but they had an anniversary fete to use to sell their baked goods.

The kids learned so very much from it and they all have a sense of pride in themselves, of achievement.

So, yes, unless we're prevented by the school, this will hopefully happen again, but meanwhile - phew! I can soon have some of my lunchtimes and recesses back!

Out of the Doghouse - what next?

2011-11-30T01:44:00.001-08:00

Re-printed from The Great Raven

So, what do you do when your writing commitment is over?

I'm going to read and read and read tonight. I've just started a new iMovie project, putting together my students' book trailers. I really can't put them all up, even if I had their permission, because there is too much need to check out how much material is copyright, although it was all credited. Too much hassle! But I will be burning it all on to DVD for the staff's professional interest, so they can see what Year 8 English students can do when they try, and catalogue it for my library, and I will be showing it to my class before we all go off for holidays.

If any of the authors want to see what 8B has done, I'll be happy to pop a copy in the mail for them. They're not perfect, but they did what I needed - showed they understood the book and that they had got something out of it. Also, they hopefully persuaded the viewer it might be a good book to read.

Here are the books: Pool, by Justin D'Ath, Dragonkeeper by Carole Wilkinson, Burn Bright by Marianne De Pierres and Once by Morris Gleitzman. A Ghost In My Suitcase was saved as a plain Powerpoint because I couldn't open the original file (pity - they could have changed it to .wmv - if only I'd known! )However, two other students prepared interview questions for Gabrielle Wang, who has kindly agreed to answer them and offered to publish it on her own web site as well as this one. Anyway, if any of you guys who wrote these books are reading and are interested in a copy, let me know.

I'm also about to prepare some interview questions for Miffy Farquarson, who has agreed to answer questions about being a CBCA judge.

So, while I won't be blogging every day now, I will be keeping busy.

Today I got such a nice email from Bill Condon, who had been a WIR on Insideadog too, and said how much he had enjoyed my posts. It does feel a little lonely when you blog away and nobody - or, in my case, almost nobody - commented. But it's nice to know.

Late dinner time - I'm off to eat and read.

Welcome Emma! And Free Rice!

2011-11-26T14:59:00.001-08:00

Hi Emma! Welcome to my page. To tell you the truth, this was my first effort at a blog, not knowing what I was supposed to do. I do most of my posting over at The Great Raven, but because I suddenly found myself with followers here I have been posting more often, just the general stuff, a lot of it about school.

I know more people are reading this than have joined, because I check the statistics, though I don't yet keep the counter up on the page, so I'm going to introduce Emma McGregor to anyone who is reading. She is a young writer who was kind enough to choose my session at the Bendigo Catholic College Lit Fest the other day and she keeps a number of blogs. One of them is Be The Change, which I have joined because it is so very impressive and useful. It is about social justice and has some extremely useful links to Fair Trade web sites and charities and even Free Rice, which I've been using with my students for some time already.

I discovered it, of all things, in an ESL newspper. The idea is that you do vocab - it gives you a word and a multiple choice and you pick the meaning. If you're right, it donates ten grams of rice to the World Food Bank. If you're wrong, it drops you a level and you keep going till you get the word again and this time you know it. I'd like to say my students love it - and sometimes they do, when they realise that this is real and doing this helps real people. I usually give them one full period on it at the beginning, with chocolate prizes for highest score and highest level reached, then keep it for a few minutes at the end of a period in the computer room. No more than that or they get bored. I, personally, find it addictive, I just HAVE to keep going and trying for the next level and the next and towards the top there are words even I don't know. If you aren't interested in vocab or don't teach English, there are other subjects, though the English bit is the best.

But do hop along to Emma's site and join. It's well worth it. I'm going to add it to my blog roll, both here and at The Great Raven, when I've finished a bit of housework (Sunday is the only day I can get it done at all.)

Latest Reflective Journal - the kids score for Greenpeace!

2011-11-15T14:00:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was an exhausting day for my colleague Jasna and me, not to mention our students. The delayed lunchtime disco happened, as did the baking of brownies by another group of students. Their classmates were planning frantically for their own events.

Both disco and brownies were a huge success, but they kept us flat out. After recess, Jasna and I had arranged to have the brownie-bakers go to the Foods room, where we would supervise them. We had to make absolutely sure that they cleaned up afterwards and put everything back where it belonged, or risk the wrath of the Foods teacher, who doesn't teach on Tuesdays. Not only that, but we had to help them find equipment they needed, including baking paper and microwave-safe bowls to melt butter. One of the students nearly placed a metal bowl in the microwave! "Stop!" I shrieked and went to see if our Lighthouse integration room had some (they did).

I went back in Period 4 to supervise all the other students of 8A and B while Jasna continued in the Foods room. The disco organisers had to set up the library and then I had to stay to help out and supervise. Fortunately, colleagues came in to give a hand, and Jasna, who had to do yard duty, was spelled by another colleague, Tina, who asked for the brownies recipe. After lunch my students got the library back to normal - there was surprisingly little rubbish, very easy to clean up. They had made $124! True, $70 of that was money they had overspent for decorations, but that still left a substantial profit. The other group ended up making the same profit on the brownies, though they ended up with a lot more ingredients than they could possibly use at home. I mean, the cocoa, sugar and eggs, yes, the flour, yes - but what were they going to do with all those packs of butter? Still - it was a lesson learned. We had told them to calculate their needs beforehand, as last year's students did. And they did make a good profit and the work itself went pretty smoothly, in between trying to find enough pans, baking paper, etc.

They hadn't thought to buy bags, so the brownies were neatly wrapped in paper towelling. They had to go back to class after Period 5, but Jasna brought her graphics class into the theory room and I helped a year 10 student, Rebecca, who had volunteered her time since her Hospitality class wasn't happening. We distributed most of the remaining brownies then and after school.

We do need to prepare a form for the students to take to teachers any time they need - note, NEED, not want - time off other classes. It will have to be signed by one of us and then by the teacher concerned and if the answer is no, it's no. We can't afford to get on our colleagues' wrong side; this is too important. That's what I have learned from this.

I went home, cooked dinner, had a shower and slumped into bed.

Greenpeace truffles!

2011-11-11T17:30:00.001-08:00

This year, as for the last two, my students are doing a community activity for their homeroom subject, Pathways. It started two years ago when Amanda, the other Year 8 homeroom teacher, and I returned from term 3 break with the same idea: let's do some fundraising and packing and donation gathering for the victims of the Samoan tsunami. So we joined forces. It was so very successful that last year we did it again. Amanda was gone, but I'm now working with Jasna.The students had been given the task, first, of researching a charity and presenting it to the rest of Year 8, arguing why we should support that particular charity. Last year they voted to support UNICEF. This year's choice was Greenpeace.

The activity has been so very successful that one of our other campuses is taking it up - much more practical than working from books. The kids love doing it and learn an amazing amount, from civics to running a mini-business! And they can do it whether they're academic kids needing a challenge or non-academic kids who like the warm feeling of having done something that will help someone else. They can shine in this task as in very little else at school.

Its success has also led to Year 9 teachers giving their students - our former students! - the task they performed so well last year. Which means that suddenly Year 8 is having to compete with Year 9 for whatever dollars the other students have available. Well, we're working around it, timetabling it as best we can, and making the students choose activities that will work, no matter how many others are selling cupcakes or running a dogdeball game or a lolly jar count.

Yesterday a group of girls from my 8B made chocolate truffles. I had the original idea and it turned out that one of them had made truffles before, from the same basic recipe as I found on-line. No point in making expensive ganache-based sweets when you want to buy cheap ingredients and sell to other students. I made some as a test run last weekend, it worked nicely and I gave the young truffle-making expert the leftovers. But they had to make more than one batch, so they went to the supermaket and bought, between them, $33.00 worth of ingredients! And they'd advertised them at $1.00 a bag of five.
Urk. "Girls," I said,"you're going to have to sell 33 bags of truffles even to get your money back. The profit will be very small." But they sold the lot in five minutes, as I'd known they would, with demand for more, and their profit was a little more than I had expected because they had sold some individual sweets. And they do have some leftover ingredients, which would make it cheaper next time.

I told them they didn't have to do it again and Pepa, the truffle expert, said, "You mean we can't do this again?" :-)

I assured her they could if they wished. So they're going to do some more a week from now and good on them!

I am actually learning as much as my students, and hopefully we can do it again next year and I will have one sure-fire money-spinner, but I'll find a way they don't have to spend $$ of their own money to do the task.

Next week's food delight is brownies, made by a boy who does them regularly at home and assures me they're quick and easy and won't take all morning as last year's cookies did. He and his group will be baking them in the foods room first thing in the morning.

Stand by for more news!

Writing A Book On Crime

2011-11-05T15:05:00.000-07:00

Here it is - my sixth post as Writer In Residence on Insideadog! Go on, visit the web site - you know you want to... And comment!

The best cover I ever had!

When I was commissioned to write Crime Time: Australians behaving badly for Ford Street Publishing my brief was to do a volume of “Fifty Infamous Australians” to go with Meredith Costain’s Fifty Famous Australians. (“Infamous” means evil, not very famous.)

It was not, repeat, not, going to be a book for homework It was for entertainment. Mind you, when our Legal Studies students were looking for specific crimes, my book came in handy!

.As well as the fifty main stories, there had to be around the same number, or more, of “Did You Know?” boxes. Plenty to choose from; we’ve had crime here for centuries, since the ship Batavia was wrecked off the coast of WA in 1629, long before the First Fleet arrived from England in 1788. While the captain went for help in a boat, several of the crew mutinied and killed passengers. There were huge battles going on between mutineers and loyal crew when the captain returned. For the record, there’s plenty of fiction about it, from Gary Crew’s horror novel Strange Objects to Kirsty Eagar’s fabulous Saltwater Vampires, in which the mutineers did it to become vampires and are still around.

I went for some silly crimes to break up the horrible serial killer ones – like the Russian librarian who rescued her boyfriend from Silverwater prison by helicopter and was identified because of an overdue library video.Then there was the couple who robbed a restaurant in the Dandenongs and escaped with a bag of stale bread rolls – on April Fools’ Day!

While researching Caroline Grills, a dear old granny who poisoned people with her cakes and pikelets and was sentenced to life in prison, I travelled to Northern Territory, where I met an elderly couple in a pub. I mentioned what I was working on and the wife said, “Oh, I met her when I was working in Long Bay jail as a nurse. Such a sweet woman!”

You couldn’t buy that kind of research help!

Looking for an angle to write about career criminal Tony Mokbel, who escaped the country while on bail and was caught in Greece, I went out for coffee one day and opened the newspaper to see a double page spread about that escape, along with all the silliness it involved. There was my angle. I called the chapter “The Adventures of Tony Mokbel” and it finished the book.

I keep coming across terrific newspaper crime stories and thinking, “Oh, I wish I’d had that for Crime Time!” Still – there are plenty more stories out there for me to tell.

Shameless self-promotion - Writer In Residence in the Doghouse!

2011-10-30T22:59:00.000-07:00

For the next month, I will be taking up residence on the CYL's web site, Insideadog, as this month's Writer In Residence. I'm thrilled to bits and looking forward to it. I've been attending Booktalkers for quite a few years now, so the Centre for Youth Literature has come to mean a lot to me. It has been the place where I've spent a lot of wonderful evenings, caught up with teacher-librarian friends and met/discovered writers - and the great thing is, it all counts as PD for work purposes! Yay!

Now, at last, I'm being recognised as a writer myself, many thanks to Adele Walsh, who, in her earlier incarnation as the blogger at Persnickety Snark, gave my book Crime Time such a fabulous review.

I might not have time to do as many posts here while I'm over at "the Doghouse", but please do follow me over there - join, even! Insideadog is a great web site for anyone interested in children's and YA books - students, teachers and just plain booklovers - and it has become a lot better over the last couple of years.

See you all there!

Attending a Sunday Book Launch!

2011-10-23T00:52:00.000-07:00

I got an email from Dot Tonkin at Random House, in my capacity as a librarian rather than as a Random House writer, letting me know they were doing a launch at the State Library for a new series by John Flanagan, of Ranger's Apprentice fame. The new series, Brotherband, is set in the same universe, but in the country of Skandia, more-or-less Scandinavia. This universe is more or less mediaeval Europe with extras added, such as the fact that there's coffee and turkey and showers in the castle (cold ones, but it's implied there may be warm ones). Well, I couldn't complain; I did the same thing in my own novel. Not with the coffee and other anachronisms, but with imported gods and a religion that was cobbled together. Like John Flanagan, I said, "It's my universe and I can have what I want in it, so there!"

Anyway, as our students enjoy the Ranger's Apprentice series, I let them know about the launch and I decided to go myself. I confess I hadn't read the series - there's so much to read, especially with review books, that I just hadn't got around to it. So I took home the first novel in the series, The Ruins of Gorlan, which I found very readable and finished between yesterday morning and today (it wouldn't have taken me that long, but I spent most of yesterday with family and at the theatre).

I arrived about 1.45 p.m., said hi to the State Library staff and bought a copy of the new novel from the Reading's booksellers in the foyer. There were a lot of children there and they thoroughly enjoyed his entertaining style, as he told them about his writing and how he sold his first book after a lot of rejections and gleefully imagined what had happened at those publishing companies that had rejected J.K. Rowling after she became a hit. He described his way of careful planning before beginning any book (and good luck to him, but if I waited till the whole thing was planned out I'd never write anything. I did do some basic planning for Wolfborn, but never more than a chapter ahead. Each to their own).

The children asked a lot of questions. I'd have liked to know how he does his research, but it seemed only courteous to let the kids ask all the questions. One little boy in my row put up his hand several times and didn't get the mike, so I can only hope he had the chance to ask in the autograph queue.

I joined the line afterwards, with my copy of Brotherband #1 and the school's copy of Ruins of Gorlan and had a chat with a Year 12 girl and her Mum. Dot introduced me to him as a Random House writer and let me have some bookmarks to take back to the library. I told her how much our students had enjoyed Marianne De Pierres' visit and that it was in the school magazine and she said she'd be in touch about some possible more visits next year.

Just before I left, I had a chat with Paula Kelly, the State Library head honcho, who reminded me that Booktalkers in on Tuesday night. I said I'd be there.

I'm sixty pages into the new book, very readable so far, and will be reviewing it soonish; Dot said she'd send me a review copy so that I can have a copy for the library. Young Ali, the current reader of this universe, will be pleased.

Stand by.

Sample Chapter From Wolfborn by Sue Bursztynski

2011-10-20T03:55:00.000-07:00

(First published on The Great Raven, my other blog)

Here's a sample chapter from my novel Wolfborn. I meant to put it up some time ago, but haven't had the chance, although I've emailed out some PDF versions on request. Thanks to Random House for allowing me to put it up on my blog as a promotion. Please note, this was a simple copy and paste from a PDF file which can't be reproduced properly on a regular blog site like this one, so I've just removed all the page numbers and copyright statements except the final one. If you want something that looks more like the book version, let me know and I'll email it to you. Meanwhile - enjoy, and if you want to read more, go out and buy one in the shops or order the ePub version on-line. If you're outside Australia and want hard copy, you can order it from Fishpond. The postage isn't cheap for one, but if you order, say, three Aussie books, the postage works out a lot cheaper.

• prologue •

They executed a werewolf in one of my father’s

inland villages the week I left. There was no question about his guilt; he’d been

taken, in wolf shape, among the flocks, and put in a cage till morning, together with the clothes he’d left hidden in a hollow tree. Nobody saw him change back, but he was found fully clothed in the cage next day, wild-eyed, howling in agony and shaking the bars.

I suppose he could have stayed in his wolf shape, but the villagers knew who he was. It was important to be sure before they did anything; they knew my father would insist on proof, and his dead body alone would not give that proof. Witnesses were needed as well.

It wasn’t illegal to be a werewolf in our region, though it was not much liked, but this one had been destroying the flocks the villagers lived on, and a little girl had been found with her throat torn out. As lord, Father was forced to condemn Pierre – a boy not much older than myself – but he didn’t like it. Neither of us could look into those haunted eyes.

‘I feel sorry for the wretch, Etienne,’ he told me as we rode away, leaving some soldiers to do the dirty work of the execution and the village priest to bless it. ‘He can’t help himself; he was born that way.’

‘Father?’ I asked hesitantly. ‘I heard there’s a race of shape-changers.’

My father gave a sharp bark of laughter. ‘Yes, I’ve heard that too. Perhaps, but I think it’s legend. There are tales of robber barons who signed pacts with the Dark One centuries ago, to make them invincible in their conquests, and their descendants would have the curse; perhaps that’s the origin of that tale. In this case, I suppose someone made a pact far more recently, probably Pierre’s father. He was a wander- ing mercenary who came and went. Many of them are werewolves; it’s useful in their profession. The lords who hire them value their strength and fero- city and they make excellent spies and scouts. They are paid almost double the fee of a normal soldier. Unfortunately, their offspring are often born with the hairy curse – and, as it doesn’t show up till they reach manhood or womanhood, it takes a while for them to be caught. If Pierre’s father had taken him along, he might be learning the soldier’s trade now and be honoured for his abilities. Instead . . .’ He sighed and shrugged. ‘It’s a harsh world, Etienne.’

I was to remember the incident later.

• chapter one •

I hadn’t wanted to go to Lucanne for my training. I didn’t see the point. I had already learned plenty from my father and it was his holding where I would be lord one day. I knew in my heart that I wasn’t going to be a famous warrior. Other things were more important to me.

‘It’s not about being a famous warrior,’ my father had said firmly. ‘It’s about doing your duty as lord to your people. You’re my only son. The kingdom has only you to do what must be done here. I hold these lands of Lord Geraint, and he is the best man to finish your education. And once a year, when you’re Lord of Jervaux, you’ll have to do your duty to the King. These are not the peaceful times when the Rom folk protected us. You’re military caste, lad. Live with it.’

And I was living with it. But I was living with something else, too. Something I hadn’t discussed with my father, something I feared would come out while I was far from my family’s protection. Even if it didn’t, and I returned to marry some neighbour’s daughter, what if it happened afterwards? Happened to my children, if not me?

When I was eight, I got into a fight with the stew- ard’s son and bit him. After we’d both been punished, my mother took me aside.

‘Etienne, you mustn’t ever do that again. The time might come when someone will remember and hold it against you.’

‘Gilbert will hold it against me,’ I’d said, rather proudly to be honest.

‘Yes, he will, but that’s not why.’ She had sent her women to work in the stillroom, and we were alone. Now she picked up her shuttle and continued with her weaving. ‘Listen, Etienne, I come from Lafranc. Your father and I were betrothed at an early age, as our families wished. But there were . . . things . . . my parents never told his parents about our ancestors. It might have led to a cancellation of the marriage contract. And you must never tell your father. He’ll worry and it’s likely that it will never matter. My great-grandfather’s brother was . . . hairy. Very hairy. He disappeared regularly and then . . . he never returned. I think I know why, though I can’t be sure. It happens in the best of families. But in Lafranc, what he was might have led to his death, even if he never did anything wrong. If it happens to you . . . well, we mustn’t give anyone any excuses, do you understand?’

I didn’t understand at the time, though I promised her what she wanted. Later, I heard from my tutor about the race of shape-changers.

Then I panicked.

•

Armand, the head page at Lucanne, took me tothe kitchen and introduced me to the staff. I would be getting to know them well enough in my duties. An older woman named Lise ran the kitchens effi- ciently, as she had to in a place with so many mouths to feed.

We ate leftover cold meat with bread and sipped cups of ale in a corner of the room, talking while work continued around us.

Armand told me about his home.

‘We only have one manor, near the mountains south of here,’ he said. ‘My sisters won’t have much in the way of dowries. Maybe when I earn my spurs and go home I can persuade my father to let me travel to Lafranc for some bigger mares and a stallion. All we have at home are ponies and you can’t ride those in armour. Well, I can’t!’ He gestured at himself and I nodded. Armand was a tall boy. ‘In Lafranc they have the descendants of Rom cavalry horses. Maybe if my family can breed some, we can earn the money for my sisters’ dowries and I can pay for some real armour . . . What about you?’

‘I’m from the coast,’ I said. ‘Our castle is one of a line protecting the country from invaders, but I don’t remember anything except Ibernian pirates; they turn up every summer and we throw them back. Still, you never know. My parents remember when we had real invaders, Saesneg like the ones who invaded the Djarnish Isles centuries ago. Jervaux is a fishing town. I’m here to finish my education, not start it . . . I suppose my sisters will have dowries enough from our other manors. We have four, one of them not far from here, which my father holds of Lord Geraint. I haven’t seen it in years, though.’

‘And what do you want to do when your education is over?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘It doesn’t matter what I want. I’ll return and protect the fishermen and do my military duties when called upon and marry – probably a girl from one of the near estates, but I don’t know who she will be yet. Perhaps I’ll write down some of the legends of the Jervaux coast.’

He stared. ‘You can write? And you aren’t going to be a priest?’

I laughed. ‘Everyone in my family writes and reads, my mother insisted on it. She even taught my father how. A priest? No, thank you! Anyway, it isn’t an option. I’m an only son. We’re in Notzrian territory and their priests don’t marry.’

I wondered if I could ask him about this place without it sounding like gossip. I was going to be here for the next few years; I wanted to know. Gilles, the Lucanne steward who had brought me here from home, had spoken nonstop, but hadn’t said much I was interested in hearing.

‘Tell me about this place,’ I asked, ‘please? We met Lord Geraint on the road here. He was on his way to fight and Gilles went after him as soon as he had left me here.’

Lord Geraint was quite old, I had noticed – at least thirty – but powerfully muscled under his old- fashioned armour, and he wore his long black hair braided for convenience. He was also incredibly hairy. I had noticed that first.

Armand smiled. ‘Oh, Lord Geraint is good to work for, a good master and teacher. And did you notice his horse? It’s a white mare from Beran, a real beauty. If I could get a few like her for our herds . . .’

‘Most knights only want to ride stallions. What was the fight about?’

He shuddered. ‘Nasty. There’s this baron called Dupré who treats his peasants like beasts. The King gave some of Dupré’s lands to Lord Geraint, but he won’t accept that. We got a message saying he and his mercenaries were burning out the villages on his former lands. That’s why this place is so quiet today.’

‘Mercenaries?’ I asked. ‘What about his levies?’

‘Didn’t you hear what I said about the way he treats his peasants? They’d be useless to him. And nobody holds lands of him if they can avoid it.’

‘Oh.’

‘Come, let’s go see our lady.’ ‘Thank you . . . It is quiet, isn’t it? Have all the men gone to the fight?’

He sighed. ‘They should have taken me along. I’m good enough, I know I am. Instead, here I am with the women and children!’

I had nothing to say to that. He was a big lad and would probably be starting as an armour-bearer soon

enough. It was understandable that he was eager to be with the men. I found a spot in the boys’ sleeping quarters for my clothes and bedding and fumbled my exhausted way from my dusty travelling clothes into something more presentable, washing the dust from my face and combing my tangled hair with my fingers. It had been a long day, but it wasn’t over yet.

We set out for Dame Eglantine’s solar. Here and there a tapestry hung on the wall, but more to keep out the cold than to decorate the place. This was a working castle; every part of it had a function. My own home was just as practical. With the Ibernians always raiding there was no choice. I felt a little less homesick.

•

Up some steps beyond the great hall, which was comfortably cluttered with the household war- riors’ living-spaces, lay Dame Eglantine’s solar. She had tried to make it fashionable. There was actually a glass window – a small one, of course – which must have cost a fortune to bring here. She sat prettily among her fosterlings, sewing something attractive but not especially useful; all the real work was being done by the girls and her two waiting-women. She was young – about nineteen, I guessed – recently married according to my father, golden-haired and pretty. Her hands were white, not roughened by work. She had a carefully cultivated air of help- lessness. I supposed it was expected of girls at the Lafrancan court, as she had been. Our lord Luiz was a warrior king and had to be, with the troubles at home and the constant danger of invasion, but those nobles with kin across the mountains in Lafranc sent their daughters to that court, where they could enjoy frivolities they couldn’t have at home. My own mother had gone for a short time, though she had never been affected by it.

My mother regularly got up before dawn to look after a household the size of six inns. If she wasn’t getting in the harvest, helping the steward with the accounts or making sure there was enough preserved food for the winter, she was weaving, working in her stillroom on medicines, or tending sick house- hold members or villagers. She was the second line of defence in war and had once, before my birth, successfully defended the castle against Saesneg raiders while Father was doing his annual military duties for the King.

If Eglantine was capable of any of that, she hid it well. Frankly, looking at her, I doubted it. My

homesickness began to return. What kind of place is this? I wondered.

There was a not-very-good musician playing as I entered, singing some sentimental love song; he sounded as if he’d rather be playing bloodthirsty sagas. Eglantine waved a white hand to bid him pause and looked over at me.

‘Who is this, Armand?’

‘Etienne de Jervaux, Madame. You asked to see him.’

‘Ah, yes. I forgot. It’s easy to forget here. One day is like another. Welcome, child. Come here.’

I went, irked by the ‘child’. I’d spent a long time at home, where I was needed, before coming here to finish my education. I was only a few years younger than her.

‘You’re rather old to be starting your fostering, aren’t you?’

‘My father needed me, Madame. I began my training with him.’

‘Ah. Let’s see, your father’s the Lord of Jervaux, on the coast . . . Your mother was at the Lafranc court with my mother some years ago.’ She sighed. ‘I was there too. One misses it. So much culture. The latest fashions . . . Does your mother keep up?’

‘I don’t think so, Madame,’ I said as politely as I could. I wondered how she could be worrying about fashions and culture while her husband was off fighting, maybe getting killed.

‘Well, we’ll look after you here,’ she assured me. Her girls giggled. She waved to the musician to go on.

‘Come on,’ Armand said kindly, ‘let’s rest for now. We’ll be busy later, when Sire Geraint comes back. He’ll bring the neighbours with him.’

We waited the rest of the day for the soldiers’ return, and most of the night. I was rousted out of my bed when they came in, as we had to help serve food and drink to the hungry, exhaus- ted fighters, while the wounded were attended. There was a kind of late supper, with the kitchen staff finding cold meats and bread from the day before.

I caught a glimpse of the enemy lord, who was brought in, chained, on his way to imprisonment in the cells below.

The Baron was a huge, hairy bear of a man, with a smell like a wild beast and muscles like rocks. His fur cloak was heavy enough – and smelly enough – to be armour in its own right. It would have been easy to mistake him for just another oaf if you hadn’t seen his eyes. I was unlucky enough to see his face as he turned it towards his captor; if the Netherworld was cold instead of hot, you would have seen it in those two chips of ice glaring at Geraint.

‘I am entitled to better treatment than this, de Lucanne! I demand my knightly entitlements.’

‘You forfeited your entitlements,’ Sire Geraint said flatly, ‘when you slaughtered helpless peasants. If you’d behaved like a knight, you wouldn’t have lost those villages in the first place. You can explain it all to His Grace next week.’ He gestured his men to take the Baron away. As far as he was concerned, that was the end of it.

I watched as the Baron went; Geraint had turned to his guests, but Dame Eglantine was staring at the prisoner like a bird at a snake. He glanced back at her, sensing her fear, and opened his mouth in a silent, mocking laugh.

Little bird, that look said, I’m going to eat you, bones and all. He turned away, leaving a chill like a snowy night behind, as if someone had opened the hall door; even his guards were clearly uncomfortable.

Eglantine cringed and huddled against her husband’s side; he took it for a display of affection and squeezed her hand, then spoke to two other warriors.

‘You’re welcome here, Sire Jean and Sire Balin. Without your help, we might not have taken this murderous scum.’

Eglantine gulped, but pulled herself together. I felt my first twinge of sympathy for her. ‘I welcome you here also, gentlemen. Anyone who helps my hus- band is always welcome in our hall. Please sit and eat . . .’

‘Well, he was devastating my lands too,’ Sire Jean said, sitting where indicated. He was a middle-aged man with a red beard and twinkling eyes. ‘A good thing my nephew was here, eh?’

Unlike the other men, Balin didn’t look like a warrior. He hadn’t had time to clean up, so he was soaked with sweat and his clothes were torn, but they had once been elegant. He was about twenty- two and smooth-skinned, with a cap of black hair and grey eyes in a clean-shaven face. He was certainly the kind who dressed fashionably.

‘For how long are you visiting?’ She waved me over to bring him the water-ewer and another boy the wine.

‘Permanently, Madame,’ Balin answered, ‘or at least until I can win some lands of my own. I’m a younger son, you see – very tiresome, but there it is. I didn’t fancy being a priest, so my uncle has offered me a post in his castle guard. I’m hoping to go to war in the Prince-Heir’s retinue next year; that should earn me some honours.’

They were looking at each other with interest. Sire Geraint smiled proudly at his wife, probably seeing Balin’s gaze as simple admiration of her beauty. I wonder if I’m only remembering this with hindsight? I suspect that on the night I was half-asleep, serving automatically, thinking of not much beyond return- ing to bed. I didn’t know these people; I couldn’t possibly have seen then what was going to happen.

During the meal, Dame Eglantine’s musician began to play his harp, already chanting something about the skirmish, improvised to an existing tune. Balin looked pained.

‘Forgive me, Madame . . . is this your household harper?’

‘Yes, he has been in this household for years,’ she sighed. ‘He only knows the old tunes.’

‘Would you permit me to play for the company? I know a few songs that are very popular at court just now.’

Her eyes shone. ‘Oh, please, do! Gaspard, lend Sire Balin your harp.’

But Balin waved it away. ‘I have something better.’ He snapped his fingers and a servant came forward with an instrument bag. ‘I never travel without it.’

He pulled out a pear-shaped box with a long neck and strings stretched lengthwise, and began tuning the instrument.

‘It’s from the east – called al oudh. It has a much more melodious sound than the harp. I got it in Beran, during the Holy Wars last year . . .’

‘You fought in the Holy Wars?’ she asked admir- ingly.

‘The lad went with his father,’ Sire Jean said with a chuckle. ‘I’ll wager there was more danger from flies than from Sarzins, eh, Balin?’

If looks could kill, Balin’s glare at his uncle would have stretched him flat.

‘It was hardly my fault that a peace treaty was signed two days after I arrived!’ Then he recovered himself and forced a laugh. ‘Well, perhaps I distin- guished myself enough today to be awarded some lands, hmm? And I must admit the Sarzins, when you aren’t fighting them, are fine musicians and poets. Here’s a song I learned there, my lady. I’ll try to translate it as best I can.’

He began to sing. If that song was an improvised translation, I’d eat my horse; he probably didn’t even know the original. His voice was pleasant enough, I suppose. From the expression on Eglantine’s face, she thought it a lot more than pleasant.

Of course it was a love song, something about the beloved, a shepherdess, being locked away in the king’s harem (he broke off to explain that the Sarzins had multiple wives) and the lover yearning for her outside. She went downstairs to look for him, even escaped into the city, but could not find him. It was not an appropriate piece for a single man to sing to a married woman, but it was probably every bit as popular at court as he’d said. My mother was always laughing about the stories she heard, about this new form of love that was all the rage, where the woman was always married and the beloved, a single knight (heaven help him if he dared to marry himself!), had to suffer all sorts of humiliations to fulfil her every whim.

‘It’s women’s revenge for being married off at twelve to fifty-year-old knights and becoming their property,’ she’d said more than once, smiling at Father, who was only a year or two older than her and had been betrothed to her when they were both infants.

Whatever it was, I thought it all very silly, but Eglantine lapped the song up. She gazed at Balin, chin propped on her knuckles, her blue eyes wide. Afterwards she said, ‘Oh, you must come, Sire Balin, and sing to us often! It’s such a pleasure to hear the new songs sung – and in such a voice! Don’t you think so, Geraint?’

She turned to her husband, who laughed and said, ‘Now, my dear, we mustn’t insult our poor Gaspard, who has been ignored this evening. Besides, you won’t be seeing much of any of us for a week or two. We’re going to take our prisoner to the King and tell him what has happened before he hears a differ- ent version by rumour. Gentlemen, will you stay for what’s left of the night?’

They agreed and bedding was brought to the hall for Sire Jean’s men – those who weren’t already in bed having their wounds treated. The two knights were offered a room above.

We went back to our beds and our interrupted sleep. Unable to settle immediately, I was staring through the gap in the hanging that separated us from the hall when, to my surprise, I saw Sire Geraint leaving, wrapped in a simple dark cloak. It was not totally black outside, so I recognised the outline of his head, with that distinctive braid hanging from it. For such a big man he was oddly silent, moving more like an animal than a human, not as if he was sneak- ing out but as if it was natural to him. One of the four favourite hounds that were allowed to sleep inside instead of in the kennels sniffed at him, tail wagging,

and made a tiny questioning noise: Can I come too? He put a gentle hand on her head, saying nothing, but she returned to her place and he continued on his way.

Exhausted after the long day, first travelling then being woken to serve the men when they returned, I thought no more of it and fell asleep.

Copyright © Sue Bursztynski, 2010. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Reflective Journal: Literature Circles

2011-10-09T16:05:00.000-07:00

Literature Circles has been an interesting journey for me and for my class. I can't say it has always been positive, but definitely something worth doing. As I write this, I'm waiting for my Literature Circles movie to save on to the library computer, allowing me to burn copies - one for the library, one for Cristina, our literacy coach (and we will miss her if the government really does go ahead and scrap this position in schools), one for our head honcho of Sunlit, out school's literacy program - and fellow Year 8 teacher, Janis - and one for the library.

There was plenty of fun and games along the way. As I have a previous post on the start of Lit Circles, I'll just talk about what happened later.

I have a first-rate class, with only a very small number of students who are a bit lazy. Cristina was very impressed with most of the groups. The one group with which we were having trouble was split up temporarily - two of the students were willing to work, so we let them get on with it and gave the others some questions about the book to answer, which they could use in a discussion later. That worked, but itwas getting late in the piece.

We had one student whose reading level was below that of the rest of the class, but she had good friends who were willing to work with her on the book of her choice. Unfortunately, she then went overseas for the last few weeks, leaving the others to complete the task, which they did well, and they enjoyed the book, but it's an experience she has not really had.

Another student had been absent for most of the year, being home schooled, and came back after we were well and truly into the task. I chose a book for him and he took it home to read and then fitted quite well into his group, so that was okay.

The main problem was missing students during class time. It wasn't just a case of illness, but of students who had other duties, such as student rep council meetings and others who had to do rostered duties for sub school. One day the SRC students were busy for a double period and the other group member, who was doing her rostered duties, came back after one period. You can't DO Literature Circles alone, so she offered to get on with another task they were working on.

Then there are sports excursions and illness and so on.

There were students reading way ahead of the rest of their groups. There were things we had agreed they would do while waiting, but that didn't always help. One group asked to please, please get their group mate to read something else to give them the chance to catch up! Luckily, he's a keen reader (the reason he was ahead in the first place) and as librarian I was able to find something to interest him.

And because I really couldn't let them take the books home, for fear they would forget to bring them in or some would finish WAY before the others, there were some near the end who still hadn't read the whole book.

Still, we had our eight weeks on the task and we finished by filming various groups at work. Even the lazy group had a discussion, thanks to our cameraman, one of the two boys in the group who had been working. Lachlan insisted they discuss a chapter they had all read and filmed it. He panned around the library, which made a nice opening for the film and gave me a chance to put in the opening credits and some music from Jamendo, a web site that has some lovely creative commons music. A tune called "Sunset" by Celestial Aeon Project, was perfect for our needs. As he visited different groups, he started them off with questions. Cristina helped too, but I have to say I was terribly impressed with Lachlan, whom I told later he should seriously consider either teaching or film directing. I made sure he got a credit to himself on the film. A fourteen year old boy and he made a fabulous film!

Afterwards, the class had a look at the raw footage and had a giggle over it. You saw them starting off nervous, then forgetting they were being filmed and doing their discussions beautifully.

I forgot to credit myself as the editor, but never mind. I learned how to use iMovie. It's not perfect - I had a hard time working out how to do the end credits and then I found myself with a double lot - the fixed-up version and the original, but it was midnight and the rest was fine, so I left it. I removed the one that were of no use - such as a student snapping, "Go away, we're not ready!" - and re-ordered them so that each group's snippets were put together. I made sure that the Burn Bright group went last, because it ended neatly with "Well, that's the end of the discussion" and "Thank you" after a humorous exchange between Joe and Cristina about a quote he'd made. The credits listed all the books being discussed and the students in each discussion group, with thanks to Cristina and our volunteer, Hilary, who had been working her way around the groups and encouraging discussion. She wasn't there that day, but will get a copy to enjoy.

It has been a fascinating and satisfying experience.

Wolfborn Book Trailer Up On Youtube!

2011-10-03T14:57:00.000-07:00

I hadn't intended to go to Youtube for my student Kristen's book trailer. I put it up on Teachertube, just so she could send the link to the State Library for the Inkys Creative Reading competition, but the first effort I made had no sound and the second, changed to another format as advised, won't open - I keep getting an "access denied" message - on my own channel! I emailed the staff, but have had no reply so far.

So - I've given in and put it up on Youtube. There are a few typos there, but Kristen worked hard on it and I'm very proud of her. I hope she will do well in the competition - she deserves it!

How about wandering over to Youtube and taking a look? It's a great little trailer!

Wolfborn Trailer

My Video on Youtube

2011-09-29T19:16:00.000-07:00

Boy, did I have fun and games loading my first video on Youtube! I decided to read from To Kill A Mockingbird - that wonderful scene where Scout has her first day at school with this pretty young thing just starting out in teaching. I soon found that the two minutes allowed for a Banned Book Week Virtual Readout didn't give me much time to read that scene, so I cut it down to a little snippet which I recorded on Photo Booth. I then followed the instructions and proudly uploaded it as instructed on the Youtube upload page. Er ... yes. It stopped after 40 seconds of the two minutes and when I went to check out the video the synch was appalling. My voice was reading normal speed but the image was rushing along at about a million miles an hour. At this stage I haven't a clue how to delete it, but will do so when I can. Anyway, I then discovered that the .mov format doesn't work well with Youtube. The page suggested that I re-do it as a Quicktime file through iMovie. I did so - and found that I could export directly to Youtube. I followed the link and there I was, large as life and twice as ugly, reading from a banned/challenged book I adore. So here's the link to the complete one and once it's up on the dedicated Banned Books Week channel, you can watch it with all the others. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLfDP6Y7M9E&feature=youtube_gdata_player Have a look at it and a chuckle and then how about doing your own? Mary of Bookhounds tells me this could be an annual event. Wonderful!

Nigerian Scam emails

2011-09-24T23:57:00.000-07:00

Don't you love them? I actually collect them at one of my email addresses, with the intention of publishing them on a special blog, eventually, so everyone can have a laugh. You know - the ones that tell you that there's millions of dollars stashed away in a bank account because the owner was killed in a plane crash (although I've been enjoying a couple from daughters of former dictators/kings/whatever) and they are desperate to get it out of the country and can they have your details and they will let you in on it for anything from 30% to 50% of the takings? And the spelling of this supposed bank director is always atrocious, of course.I've never been able to work out how anyone could be taken in by this rubbish. I mean, they say you can't fool an honest person and certainly, anyone who thinks they're going to get lots of free cash for perpetrating a scam overseas is not very honest, but also, why would they think that this email has been sent to them personally by a total stranger instead of to millions of people?Phishing is worse. It's easy to be fooled into thinking your bank is asking you for information unless, a. you know that banks just don't do that by email or, b. you get an official-looking email from the ANZ bank when you don't actually HAVE an account with the ANZ.And then there are the supposed emails from, say Yahoo, threatening to cut off your account if you don't reply within 24 hours. I always say, "Go ahead, make my day", but I bet there are plenty who don't. If it's from Yahoo or Hotmail and my account is Yahoo or Hotmail, why is it in the spam folder anyway? But again, it's easy to be fooled here.No, I just love the Nigerian scam ones, they're my all-time favourite and I only just got my first one in Gmail, right under the fake Rolex ads, the penis enlargers and the ones about Russian women who are desperate to make your acquaintance. I need the laugh.

Banned Books Week!

2011-09-24T23:46:00.000-07:00

I have on my computer desktop a folder labelled "Banned Books Week". Some time ago I thought I might try a class activity centred around it. I never got around to it but once more it is Banned Books Week, as I was reminded by taking a look at Mary's Bookhounds. My class is on term break, but I believe there are things you can do yourself. One of them is to read from a banned or frequently challenged book and upload it to a special Youtube channel. I'm going to have a go at this, perhaps tomorrow when I can haul out some of my favourite banned/frequently-challenged books - and heavens, it's amazing what's on the list! I'm spoiled for choice. So let's all do it! Fish out the web cam and the favourite banned book and start reading NOW! Or go to an Internet cafe and use their web cam? Let's show we support such books as Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Catcher In The Rye, To Kill A Mockingbird, Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights/The Golden Compass and hundreds of others! The Banned Books Week web site has links to the ALA web site which has lists of banned classics and frequently challenged books for the last ten years. The Banned Books Week web site has instructions for how to upload your virtual readout video. If anyone reading this does it, please get in touch and I'll put in a link both to your site and your virtual readout.Go on, don't be shy! I know a lot more people read this web site than comment, so how about coming out and making yourself known?I will announce when I've done my virtual readout and pop in a link.By the way, do go take a look at Bookhounds. It's an excellent blog and updates more often than I do.

More SheKilda

2011-09-18T02:21:00.000-07:00

First posted on The Great Raven:On October 8th I will be doing two panels at SheKilda, the second women's crime convention to be held in Melbourne. My co-panellists will be Goldie Alexander, who has written far more books than I have, for younger kids, and the wonderful Catherine Jinks, author of a wide variety of YA novels in a huge variety of genres - SF, fantasy, mystery, ghost stories, historical fiction (the fabulous Pagan series set during the Crusades) - you name it, if it's a YA genre she's probably written about it. The convention itself should be terrific, if it's anything like the last one. People would yell out, "SheKilda!" and others would respond "No she didn't!" There were some great guest speakers and there was even a panel on fan fiction, with Kerry Greenwood admitting she wrote the stuff just for herself, very steamy, while Jenny Pausacker was happy to admit that she, too, wrote fan fiction and published it on-line. Also steamy. ;-) I met a lot of people I knew, because SF and crime fandom overlap. The con committee are all SF fans as well as crime writers/readers. I remember the time we all went off to see the Star Trek movie in Gold Class and afterwards walked around Borders putting our books facing outwards. Well, the others did - and they had to do mine as well, I was too embarrassed! (Hides face while Cecilia Dart-Thornton finds a copy of Crime Time and faces it outwards...).Come along if you can. It will be a great weekend. Check it out on the web site - SheKilda Again - and there's a single day pass if that's all you want to attend. The program is up so you can decide what you want to see.Come and hear me? :-)

9/11 - I remember

2011-09-10T17:13:00.001-07:00

I posted this and saw that it's still September 10 on the side of the world where Blogger is located, but here in Australia it's September 11.

As it's the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I thought I'd just reminisce a little. I was working at the senior campus of my current school at the time. The students were asked not to have a go at their Muslim classmates, of whom we have plenty at Sunshine College. None of them did, although one young Muslim student was laughing his head off and celebrating - only one, but he was enough for me. He had a lot of respect and liking for me, knowing that whatever my background, I was not his enemy. I had told him that if I could leave the Middle East war at home, so could he. I let him know that his behaviour was unacceptable - and so did the Principal, when she heard.

We had a student whose brother was living in the US and working in the World Trade Center, but because there were so many phone calls being made, her family had to wait all night to find out what had happened to him. In the end, he was fine - he had apparently been late for work that day because he was sleeping off a hangover! That was one lucky hangover.

There were, as I recall, a lot of people writing letters to the newspaper saying, "Oh, well, I don't condone it, but we have to understand why it happens."

Sorry. As far as I'm concerned, to say that is to condone it. Besides, the young men who committed that massacre - let's call it what it was - were not poor refugees, they were from wealthy families. What's to understand?

Religion - all religion - has a lot to answer for. And I say this as someone who quite likes my own religion.

Welcome, Paul!

2011-09-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

Hi Paul,

Welcome to my first blog! It's my general blog, though - I tend to put stuff here that's been on Livejournal (or vice versa!). The blog on which I put most of my literary stuff is The Great Raven, which has built up over the years into a fair review blog for YA and spec fic books.

But hang around here as well; I will shortly be posting my thoughts on how the Literature Circles worked out. On Friday we filmed some of the kids having discussions - well, one of my students did, anyway; he was more familiar with the camera than I am and asked questions of each group to get discussion started, very competently.

Census Night is coming

2011-07-29T23:54:00.000-07:00

My census form has just been delivered and I've taken a browse through it. I was with my mother earlier in the day when her form was delivered and the gentleman assured me it was okay to do it before next Tuesday, which is the official census night, as long as you can be sure who will be with you in the house. That's good because it means my sister and I can do it for her tomorrow night.

It would be nice if they could explain why the form is the way it is. I assume some of the details are so they can know what to build where and which communities need help in what.

Thing is - what do they mean by "ancestry"? How far back are we talking here? A century? Last year? What would I write anyway? I'm not Polish, despite my name. My ancestors lived in Poland but came from elsewhere and weren't treated as Poles anyway. What help is it to the government to know that my great grandparents lived in Poland? Maybe I should put "Khazars" which is quite likely! :-). You know - Arthur Koestler's "thirteenth tribe" who were the ancestors of lot of Poland's Jews - but Dad's family came from Spain in the fifteenth century...

Then there's the religion angle. I know it's not compulsory, but that isn't my issue. Why do they need to advertise seven brands of Christianity anyway? These leave no room for anyone else except Islam and Buddhism. The rest of us Hindus, Jews, even some other brands of Christianity have to go under "Other" along with the Jedi Knights and sun worshippers! I find that offensive, I admit.

At least they acknowledge unpaid household work. Thank heavens for small mercies.

HAUNTING VIOLET By Alyxandra Harvey. London:Bloomsbury, 2011

2011-07-23T03:35:00.000-07:00

Alyxandra Harvey is best known for her popular Drake Chronicles series, about the likeable family of vampires, the Drakes, with all those truly hot sons and an ass-kicking martial arts mother. They’re among the few vampire books I enjoy, mainly because they have a sense of humour and aren’t really about vampires biting people but about fights between various vampire clans, ranging from those who think humans are cattle to those who, like the Drakes, are happy to get their blood without harming anyone.

In Haunting Violet, Ms Harvey moves from present-day rural America to Victorian England, when séances were a regular part of middle-class entertainment and there was an entire spiritualist movement.

Violet Willoughby's mother is a phoney medium, making her living from convincing grieving families that she can communicate with the late Horace or Amelia. Violet has been helping out in the business since childhood, unhappy but knowing there isn’t a lot she can do about it. It’s a living –and her domineering mother is scary! While at a house party where her mother is expecting a triumphant performance, Violet is horrified to find that there really are ghosts – and she can see them. Even worse, the most persistent ghost is the murdered twin sister of one of the other guests. If Violet doesn’t find the murderer, the killer may strike again.

It’s either solve the mystery or end up an old woman with the carpet still dripping with the water in which the body was dumped - that's if she isn't murdered herself!

Despite the gloomy cover, there is plenty of the over-the-top humour that makes the Drake Chronicles books such fun to read. The image of Violet turning up at a society ball in her soggy, muddy underwear after fleeing the murderer is unforgettable. The class structure of the time as seen through Violet’s eyes is bizarre but funny. It's wise to set this in Victorian times, when it might be possible to get away with a murder of this kind. If it had happened in the present day, the forensics team and detectives would be all over the crime scene before coming to the conclusion that it was an accident - especially with the victim having bruises at throat and wrists.

Definitely recommended!

My first follower on this page!

2011-07-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

Welcome, Emily!

I was very surprised to find a follower on this, my general page, but I'm pleased to have you here.

I'm trying to update this page and put a little more on it than in the past, but I suspect you discovered it because of the book review. Actually, most of my reviews appear on http://suebursztynski.blogspot.com - The Great Raven - which is the web site I keep for YA fiction and such. This one is more Livejournalish. :-) So if you would like to take a stroll over there, you'll be made equally welcome.

Changing Yesterday By Sean McMullen. Melbourne: Ford Street Publishing 2011.

2011-07-15T23:26:00.000-07:00

In Before The Storm, Liore and Fox, two young cadets from a dystopian future travelled back in time to 1901 Melbourne, to prevent a terrorist group, the Lionhearts, from blowing up the first Australian Parliament. The disaster will start a century-long war which the British Empire loses, resulting in a militaristic society and six billion deaths.

The time travellers were helped by four local teenagers – siblings Daniel and Emily, artist Muriel and petty crook Barry. They succeeded in preventing the explosion, but as this book starts, the Lionhearts are trying again. It is clear that whatever happens, history is going to try mending itself.

The situation is not helped by some personal disasters. Muriel and Fox run off together to Paris, breaking Daniel’s heart, and Barry runs off with Liore’s advanced weapon, with plans to make money on it. When Daniel’s parents send him off to England and Barry must flee Australia one step ahead of both the murderous Lionhearts and an enraged Liore, the action starts all over again, this time moving out of Australia.

Changing Yesterday , like Before The Storm, is a deliciously entertaining romp with a steampunk flavour. Despite the seriousness of the situation – the world could come to an end, for heaven’s sake! - there’s plenty of humour here. Emily is replaced as a protagonist by a young woman from Ballarat, Madeline, who has a yearning to become a private detective and just might make it. Liore may be a spectacularly good warrior, but she has no idea how to relate to others. She badly needs a local ally and Madeline is perfect for the role. Characters need to learn some life lessons – Liore comes to regret having had affection cut out of her genetic make-up while Daniel needs to become stronger.

Sean McMullen is well known for his bestselling adult speculative fiction, but his last few YA novels suggest to me, at least, that this is a promising new direction for this author. Here’s hoping he will continue to write for teens!

I’m inserting here a guest post Sean did at From Hook to Book, Christine Maree Bell’s blog. It will give you a fascinating insight into the research he did for this novel.

First draft written!

2011-07-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

First published on Livejournal

I've done my first draft of "Call Him Ringo", my attempt at short historical fiction for an anthology. I spent two days in the State Library researching the Beatles visit to Melbourne, prices of groceries, what was on at the movies and the theatre at the time, what was happening in the world at the time. I knew I wouldn't use more than a small amount of what I'd found, but the human interest stories in the Sun (now the Herald Sun) were far better for my needs than the rather dry articles in the Age, a paper I much prefer to read in the present day. If it hadn't been term holidays I would have had to go in after a long day at work and leave the writing for the weekend. back to work next week, so I'd better get on with the other stories I have in mind, while I can. "Call Him Ringo" is going to sit there for a while, percolating, till I can look at it again and decide how much of a rewrite it needs before I submit it. I really hope it does sell, because there's not much call for short historical fiction for teens these days. Perhaps I can extend it to a novel, later.

By the way - movies at cinemas in Melbourne in June 1964 were "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Cleopatra", among others. "Camelot" was happening at Her Majesty's in Melbourne and "Carousel" at the Princess. You could buy three tins of salmon for 1/6 at SSW (fifteen cents) and if you spent more than thirty shillings at Spotless Dry Cleaning (very hard, by the way! The cost of every service they offered was a lot cheaper than that) you got a free Beatles beaker, suitable for hot drinks.

Bob Dylan had a new album out - it was reviewed in the Sun - and was fairly new himself.

Women in Victoria weren't allowed to go on juries. Teachers had applied for equal pay for women and been knocked back.

The Vietnam War was looming on the horizon. There were a few Australian advisers there already and in November that year, Australia started to draft boys.

And on a page of the Sun that had the young woman who'd written an 812 page letter to the Beatles say she was starting another one, there was an article about an earthquake in Japan. Right next to her smiling photo. :-(

It made me feel more comfortable with the era, more able to write about it, but there was no need to show off as some historical writers do - "Hey, look how much research I did!"

And then there's oral history. It turns out my brother-in-law Gary was at the Southern Cross on the day the Beatles came out on the balcony - and because he couldn't get a ticket, he simply stood outside Festival Hall. He was a student teacher at the time. I wrote him into my story, as I've done before.

Fingers crossed it sells!

Literature Circles and Analysis

2011-07-05T19:46:00.000-07:00

First published on Livejournal

Who would ever have thought kids would be analysing my fiction? :-)

I have a year 8 class, a very good one for the most part - there are two or three lazy students who have recently started to realise that I have to write reports and guess what, I have nothing on which I can report, but most of them are very good students. Can't believe my luck this year and will enjoy it while I can. Next year i think it will be back to normal - some terrific kids, some average and a few horrible.

We have to do Literature Circles this year instead of the class novel and I'm the first one on our campus to try it. I have been struggling to figure out how it works, but yesterday Cristina, the school's expert on the subject came over and did my entire double period with them to get them started. I'd made a start on getting them to choose novels. They had to choose three in order of preference, something I hadn't understood when I first got the instructions, but now do - when you get one kid asking for a novel that has to be read by a group, it's just not possible. So they can have their second preference. Not all of them got their first choice, but it's interesting to note that they've more or less fallen into groups according to what they can handle, after I told them that they should choose not what their friends wanted but what they wanted. Some of them did end up in friendship groups, but they were the capable ones who could handle the harder novels.

One student was so keen to start, she went and got a copy from the local library! I told her that was up to her, but she'll end up having to read it again if she and the others are to discuss it a bit at a time. Fortunately, she hasn't read that far into it yet.

Before they could begin, they had to have a practice session using a short story they'd all read, with the lady who was being our guest speaker.

I chose my own story, "Mega-Wombats And Demon Ducks" from the Worlds Next Door anthology, not just because I am so familiar with it, obviously, but because it was at a reading level even the lowest-level readers could handle and it didn't come across as a simple story. I got them to read it in class a week ago, then brought the copies to the class.

Cristina took them through the various roles that Literature Circles have. Basically, it works as a discussion like a Book Club one, but with everyone having a job to do to contribute to it. She used bits from the story to get it started. My jaw dropped as I listened to my students getting into passionate discussions about various aspects of the story. And this was just the practice session! One girl turned to me and said, "Miss, can you please write another chapter of this so we can find out what happens ten years down the track?" She and another student were arguing about what might happen to the over-the-top computer program in the story, devised by a small computer genius. Nothing I could say would convince her that the little girl would be bored with it and have devised plenty more by then, as small children do - get bored, I mean. So I promised to write a sequel at some stage if they'd get on with discussing what Cristina had asked them to.

I am so, so glad that they didn't hate the story! :-)

Thing is, the kids are used to my being a writer. They know that Miss writes books and that they can borrow them from our library. One new teacher told me that she'd been startled to find my name on a book cover and the students had said casually, "Oh, yes, that's her, she writes books." So it's just a case of deciding if they like THIS one or not. And I think they did, and enjoyed the practice run.

Let's see if I can handle it without Cristina.

Reflective Blog: The Book Clubbers

2010-11-16T19:17:00.001-08:00

Okay, they're the same students. Book Club and Writers' Club - they overlap, although the Year 7 girls don't turn up to the latter. They did come on the Book Club excursion. Last week in Book Club, we had a lively argument, everyone talking at once, about which was better - Twilight or Harry Potter? Nobody wanted to wait for anyone else to finish and in the end I let them just do it as they pleased.

This week, Dylan read the latest instalment of his epic "Three Brothers" series to the gathered group. I asked Ryan for the file of his Japanese martial arts story, which he says he's finished, so I could print it out and we can discuss it next time, but we became a little distracted by various things. I will have to ask again.

We all stood at the computer, where Thando explained about www.inkpop.com, an on-line writers' community to which she belongs. We couldn't get a Word copy of the story - I think it's a web site security issue to protect the writers - so we printed it off and Thando read some of it to us. It's about a girl who lives on Venus and has been admiring an Earth boy from afar. Willis did discuss with her the scientific issues about Venus as a planet. I suggested she just get on with it, so the story is written, then go back and check out her research facts for the purposes of correction; I believe that one should write while ideas are flowing, THEN do the research and re-write - unless, of course, you're doing some reading and get the ideas from that. I think I vaguely recall Robert Silverberg saying at Aussiecon 3 that this is how he works, that he'd never get anything done if he stopped to do all the research first.

So no, I wasn't going to tell Thando that Venus might be a bit hostile to life. Not yet, anyway. I just suggested that she look it up later. The story so far is charming. I'd hate for that to stop.

I think it's well worth giving up one lunchbreak a week to be with these delightful students and give them space for their writing and reading.

Romeo and Juliet and 8A

2010-11-08T16:23:00.000-08:00

So, why do Shakespeare with a year 8 class? Why do it at all? The second, first. Because he's got something to say to everyone - or else why do they still make movies based on his plays - or inspired by them, even (and there are plenty of THOSE! I plan to try She's The Man when we've looked up background to Twelfth Night and what was Twelfth Night anyway?)? Why do we use his quotes and even his words without thinking about it, daily?

Why Year 8? Because that's what I've got, and there's no guarantee they'll ever do Shakespeare again, not a full play, though they might get a slightly more advanced intro next year. I chose Romeo and Juliet because of the Luhrmann movie and because the hero and heroine are just their age.

I started with numbers, as suggested by another teacher - they had to look up the connection between those numbers and Shakespeare, e.g. 37 plays, 1564, the year he was born, 18 - a famous sonnet. 2000 - words first heard in his plays. And so on. Then I got them to tell me one fact they'd learned that day - "Ooh, it's called 'The Scottish Play' because there's a curse on saying the name!" one of them squealed excitedly.

This is a difficult class. There are some great kids in it, but many who are very, very hard to engage. Luckily, the most difficult of them were not here today - and they're fresh first thing in the morning. I couldn't have done it on a Friday afternoon when, alas, I have them for a double period.

I decided to at least show them a few scenes of the Baz Luhrmann Romeo and Juliet because it's very fast-paced. Just the fight scene at the beginning, that's all. We began with a little pre-teaching. "So, has anyone ever had a girlfriend or boyfriend Mum and Dad don't like?"

"All the time," groaned one of the boys. When another asked why parents had had power to decide who you married, he added, "Still happens in my country."

I was in the middle of taking them through the basic storyline on-screen - thank heaven for Interactive Whiteboards, though it wouldn't show the photos I'd inserted - I had to show them separately, but that worked anyway. I'd got their attention by then. The Principal walked in, bearing electives forms for them to fill in and I worried that when he was gone I might not be able to get their attention again.

But no. They were interested. Even the group of girls who had had their noses in novels were watching.

After I'd done the Shakespeare bio and showed them pictures of the theatres,including the modern Globe, and gone through the very basic story outline, we put on the DVD. I couldn't believe who was watching! One student who has shown very little interest in anything this year was watching wide-eyed. I meant to turn it off just after the fight scene, then the scene where "Captain" Prince yells at the idiot Montague and Capulet parents, but they refused to let me stop. They watched as Romeo appeared, brooding on a girl who never actually appears in the play, then just a little more as Juliet made her first appearance with her mother and nurse. I mentioned that Lady C would have been only about 28 years old.

When I asked, "Who'd like to see some more another day?" most hands went up.

Not sure what I'll do when I have the full class. Two were doing bin duty and four were absent and some of those may show no interest at all, but stand by.

New Schools and phone booth libraries

2010-08-17T01:04:00.000-07:00

Today I got a link from my friend Edwina to a BBC article on a re-cycled phone booth in England, being used for an informal library. You put in any books you don't want any more and pick up something that interests you.

Sounds like what they have planned for Victorian state schools - those that are still lucky enough to have libraries at all. There was this article in the Age the other day which mentioned some school in Coburg (in Melbourne) that has scrapped its library altogether, though the Principal sneered that they had kept a few novels, for those kids who still wanted to read something that wasn't on-line. He declared that "the whole school is a library!" Translation: "Why spend money having a place for kids to go and read BOOKS, why pay for a teacher, for heavens' sake, to stamp books all day? They're all using the Internet now, aren't they?" Of course, the academic Kew High, which produces the best results, has refurbished its library and staffed it adequately. But who's interested in that?

A few days ago, my school's library staff had to go and see the so-called architects who are designing the new school. The place they had designed was half the size of my current library - just mine, mind you! It's a Commonwealth library, built in the days when the government hadn't started privatising everything. The new school will have four times the students, assuming we don't lose any.

But the architect lady told us we should be grateful to have a library at all. Seems that someone in the government is all for the idea of school without libraries - like the one in Coburg. And this half-sized monstrosity was supposed to be hosting the IT technicians, in an office that would jut into the main body of the library and make yet another blind spot. There was space for four bays of books - fewer than half of those in my library - and those were to be placed in front of a student lounge area - again a blind spot. No AV room, no library office "because everyone else has to make do with a staffroom, why not you?". They didn't even know we NEEDED a room to produce and process the library's AV resources. Andrew had to explain the difference between teacher-librarians, who have the responsibilities of other teachers plus library responsibilities and no time to leave the library to write reports, for example, and nowhere private to do their report-writing, because if you're in the library, you're on duty. We had to explain about what the AV person does and about valuable equipment.

They told us, with great pride, about their exciting new way of making the place big enough for parent-teacher interviews and information nights: just open the accordion doors on to a breezeway between buildings! How fabulously up-to-date, why didn't we think of exposing everyone to heat or cold?

No toilets, of course; said parents would have to find their way through the school buildings to the staff toilets.

There will be special areas between classrooms with class sets - nobody, presumably, responsible for these.

They said the new library would have no computers because it was the government's policy to have laptops used.

When I asked what the kids would use when they came to do homework at lunchtime or after school, there was no answer. Grudgingly, they agreed to put our computers on the tables.

No air conditioning for the school at all.

Don't get rid of the library, just work hard to make it irrelevant. Nice idea.

And this is the Labor government. What would the other side do, I wonder?

Hell, why bother to have a new school at all if it's going to be worse than the old one?

More reflection - and the Writers' Club

2010-08-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

Today we had a writers' club meeting - we alternate. Next week Book Club. It overlaps anyway, though the Year 7 girls didn't turn up today. I did get Ebru, who brought her manuscript - several handwritten pages in an exercise book. She told me about it, but I suggested she come to the library at lunchtime tomorrow and start typing.

Willis began typing his entry for "Write Away Victoria". It was well-written, but unfinished and he's not quite sure where he is going with it. I told him about my method of writing the end, if known, and going backwards. On computer, it's fine.

Thando and Paige brought their re-written stories, which I think are just about ready to send, give or take a little fixing up of punctuation. Thando's first attempt was not crash hot, but the new story is very good, much better, and I told her so. Paige's story was a sweet, gentle piece, a lot like the author.

Ryan was working on his martial arts fantasy with the help of a friend - he's written a lot since last time. Dylan was working on his novel. Selena was reading a bit of it.

I need to find someone from outside the school to do a proper writers' workshop - if I can't do a writers' festival, perhaps I can at least see if someone will give us the money for a workshop. I mean, I write, but in the end all I can do is facilitate what they're already doing.

Still - this thing is working better than I had dared to hope.

Reflective blog - um, whatever! Book Club! Sunshine College West Campus Library

2010-08-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

I've tried this before. It never worked. But this year, apart from the usual suspects, we have a strongly-bookloving bunch of Year 7 girls. They consider it cool to hang out in the library and talk to the library teacher about books and reading. One of them even agreed with me that Twilight wasn't particularly scary as vampire books went and asked for Dracula. I couldn't give it to her right away, because it was already out. Her friend had it! :-)

So as they were coming anyway, I revived the Book Club idea. I have around ten enthusiastic young readers who turn up on Wednesday to do book things. Mostly, so far, it's been browsing through new books and choosing from book displays, but this week we actually sat around and talked about books they - and I - had read and I let them know that Edwina Harvey, author of The Whale's Tale, was coming to town and would be speaking to them. Young Willis, who has already written me a superb essay for English - a Year 8 kid! - had read it and spoke enthusiastically about the book. Selena, his classmate, borrowed it. Willis was borrrowing the four-novel volume of Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy and I told the others about that. I promised Willis I would buy Volumes 5 and 6 if he wanted me to, though I personally hate the fifth novel and the sixth is by the author of Artemis Fowl (they had heard of him!).Thando of 8B wanted to tell the others about a fabulous book she had read called Ten Things I Hate About Me (someone else borrowed that on her recommendation). Her friend Paige wanted to know about Jane Eyre, which she had picked up from the display area. I felt able to explain the concept of Gothic romance - the young woman who goes as a governess (live-in schoolteacher, I explained)to a country home and falls in love with the boss, who has a Deep Dark Secret. I told them I had bought it because I wanted somewhere for Twilight readers to go when they had finished the series. Paige borrowed it. When I saw her yesterday she was quite enthusiastic so far.

I considered it a huge achievement last year when I got Jacinta to read and enjoy two books after she had refused to read even one, and it was - but we do have to look after the good readers too. They're the ones who actually turn up in the library, willingly.

Current plans are to take them to Teen Booktalkers next term, if I can get permission.

Sunshine College West Campus Book Club

2010-07-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

I've tried it before. Usually, it has fizzled out - and I do like to have the occasional full lunchbreak. This year, I have enough students really, really interested to make it worthwhile. Not to mention those who want a writers' club! Which means that on Tuesday I get no lunchbreak at all, because you can't have the two together.

But who could deny them? I gave out some information about a writing competition being run by the Melbourne Writers' Festival. You get a story starter written by a well-known children's novelist and use it to get started. One girl has already finished her entry! There are eleven in 7A alone. Two in my own class.

Today I invited my Book Club in. I meant to discuss the manuscript reading for Allen and Unwin (we have nine students interested - last term there were four, all back). I meant to talk about Children's Book Week. I meant to discuss what they were reading.

Well, in the end, they pounced on the new books and borrowed them - the ones they chose at the last meeting. And they did discuss those.

Not very organised, on my part, but hey, it was their club and they enjoyed themselves, so I guess it worked well.

What next, I wonder? I'm book shopping today, if I can get away on time.

Let's see, is that request "Nightworld" or Night-thingie or what?

And what next for the school? The plans for the new school incorporate a tiny library for four times the students and three book store rooms, the sort of thing they have done at primary schools to save money on staffing. There will, I suspect, be no book clubs at the new school, no one to instill a love of reading or look after those who do, no one to come up with any of the ideas I have. That's modern schooling for you.

I'll look after them while I can.

Nonsense Words and Group 2

2010-05-20T00:28:00.000-07:00

I have a great class for my school's literacy program, Sunlit. Five delightful, hard-working students, all but one of whom is an ESL student and the fifth of whom still has an accent.

One of the things we're required to do, after going through three lists in the textbook, is a so-called nonsense word list. The idea is that if they can pronounce it in a real word, they should be able to pronounce it even if they've never seen it before. And I can see the point, but my students are still learning English and it's hard enough for them to get the real words let alone being confused by nonsense words. I have my own ways of fixing their problems. When a list is too hard, when one word is confused with another not on the list, I prepare a special list that places the confused words side by side and gives them the chance to pronounce both. That works. Sometimes I make a game of the nonsense word idea by handing them a bag of consonants and one of vowels. They choose two consonants and a vowel, which are written on the board as they sound it out, forming - yes - a nonsense word. But it's THEIR nonsense word. This works.

However. Here I am with one of the official nonsense word lists and tomorrow will be our third day on this and some of them have gone and learned them off by heart, which is not the point of the exercise. Others are still adding a letter to the word - say, an r - that isn't in the word and I have to ask them, gently, just to read what's there. Remember - much of the time it's the accents that are the problem.

Today, the problem with most of them was the nonsense word "shass". They kept saying "shash" or "sash".

So we put down the nonsense word list for a while. I asked them to think of as many words as they could ending in "ss", which they did. Then we had some good old-fashioned tongue-twisters, which a couple of them said they did in language school. There is something hilarious about five students reciting "She sells sea shells by the sea shore" to which I added, "and sits on a see-saw she saw".

By the end of the period they were in tears of laughter - but they got "shass".

Let's hope it lasts till tomorrow, when I will get them to do the tongue-twister before the nonsense list.

The Right Book For The Right Person

2010-04-23T21:05:00.000-07:00

I deal with this every now and then: finding a book for a student who doesn't like reading. Last year, it was Jacinta and a Girlfriend Fiction Book. As it happens, she read two books, willingly, that term. Perhaps she hasn't read any more since then, but you never know. One of the books was my crime book, Crime Time.

After parent-teacher night this time, a year 10 girl came to see me. She told me, lip quivering, that she was under orders to read more. She had come to - shudder! - borrow a book.

I asked her, first, what she had last read and enjoyed, which I usually do to help me.

"I've never read a book in my life!" she wailed. "No, Miss, it's true! Well, except for primary school..."

And then she muttered that, actually, she had read something that morning, during her teacher's absence from Literacy class, that she wouldn't mind borrowing, if she had to read a book.

Guess what it was?

Crime Time: Australians behaving badly. :-)

Well, it has done very well in libraries. School libraries especially. I am very flattered to know that a girl who avoids reading is willing to read my book.

Pity bookshops didn't know how to display and promote it.

Reflective Journal again!

2010-04-23T20:55:00.000-07:00

The thing is, you almost never see the parents you need to see. I do recall last year when one mother did turn up and I supplied her with a box of tissues as she heard from her daughter's teachers what the problems were.

The other night, we had interim report parent-teacher interviews. This works as follows: all the class's teachers have to tick boxes to say whether or not the student is up to date, is doing everything they should be doing, is co-operative, etc. Any student who gets more than a certain number of "no" responses or "sometimes" is asked to come in. Most of my class got those messages. The ones who really needed to come in, didn't, as usual - which, I guess, is why the kids are the way they are.

On the other end, I had a visit from a student and parent who didn't have to come. The boy's father suggested that maybe he needed something more challenging - and I told him, to his surprise, that his son had had the chance to do this in a recent assignment that was designed to give all students an opportunity to work at their own level, but had chosen the easier options!

It should be interesting to see what happens next time i hand out an assignment.

SLAV Meeting March 17 2010

2010-03-23T18:18:00.000-07:00

I hadn't been to a SLAV regional meeting for some time, because they're usually held at Landmark in Essendon and it's simply not possible to get there in time from my current campus of Sunshine College. They happen about once a term and are usually worth attending.

However, this time the meeting was going to be at Overnewtyn College, a wealthy private school out in the middle of nowhere and the decision has been made for future meetings to happen at schools in the region. This is a good idea, because some time I can offer my own school.

Meanwhile, I had to get a lift and Penny Geoghan, head of the network, organised one for me with Marion Treiber, a lady who works at a deaf school in North Sunshine.

It's always good to catch up with other library staff, something I don't have much chance to do. It was interesting to hear everyone's stories and I learned that other schools are worse off than mine, including one private Catholic school where the library was run by a technician, who has no offsider and looks after 500 students. "Lunchtime? What's that?" she quipped. Schools are really, really going cheap these days, despite their loud declarations about the importance of literacy. Bring on the Federal investigation into school libraries!

Meanwhile, I made sure I was there because the topic of the meeting was supposed to be blogs. I was hoping that my questions would be answered, because last year I attended a conference where I learned about Global Teacher, that lets you do a library blog or a classroom blog. I'd had a go, but was having problems.

Unfortunately, the subject was not brought up till well into the meeting and then mainly to talk about the SLAV blog.I'm sure it will be useful and will certainly take a look, but that wasn't what I'd gone to the meeting to do. I must have misunderstood the theme advertised and am very glad that I didn't bring along one of our English staff as I'd planned to do.

I did ask if anyone was using Global Teacher and would like to talk about it, but it was late in the meeting and Mary Manning suggested that it might be best to take on the on-line course SLAV is offering. If I do, it won't be for the blogging section, because I already have one, I just want to find out why some aspects aren't working for me. I will email around and see if anyone can discuss it.

Latest Reflective Blog Entry: on the Ultranet in Victorian schools

2010-03-07T20:30:00.000-08:00

Recently, we had a PD session on the subject of the Ultranet, which is about to make its appearance in Victorian state schools. The enthusiastic presenter showed us all the fabulous things you could do with the new system. "And just think," he added. "If you give them homework where they have to look up something on the Net and they tell you they couldn't do it, you can check to see if they were on-line last night!"

At this point, somebody asked what happens if the kids don't have the Internet at home, as about half of ours don't (No more than 51 % of all our students have access to the Internet at home)? The presenter seemed taken aback and muttered that if there was enough will, somehow this problem could be gotten around.

Meanwhile, we should check out iGoogle, which we can show the kids. So, in a spirit of good will, I did. I had fun adding all sorts of useful widgets to my personal Google page. And that was fine on the staff computer. Just to test it, I tried it out on the student computers, which, alas, are set up to delete anything saved to the hard drive during a work session, because otherwise the kids bring games from home and we end up with viruses. This happened a lot last year.

I added a widget or two to the Google page, then re-booted and went back. Sorry. No widgets. So, until they can think of a way around it, no point in instructing students on the joys of iGoogle.

I am also using our Pathways classes - homeroom activities - to show the students some of the good stuff they actually CAN get out of the Internet and the library catalogue. This is mostly because I can't persuade most of the other staff to let me do likewise for their own classes. We subscribe to Echo, a newspaper index which does a whole lot of other stuff, but the only response I got from discussing it at meetings was "That's too hard for our kids." No doubt it's too hard for some of them, but that's why you do it a bit at a time. And they will need it at VCE level. Year 11 and 12 will involve a lot of newspaper research.

However, at least mine will leave Year 8 knowing some of it, if not all - there is only so much you can do at Year 8 level.

Last Friday I tried it. Some of them got it right away. Others wasted time and had to be kept in after school, if only for a few minutes. At least some of them know.

I will have to try it during a morning class some time.

Seeing Things Differently.SLAV Conference November 13 2009

2009-11-14T17:47:00.000-08:00

Also published on my Great Raven blog.

I have just been to this year's end-of-year library conference. I usually hold out for this one, because, unlike the earlier ones, it's book-related. Writers and artists speak about their work and some of the talks are directly related to libraries. It's not that I have anything against conferences that give you ideas for running the library. It's just that I have found most of them are aimed at the kind of school where they have more than one part-time teacher-librarian and part-time support staff and that have budgets I can only dream about. The last straw was when I attended a SLAV conference at which one of the guest speakers, who came from a Grammar School, stood on the podium and told us smugly about all the fabulous things they were doing at her school ... with dozens of staff and budgets in the 100,000-or-more range. And then expected us all to applaud her for doing writers and publishers out of their hard-earned money by scanning their work on to a school web site. As if the rich kids at her school couldn't afford about $12.95 for a copy, or the library couldn't buy some class sets of them! It was illegal, of course, but what point in getting up and accusing? I just stopped going to "those" conferences. That was years ago.

So I was looking forward to this one, which was held at the National Gallery of Victoria on St Kilda Rd.

Well, there were some very good presentations. I took notes on the use of Web 2 in libraries and on graphic novels in the curriculum. I did wonder if having to study them wouldn't spoil them for the kids, but I'm prepared to try it out. "Visual literacies" was the theme of this conference, which was natural for a conference held at the gallery. And the keynote address by Dr Mark Norman, marine biologist and children's non-fiction writer, was worth the price of the conference by itself. He was delightful. I could hardly wait to get down to the book stall to pick up some of his books which I knew would thoroughly engage our reluctant readers. He began by showing a picture of a vampire and a real-life fish with fangs and showed us, in the course of the talk, how truth really is more bizarre than fiction and that there are so many wonderful things in real life that you couldn't invent.I was sitting next to Sue Ann Barber, programmer for Aussiecon 4, and suggested she see if we could get him for the con's science stream. I am certainly going to get hold of some of his books for myself, before my new budget next year, to use in my own research.

The only trouble was: there was no book stall. No publishers showing off their stuff. No useful stuff for schools. No graphic novels of the kind that speakers were urging us to buy for our libraries. A library conference with no books, except those on the screen? It reminded me of the time, years ago, when a friend and I took her son to the Book Week Fair at the Arts Centre and the poor boy stopped and asked, "Where are the books?" The only books at that event were on the YABBA stall, on display, not for sale.

Now, I know I can't get at my budget for next year as yet, because the books are closed and there has been a death among the admin staff and no time to replace her, not to mention a business manager on leave. But I have never seen a book stall not swarming with customers, even in November. What happened? Did the gallery object, perhaps, because they have their own bookshop? But that wasn't connected with the sort of stuff normally sold. Did the booksellers simply not bother this time? I'm sure I will find out eventually, but right now I am puzzled and disappointed.

No writers as speakers, either, except for the delightful Dr Norman. I really look forward to this conference because of something that wasn't there this time. While I found the talk on Asian art enjoyable and the talk by a painting conservator fascinating, including his description of the research he had to do to get it right, they just weren't what I attended the conference for.

I assume they had to use the gallery's caterers too. There was no afternoon tea, as in the past, so we had both sessions before lunch,when we went to the Great Hall - a lovely place for lunch. And if you like dead animal on your plate, I'm sure the egg and bacon and chicken sandwiches and party pies and sausage rolls were fine. For those of us who prefer not to eat meat, there were only roast vegetable sandwiches, and while I am in a minority in this, I believe vegies belong on the side of the plate, not in bread. I ate them because there was nothing else except fruit on sticks, which I also ate. I was hungry when I left, though, and dinner with my family wasn't till 7.30 p.m. And no coffee urns when we arrived. When coffee was available at morning tea, you had to wait for a staff member to pour it for you.

Still, there was Dr Norman and there were some really useful suggestions about the use of Web 2 and graphic novels in the library and classroom (we are already buying lots of graphic novels, especially manga, though not teaching them).

I can only hope that next year, though, the event is held elsewhere and is more like what I look forward to.

Blogging with 8A

2009-07-16T18:38:00.000-07:00

This week, I started to set up my homeroom/English class with their own blogs. It seemed like a good way to get them started on a sort of on-line journal and let them see that there are other things than social networking sites!

It's still at the teething stage. I suppose I should have committed them to one choice of blog, but you have to have a Gmail account to access Blogger easily and besides, Livejournal offered "friends" which seemed a good way to ease them into a different kind of on-line presence, so for those of them who didn't want to bother opening a new email account, I offered Livejournal. I discussed the differences between the two, pointed out that they could post plenty of pictures on Blogger, but they could have "friends" on Livejournal and let them decide.

Some of them took to it with great enthusiasm, had fun coming up with names for their journals and actually succeeded in putting up posts. Others tried desperately to open their new accounts, but had trouble with the "are you a human?" check where you have to type in the nonsense words, because even when they got it right they were rejected. Then there were those who managed but said, "Okay, I'm in, now what?" and didn't like my suggestion of beginning with an introduction to themselves. There were a couple whose posts were written SMS-style and they insisted they wanted it that way.

There were those who spent so much time acquiring "friends" that they didn't get around to posting.

And then there were those who set up successfully the other day, but forgot their logins and passwords alike.

I had taken a list of URLs, but I am going to make each of them give me their log-in and password if they don't want to risk recording it in their school diaries, which have a tendency to get lost.

I took them to the library, where we only have 12 computers, so had to book the class set of Netbook computers to have enough for everyone. It sort of worked, but those cute little computers take time to get used to.

I need to think of a structured way to get this going, but I think they enjoyed it and once it's up and running, it can be a semi-regular thing. They can post at home or at lunchtime, they can post late in a period when they have finished other work.

Still, I'm exhausted!

Till next time...

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 2. TEACHING YOUR GRANDMOTHER TO SUCK EGGS: SCHOOLS, TEACHING AND THE GOVERNMENT.

2008-10-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

Recently, in Melbourne newspapers, we’ve been reading all sorts of stuff about how schools have been wasting too much time doing all that fancy-schmancy stuff and it’s time to get back to the basics! Or, rather, the Basics! You know, the three Rs that we’ve supposedly been neglecting all these years (perhaps in response to all those letters to the editor that begin “They oughta be teaching - fill in the blank- in the schools!” Not to mention editorials that think we “oughta” be teaching swimming, values, health, drug education, sex education, the list goes on and on, in the schools! The kind of stuff parents used to teach, but think their taxes ought to be paying for, these days). I’ve been working in the school system most of my adult life and can’t remember when nobody was teaching the basics (sorry, the Basics). The grammar books are a lot easier to follow and less forbidding than they used to be, but they’re still there and nowadays you can also go on-line and get other people’s ideas. I’ve had to. Suddenly, I have had to be responsible for 8B, in an area I haven’t covered in a long, long time. So I know. The simple fact is, most people can’t spell. I remember, in my second year out, having a student who was bright and articulate but couldn’t spell to save his life. Probably, these days, he’s using a spellchecker in his highly-paid job. Maybe there’s a spelling gene. I think I have one. Most people don’t. You can only do your best to compete with the advertising and the TV shows and the shop signs and the text messaging, all of which tell people that it's okay to use apostrophes other than to join two words or indicate possession - or not to use them at all, that it's fine to abbreviate words to "txt", even when it isn't costing you money.

But hey, the government knows best. At the Federal level, they’ve got the bright idea that they can grab kids who got high scores in uni, give them a five-week crash course and send them out to the schools to teach experienced teachers how to do it properly.

Then there are all these warm and fuzzy articles in the newspapers about this or that primary school where they’re teaching – wow! – local history. Or robotics. Well, duh. Guess what? We had local history at Flemington Secondary College back in the 1980s, when I was getting a full day’s time allowance to handle it. People from outside the school system were coming in to use our historical newspaper microfilms. And at Sunshine College, where I now work, we have local history units at Year 9. Sunshine is a very important place in the history of industrial relations. Some of our students are descended from the original Sunshine Harvester workers. We like them to know that they have plenty of which they can be proud. And yes, thanks to a very good teacher willing to give up his own time, we have robotics too, and students who wouldn’t normally hang around after school hours are going along. It’s going to expand.

So what’s new?

Victorian schools these days make a lot of fuss about literacy, but get rid of their teacher-librarians. Thing is, when Jeff Kennett came to power, apart from closing a lot of schools to save money (and make money in the case of Flemington SC, which he sold to the Victoria Racing Club next door), gave principals powers they’d always wanted. Among them was control of the purse strings. The trouble with that, which these principals probably never considered, was that controlling the budget means you have to make decisions you mightn't like. You need to fiddle with the funds to make them fit. You have to hope that the more expensive experienced teachers will leave so that you can replace them with kids fresh out of university who don’t have to be paid as much. Of course,you can always, as so many principals do, declare that you want "young and dynamic!" as if you have to be one to be the other. You have to decide that the first place to make cuts is the library which, let’s face it, is just a book room. Give everyone a key and get rid of those people who, after all, just stamp books! They don’t, of course, help design curriculum or teach research skills or fit kids to books or help instill a love of reading. Come on, now! We don’t need them. Not if it means paying out more money.

Or, if you MUST have someone in the library, get someone without library qualifications or teaching qualifications. Much cheaper! And you can make them work longer hours than teachers, even if nobody makes use of them.

We used to be able to apply for jobs at other schools, but with the global budget, once you reach a certain level, you can’t do that any more. Schools aren’t advertising for experienced teachers unless they need someone in a leadership position and then only grudgingly. So if you want to move, you have to take a pay cut and then, when you finally retire, your superannuation pension is lower because the calculations are done on your last two years, no matter how many years you’ve been paying your super contribution before that.

When the budget was centralised, people could be chosen or promoted on merit, not on how much they were going to cost. Schools were still making cuts in the library, but the minimum you had was one full-time teacher-librarian. Those were the days when you could concentrate on the basics instead of our current, overcrowded curriculum when we somehow still fit in the important stuff among all the things that parents don’t want to do any more.

So go on – teach us to suck eggs!

Reflective Journals, Circle Time and 8B

2008-10-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

Recently, the VIT (Victorian Institute of Teaching) decided to show they were doing something other than taking our compulsorily paid money every year and providing us with glossy, self-congratulatory newsletters, so now we have to start, effectively, keeping records for tax and we have to prove that we're doing PD, keeping log books and noting how much time we spend on each PD activity. The fact that we just do it without thinking about it, read stuff for our work, in my case review lots of YA books, read papers for use in class, check out useful web sites, attend conferences and Booktalkers at the State Library and generally exchange information counts for nothing unless we have it written down. We have to prove all these things at our annual reviews anyway, but without all the record-keeping.

It's likely to lead to people counting their hours, saying, "Well, that's VIT satisfied" and not bothering with more, but there you are.

One of the things they suggested is to keep a "reflective journal". Until now, we've had that as an option for our annual reviews, but been assured we don't have to show it to anybody. Which, by the way, doesn't stop meeting leaders from inviting us all to "share" ("Hallelujah, brother! Today I did Circle Time with 8B and one of the students who's normally a pain really enjoyed it!")

At the last meeting we had, I told people I keep a reflective blog and they're welcome to go on-line and look any time they like. My diary I don't share with anyone. I more or less do what "reflective journals" do orally, as does every teacher I know. But now they want it in writing.

So here it is. I did try Circle Time with 8B. They had seemed to enjoy the previous one, which was done with the school nurse, so I decided to have a go at it myself. The theme was "self-esteem", which is this term's Pathways unit (Pathways being a fancy name for "homeroom")and I began by saying something nice about every student in the class.We passed around a "speaker's tool". After that, we had a ball that was thrown around and you had to say something nice about the person who threw it to you. I'd like to say it was a huge success, but while some of them did what they were asked, many couldn't think of anything (this was mostly the more peaceful students, who will write anything you want and do you fabulous posters, but are just too shy to speak up in class) and others simply didn't get the rules about one person speaking at a time and banishing from the Circle anyone who interrupted or put down anyone else. I finished up the period but told them that we wouldn't be doing it again until I was happy with them. Since then, they have asked me, "Can we do Circle Time?" and I've said, firmly.

I think I might try it again, for the last few minutes of a period when they've been good and see if it works better. Meanwhile, I know that at least one student was made happy by my compliments, because she positively beamed when I said how hard she worked and that she did terrific posters. That has to count for something.

And self-esteem is very important. This is not a school with kids who have everything in life. A lot of them have very low self-esteem, especially the worst-behanved, who feel they have something to prove. They need to understand that everyone does something well, even if it's just making other people happy, or being honest about having done the wrong thing. Hey, I discovered that one student, who was having a struggle in class, does tae kwondo! I made sure to let him know how impressed I was.

Circle Time #2 - perhaps even today? Or maybe next week...

Marta Sisay saves the world

2008-08-17T02:02:00.000-07:00

This is an entry that I originally put on my classroom blog. For some reason, it hasn't registered on Google yet and Marta is a wonderful student. She wrote this piece about the day her class went tree-planting in Science Week. I've done minimal editing so you can get her voice. Enjoy!

Save our planet by planting trees

On Thursday 14th of August 2008 we went on excursion to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air by planting a tree with students and some teachers. We went by bus with Mr. Smythe and Mrs. King. When we got there we saw two women standing with the equipment that we were going to use, some of the equipment included water, gloves, shovel and a hammer. We started the day by the two women telling us why we were planting trees and what difference it will make, and then we were partnered and I had Madit as my partner. After that we started digging a hole to put the plant in and when we finished digging a hole we put the plant in the hole and we water it. At the end me and Madit we planted about 8 trees and then it was back to school and into work.

Boys and non-fiction

2008-08-11T02:38:00.000-07:00

I wrote this letter to the Age newspaper in response to an article by that wonderful children's writer Paul Jennings, which was published in the education section one Monday. My letter was published, although the next time I saw the article it had the same list of suggested books. And don't get me wrong, they were great books, but there seems to be some idea that if it isn't fiction, it isn't reading. Or, at best, they say with a rolling of eyes, "Oh, well, at LEAST it's reading..."

But non-fiction is still story-telling, as I've found out over the years as a writer of non-fiction for children. It's just telling a story that is true.

I've found that my students will usually shut up when I'm reading to them - but it has to be true. The weirder the better - it has to be so weird it could almost BE fiction ... but it's not. And they read the newspapers or watch the news on TV. Quite often, they'll say, "Oh, yeah, I heard about that on the news ... on Sixty Minutes... "

So, off to find something else "stranger than fiction, perhaps in MX or in the Age Odd Spot which I will follow up in Google News, to present to my class.

Meanwhile, here's the letter:

"I enjoyed Paul Jennings' article on encouraging boys to read. Mr Jennings is one of Australia's best writers for girls and boys alike. What he says is absolutely right, as far as it goes. Teachers can't do all the work. Parents need to be involved. And yet... your recommended reads for boys included not one non-fiction book.

Boys love non-fiction. As a librarian I have watched English teachers yell at boys to put down that book on soccer or cars which would have engaged them and get a novel - right now! As a teacher myself, I've seen a noisy, almost-all-boys class hush and listen when I read them some bizarre news story, followed up by, "Miss... is that true? Really?" I've been at children's literature panels where participants grumbled, "Oh, well, at least they're reading..." implying that they SHOULD have been reading fiction.

All right, I admit it: I write non-fiction. Two-thirds of the sales on my latest book have been through Book Club, where children can choose what they want. What does this suggest?

If you want boys to read, you have to offer them what they want to read."

St Kilda on Sunday

2008-08-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

This morning I had to get an MRI scan to work out why my left leg is still hurting a couple of months after some idiot in Hobart knocked me over while daydreaming as I crossed at a green light. After I'd had the snapshots of my knee taken (listening to soothing Rimsky-Korsakov and Chopin), I decided it was too late to go to the Continuum meeting in Carlton, so I took the 16 tram down to the beach.

I'd earned a break, after spending all of yesterday on my computer, fixing up and editing my manuscript for my new book, which I'm doing for Ford Street Publishing. No title so far, because neither of us really knows what to call it. Paul likes: Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly. I still have eight chapters and the "Did You Know...?" file to finish, plus some more "Did You Know...?" entries because Paul Collins, my publisher, keeps worrying we might have left someone out on the list of Australia's famous criminals and I keep finding amusing snippets, such as the story of the forger who was Australia's first artist and forged cash on the way to Australia to get extras for himself and his friends in chains,and the fact that our Prime Minister has convict ancestors. But it should mostly be over by the end of this week, because the typesetters are on holidays for a month and Paul wants to get it all out of the way before September (though I'll still have to do my index).

The Sunday craft market was in full swing. I saw the Dutch Blue Delft stall and asked the lady there - the artist - if she could bring me a full-sized teapot, which I can buy as part of my wedding gift to my sister's best friend's daughter. They're very beautiful and I have had one for many years, still used for Saturday morning breakfast cuppas.

The gentleman who makes Australian animal stuffed toys was next on my stop list - I have a wombat of his, plus I have bought other toys for children. One of his wombats went to England, for the daughter of my penpal, Joyce Cluett. Tricia is grown now - perhaps she has kept it for her own kids. I hope so. I have also had a recent e-mail from my American "honorary cousin", Walter Bursztynski, who has a second grandchild. I could perhaps send a wombat for the new child, Paige, and a possum puppet for young Chase, her brother - it's great, you put it on your hand and drape it over your arm and it looks as if you're cuddling a possum. He'd love it!

I did consider some painted glassware for Maia, the young woman who is marrying, but the man only had two of everything on the stall, his partner makes them as the mood hits her and two wine glasses are useless for the Shabat table. Pity.

Next were the wonderful wooden chopping boards, but Maia has one - I gave it to her for her engagement.

For myself I bought several pieces of handmade soap and two CDs of soothing harp music, from the lady who recorded it and gave me two for $10. A win-win situation - it would have cost her about $1.00 to burn and most folk selling their music charge a lot more. I look forward to playing them. I do like to support local artists.

Then down to the beach for a walk. Unfortunately, the newly-built walk has taken up a large chunk of what was beach. They have knocked down the small round shelter that has been at the start of the pier for years and had a Mirka Mora mosaic in it - I hope they at least preserved that somewhere! There is nowhere to sit along most of the walk and for the moment, at least, no designated bike path, so cyclists just zoom along wherever they please and walkers have to leap out of their way. I know we're supposed to be all for bikes because they're more environmentally friendly than cars, but I just CAN'T like the things when they're on the footpath. Elderly people have been known to get killed by some idiot cyclist who thinks they own the path.

I shouted myself lunch at the Stoke House restaurant on the beach - barramundi, quite nice, but not as good value for money as the barramundi at the Presse cafe near my home, which comes in a bigger piece and lots of salad/potatoes/whatever, and four dollars dearer.

I remember when the Stoke House was just a pleasant place for afternoon tea instead of a rather upmarket restaurant. You could get huge scones fresh from the oven, lots of cream and jam and a massive pot of tea or coffee. Or Sachertorte or bienenstich... Yum! No more, alas! But it is a nice, if expensive, restaurant.

I am writing this in a local Internet cafe on Sunday afternoon, before going home to clean the house and do some more editing ... Work never ends!

Another family photo

2008-02-29T15:44:00.000-08:00

Here's my grandmother, Zelda Altbaum, after whom I was named. She was the mother of my own Mum, Mila Bursztynski. Mum doesn't know when this photo was taken, though she says it was certainly before Zelda was married. I'm guessing it was about 1920, judging by the style of her coat and hat. She was, like most of my family, a victim of Herr Hitler, so I never met her. Mum says she was the firm parent you have to have while Grandad Altbaum was the one who undermined any punishment by taking her out for afternoon tea. :-) She also says that her mother got her into reading by asking her to read aloud from such books as War and Peace (Mum was in prinary school at the time.)

I would have liked to know her. This is the only picture we have of Zelda.

Technorati Claim

2007-12-21T18:20:00.001-08:00

Thought I'd done this ages ago, but here it is, so I can ping them when I update and find something on Google more up-to-date than my Thousand Paper Cranes post!

Technorati Profile

More family stuff

2007-09-24T17:47:00.000-07:00

This is Mum's gorgeous sister Hanna and her husband Mendel in 1936. It's truly sad to think I never knew most of my family because of the Holocaust. After it was over, on Mum's side ofthe family, there were only her and her sister Esther and a cousin or two whom I never met as they were in America. When people who will never suffer such loss question the Holocaust, my blood boils.

Anyway, here's Hanna - see what I mean about the film star looks?

On scanning family photos

2007-09-17T04:15:00.000-07:00

Dad gave me a pile of photos to scan a few days ago. Some I have seen before, others not. The pictures are of him, his friends and Mum's family. It's strange to see family members in the 1930s and 1940s, before I was born, some relatives I never met, such as my mother's beautiful older sister Hanna, with her husband Mendel, taken in 1936. She looked like a film star, the kind you could almost imagine being carried up the Empire State building by a giant ape ... or in Roman costume, falling in love with Fredric March. Dad was quite a hunk in his youth too, smouldering out at you from some of them, standing in his Israeli army uniform or outside the hostel where he worked...

I'm going to use this post as an experiment, to see if I can put one of the pics up on-line. Here's one of my gorgeous family members for the enjoyment of all.

Afternoon Tea at the Windsor

2007-07-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

Let's face it: I'd always wanted to find an excuse to have afternoon tea at the Windsor Hotel, one of Melbourne's historic hotels. Afternoon tea there is an institution. I'd never got around to it. So when, a few days ago,my Brisbane friend Natalie Prior e-mailed me that she was going to be in town to see her new publishers at Penguin, it seemed a great excuse. She was staying at the hotel anyway; she'd liked it when she was here as a guest at the Melbourne Writers' Festival and decided she'd indulge, despite the hotel's expensive room rates.

On the Sunday, I rang the hotel to inquire about times and prices and discussed it with an amiable young staff member with a pleasant Irish brogue. I booked us in for 3.30 and off I went, Monday afternoon - the first day of my term holidays.

Natalie and I sat in her room and chatted for about half an hour, interrupted only by a phone call from my sister, Mary, who wanted to know something about a payment for her latest article; it was more than she'd expected and she was wondering if there was a mistake somewhere. Natalie told her to take the sizable amount offered and run. Then we strolled downstairs to the hotel restaurant, where we were settled into a nice corner table. The waitress brought us coffee and a huge pile of sandwiches each, along with a cake stand of tiny, dainty cakes. It didn't look much, but by the time we were through with our afternoon tea, there were still half the cakes left.All those sandwiches, maybe? The coffee was a bottomless cup, as much as you wanted. The waitress also brought us each a glass of iced water.

Outside, it was cold and wet; inside, Natalie and I sat and yarned on about family, friends, work, movies, books and publishers - I last saw her a year ago, but it was as if we'd never parted.

Afterwards, when I was standing in a queue to pay for the tea - a set price per person - I was surprised to see several people who were paying extra because they'd ordered wine. I mean, honestly, why would anyone want to buy more stuff when there was plenty to eat and drink within the set meal?

Anyway, now I know how it works, I'm certainly going to do it again, whenever my next interstate or overseas friend is in town.

Mark's Wedding

2007-03-18T00:28:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I went to my nephew Mark's wedding. Mark and Bianca had been going together for several years. You wouldn't have imagined them together. He's six foot four in height, she's more like about four foot ten(This is not necessarily a problem. I'm five foot two and used to date a guy around Mark's height. You do have to lean a long way back to kiss, unless you're sitting down). He's gentle. She's a black belt in her martial art of choice. That said, she works for a vet and adores working with the animals. But their personalities meshed. And she had some great ideas for the wedding, such as getting a friend to make up about fifty squares of patchwork and sending them to family and friends to decorate. These squares were then made up into the chupah, the wedding canopy. And wasn't the finished product gorgeous! Mine was a unicorn (because that's my personaily) surrounded by Australian native flowers and Mark and Bianca's names and Hebrew wedding date. Embroidered, of course - that's what I'm good at. My parents contributed one of Dad's cartoons of themselves, Mum's contribution a heart with their names in it, between Mum and Dad's upraised hands. I traced the picture on and embroidered it in black thread. Mark said it was his favourite. The chupah will be an heirloom they will cherish.

Friends of Bianca's family lent their home for the event. I still have no idea how they got 270 people into a large, but not huge suburban back yard, and it wasn't even very crowded, not uncomfortably crowded, anyway. The food was home made, not catered, and it was terrific. Vegetarian, as Mark is a veggo, and it meant I could eat anything on the table. I usually go for vegetarian on plane flights in preference to kosher, which is rarely as nice.

My brother Maurice's mother-in-law, Carole, for whom a kosher meal was prepared, was very helpful in the lead-up to the wedding. She and I went halves on a pair of Shabbat candlesticks. I also went halves on a dinner set with my friend Bart.

The ceremony was beautiful. One of Mark's friends from his rock group sang the bride and groom under the canopy, and the rabbi was a "cool" one from my sister-in-law's workplace (Joanne works at Mount Scopus College). And Mark and Bianca were beaming, absolutely delighted with each other and with finally Doing It. The little girls - my grandnieces, Dezzy and Rachel, and my niece Amelia, made lovely flowergirls in their pretty floral gowns. I'm assuming someone explained to Amelia that it was okay to scatter flower petals on the ground. At her Uncle Robbie's wedding, she was scrabbling around, tidying them away during the ceremony! Mark said to me, dazed but thrilled, "Hey, I'm married!"

The speeches, later in the evening, included three songs - one from Bianca's Dad, one from my brother Maurice and one from Mark himself who decided it was easier to sing than to make a speech. Bianca, though, had no problem. "He's my best friend and my lover and now my husband!" Yesss!

Today, on my way to the beach, I passed another Jewish wedding in the park and stopped to watch and call out my congratulations. I was utterly moved, as last week (when I stood under the canopy with other family members, a broad grin on my face).

Yesss!

At the Writer's Festival with the girls

2006-08-29T02:09:00.000-07:00

There was some doubt expressed when I told the other staff I was hoping to take my small ESL group to the Melbourne Writers' Festival. Would their English be up to it? I wasn't sure, myself, how it would turn out. But I wanted to take them to hear Melina Marchetta, whose novel, LOOKING FOR ALIBRANDI, they were slowly making their way through - and it would be a day out and something they normally didn't do.

In the end, the boys didn't go. Ibrahim had a medical appointment. Majang just doesn't like excursions, no matter what, and had turned down a much more important one, to Collingwood TAFE.

"Who needs you?" the girls teased, and we went, Amani, Ranya, Achol, Noura and me, along with another class which was going to the Rialto in Melbourne, to see the view and do some measurements (it was Maths Extension class). We had to stand up in the train nearly all the way, packed in like herrings. We reached town early, though later than I had expected, and went for lunch at one of several fast food joints along the way, as the food at the Festival is expensive. They all upsized their meals; only Ranya realised she'd never get through it and offered me some chips, but I was full already. And then we took a stroll along the street and I suddenly remembered I was with sixteen-year-old girls. They fell with cries of delight on the first clothes shop, though they didn't overdo it. Noura, who is the most "girly" of them, kept stopping to drool over shoes in windows - the others dragged her out of a clothes shop, because we really needed to get to the festival on time. We climbed on the No.1 tram to South Melbourne and found ourselves there early.

I sent the girls out into the sun for a while, because the staff couldn't find our tickets. Finally, they simply printed us out some more, and I joined my students at a table outside. I bought them all some drinks - fruit juice in interesting-looking bottles - and then we strolled into the theatre. As we were the first there we were asked to go to the front row, where we sat, waiting for the session to start.

The usual interview which is done by a student on the students days at the festival had been replaced by a full-length talk by the author. She wanted to promote her new novel, which has just come out, but realised that the audience wanted to hear about her other two books, so went through them all and read from the new book. Then she answered questions, which were fairly predictable ones, such as "What's your favourite of the books?" and "How do you feel about the different ending of book and movie?".

I glanced over at the girls, who also glanced at me. Two of them had shut eyes, but when we left, they were talking enthusiastically about the presentation and discussing what she had said - and they teased me that I had fallen asleep! (Not this time - I have been known to do it, but this time I was listening carefully in case they had questions or wanted clarification).

As we stood on the tram, they even noticed someone had bought a copy of the new book. The train to Sunshine was less packed than the one to the city and we found seats together.

Today they were telling everyone what a good time they had. Nice! One successful experiment.

Handcrafting and ESL

2006-06-01T00:41:00.000-07:00

My ESL students weren't doing exams today. Their English just isn't good enough, yet, to expect them to do it. I was asked to run a handcraft session, before they were taken on an excursion - this week has been full of interesting (we hope!) and useful excursions. The official craft was supposed to be cardmaking and I took along the stuff needed, but I had a sneaking suspicion there wouldn't be much interest in it, so I also took along some of my old beads and earring hooks and necklace clasps and needles and thread and soon, the girls were happily making necklaces and bracelets. The boys just made paper planes. No one made cards, until near the end, when someone decided to have a go.

Amani showed Ibrahim how to make a paper crane, but I think they're craned out for now.

Sue And The - Er, Several Paper Cranes

2006-05-11T16:39:00.000-07:00

Try teaching ESL to a bunch of kids fresh out of the language centre, making it up as you go! Oh, I'd found all those suggestions, which usually began with, "Divide them into groups of six and get them to brainstorm..." Well, I barely have six in each group, some of whom are absent a lot, and trying to explain brainstorming is not easy. I thought they might be a bit fed up, too, with stories about refugees, because as far as I know, only one of them actually IS a refugee and he, understandably, doesn't like to talk about it.

So I got out some copies of SADAKO AND THE THOUSAND PAPER CRANES and we read it together - short, not hard reading, but not an insult to their intelligence. And then I got the idea of actually making paper cranes, which would give them the chance to follow instructions in English.

It worked beyong my wildest dreams - too well, actually,they would keep making paper cranes, even when I was trying to do something else with them! One of them looked up Japan on the Encarta. Another one got so good at it, she did a microscopic crane, no more than a few millimetres, perfect, with its tiny wings outspread. And it is addictive, I've been "craning" every spare bit of paper I got hold of - newspapers, advertising brochures, everything. Wonder if I'll get to 1000?

A Fannish Funeral - vale Diane Marchant!

2006-04-17T01:43:00.000-07:00

I remember my early days in fandom, when I had just started to make friends. I was a member of Austrek, which at the time was the only Trek club in Melbourne (and maybe it is again, now that the others have died off!). I was invited to come along to one of the Friday evenings at Diane Marchant's home in Mordialloc. At the time, she was living therewith her mother, Jessie, but Jessie was always in bed when we arrived, so I rarely saw her. Diane was delighted to have visitors and always made us welcome. We would sit in her living room talking Star Trek, then we were invited into her special room, where she kept her collection of Star Trek memorabilia - signed photos, books, jewellery, toys, cards - and that massive collection of fanzines. Diane was only too willing to lend them out to us and that gave me the chance to read fannish Trek fiction. Afterwards, we would retire to her kitchen for supper. My favourites were the cheese and pickled onion sandwiches (I still make them, and think of her when I do). I remember, later, when she and Helene Shaw, my friend who passed away almost exactly thirteen years before Diane (about two days difference), used to play a game called ENCHANTED FOREST and argue good-naturedly abvout who was winning. Eventually, the Friday nights no longer happened. For personal reasons, Diane withdrew, even from the Star Trek Welcommittee, which she had helped found, and although she never quite lost touch - I used to get a Christmas card each year - she made most of her friendships in her local church.

Her funeral, on Monday April 10th, was in that church. We did get the fannish tree going, and most of her friends and acquaintances found out. Only about a dozen fans actually made it to the funeral, though I'm sure everyone who could get there did, but the church had quite a lot of people there, because she also had plenty of friends in the congregation.

There were some of her most cherished items on the coffin, including her signed photo of a very young Leonard Nimoy, who was one of her friends in the old days, and probably knows by now.

The actual service took about an hour, then there was a morning tea and Geoff Allshorn did a very good eulogy - the official one was during the service, but this was the fannish one. Helena Binns, our indefatigable photographer, was there taking group shots of everyone. She had taken a picture of Diane in bed, looking very much herself and waving cheerily, made copies and kindly distributed them to all of us.

We went on to the Springvale cemetery, which is surprisingly beautiful, looking more like a park than an old-fashioned cemetery, where Diane was laid to rest in her family plot, and we threw rose petals on the coffin. After that, we all went off to the cemetery cafeteria, would you believe, and had a belated lunch. It was nice having company to cheer each other up. Fandom just won't be the same without her.

The SCBWI Conference

2006-04-01T18:11:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back, I went to a conference in Sydney, where I got to meet a whole lot of other children's writers. Some I already knew, some I knew by name, but hadn't met, others I didn't know at all. I managed to talk Edwina Harvey into coming for at least the second day and very pleased she was she'd done it too. Two days of hearing publishers tell you what they were - and weren't - after, of writers who were actually making a living out of this telling you how you, too, might sell more, a fascinating talk by the GoH, Susan Sherman, an art director from a US publisher, on how a picture book is put together and finally published. Mind you, when the lady showed us two potential covers and asked for opinions, she seemed shocked when I suggested that perhaps she might like to ask some kids. My own book cover was chosen by kids only recently - in fact, it turned out to be the one the publishers had in mind, though they added a bit of the other cover to make sure boys liked it too (it worked). So everyone was happy. Oh, well. :-)

It was supposed to be an international conference, but, like the Worldcons we've had in the past, doesn't seem to have drawn too many overseas attendees (I suspect the GoH was the only one). Comes of being on the wrong side of the world.

I'd intended to stay at the YHA, either in the CBD or Bondi, but when I was offered half price for a small room at the con hotel, I thought what-the-heck, why not? and I don't regret my decision, which saved me some taxis. Breakfast was included, after all, and the con membership included lunch, morning and afternoon tea and dinner. I took a cab to the hotel on the Friday night, and it was not too far. It was a graceful-looking "boutique" hotel in the expensive area of Woollahra.

Now, I was expecting my room to be small, but I hadn't quite expected the bed to be a bunk or the view from the window to be the hotel laundry, which was literally about two metres away! Still, I was only going to sleep there and the bathroom was across the hall. I chose the bottom bunk, although you had to be very careful sitting up! They had supplied me with the usual hotel tea, coffee, etc., even some after-dinner mints (melted in the heat, alas - I put those in the fridge). There was a cerling fan, but no air conditioning and the room was very warm, even with the fan going.

Still, I thought, I'd have a nice shower and sit up in bed with a cuppa, biscuits and watch Star Wars on the TV, then switch off the bed lamp and sleep... Um, no. There was no kettle. The kindly manager got me one on request, but I had to boil it on the floor because there was no extension cord (he gave me one next day) and no free power points. And there was a bed lamp, but you couldn't plug it in because the pin was bent. The TV remote control didn't have an on/off switch, so I got up to switch off TV and light at the same time. Still - I got my cuppa, biscuits and movie and that night, at least, it was quiet.

Saturday night, however, I think it was forgotten I was there, because after midnight there was a rumble of washing machines from the laundry. I got up, dressed and went into the kitchens next door to ask if the machines could please be turned off. They did.

All that said, I had a good time, the food was fine and the staff were nice. I just think perhaps they might consider turning that room into a storeroom or some such. Everyone else was writing in Pass It On about what great rooms they'd had. Well, they paid full price, but you have to wonder if that particular room is normally the very expensive regular price they paid...?

It was nice to see Edwina, who accompanied me to the airport and kept her patience even when I suddenly reaslised I'd left my bag at the hotel and we had to get offthe bus and go back!

I took some photos, which I'll post as soon as they're developed and scanned. It was a fun weekend, even the room!

Aris, Paul and me at the Formal

2006-01-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

Aris, Paul and me
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

Aris and Paul are twins, but different as oranges and apples, personality-wise. Just as well I like both oranges and apples! I will miss these two characters.

Cheeky Zeineh

2006-01-03T20:48:00.000-08:00

Cheeky Zeineh
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

Zeineh, who looked fabulous on the night, had a great time and couldn't resist doing a little belly-dance shimmying.

John and Maree at the Formal

2006-01-03T20:46:00.000-08:00

John and Maree
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

They danced together most of the evening. Both of them look great and had a wonderful time.

Nikolina, Ivana and me at the Formal

2006-01-03T20:38:00.000-08:00

Nikolina, Ivana and me
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

The Year 12 formal is the last chance to say goodbye to the students. This is me with Nikolina (in red, who won the best female clothing award) andIvana, our MC for many school events, who looks like a model from Vogue in her white pants suit. These two were terrific to know during their two years at Sunshine College Senior campus.

Sue with Richard Harland

2006-01-03T20:37:00.000-08:00

Sue with Richard Harland
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

This is a photo of me at Swancon with Richard Harland, who was launching his new novel, THE BLACK CRUSADE, at the time. Richard is a very funny man and his fiction is over-the-top zany. Since the above was taken I have read and reviewed his children's novel, Sassycat, which is a great piece of entertainment. (See my review in the children's section at www.januarymagazine.com)

English11E

2005-12-09T22:24:00.000-08:00

English11E
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

English 11E
My English class, or what was left of them by the last day. Stefan, Kellie, Josh,Rebecca, Cat, Nancy peeking from behind her, Paul and Leah. Jasmina put her arm around me. Ebru and Ali were celebrating the end of Ramadan. Lucy was not attending classes by then. Actually, she hadn't attended classes, in English or anything else, for some time. Cat, Kellie and Ebru visited me in the library to say hi, after they finished for the year, which was nice - and unexpected! Josh and Rebecca were busy burning DVDs of the school show by then. Paul was probably playing with the cars he loves so much. :-)

Me and 11SB

2005-12-07T20:43:00.000-08:00

11SB
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

These students are what was left of my homeroom at the end of 2005. They're a fabulous bunch of kids and I will miss them. Tam, Angelique, Kerrie, Shane, Ricky and Dale were the ones who turned up to say farewell at our last pastoral care session for the year. Huynh was absent, alas. The photo was taken by Zac, who was joining us only for two days. He did a good job.

Catspy

2005-12-07T20:40:00.000-08:00

Catspy
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

Here's the cover of Your Cat Could Be A Spy. It's been exhausting but fun, working on this, and there was a lot of stuff that had to be cut from the finished product. The thing about writing non-fiction is that you learn a lot and there's always far more information than you can possibly use. I'm proud of this!

Sue with Shaun Tan

2005-06-18T18:38:00.000-07:00

Sue with Shaun Tan
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

Swancon ends on a high, as I get to meet Shaun Tan, who has illustrated some terrific children's books. He said teacher-librarians formed his main fan base ... so what about the kids? Hmm...

The Wedding 1

2005-06-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

The Wedding 1
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

Lyn with her bouquet, smiling broadly - it really was a great weekend for her! Dave Luckett on her left, not sure who's the lady on her right. Please forgive me if I should know you.

The Wedding 2

2005-06-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

The Wedding 2
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

Lyn Battersby, formerly Lyn Triffit, and friends, just after the wedding. Dave Luckett stands behind her and that's Zara in the black t-shirt.

Ann jams with the De Lints

2005-06-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

Ann jams with the De Lints
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

Ann Poore plays the harp on Sunday night at Swancon, with the GoHs, Charles De Lint and his musically gifted wife, MaryAnn.

Flickr

2005-06-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Lyn and awards

2005-06-18T18:22:00.000-07:00

Lyn and awards
Originally uploaded by Zeldaleh.

Here are some Swancon photos. Lyn received a number of Tin Duck Awards. The grin speaks for itself. A nice start to her new marriage!

Swancon the rest of it!

2005-03-27T21:06:00.000-08:00

The kiosk went down and I was unable to find my way back to the Internet cafe that Sally had shown me, so ... Saturday morning, Sally and I woke late-ish and had a companionable breakfast in our room. It was supposed to be the Market Day and we began to haul the ASIM stuff downstairs, only to find the day had been postponed till Sunday. Upstairs again and the first panel I attended was about Robert E. Howard, with Charles De Lint and an academic-type guy who has a passion for the works of Howard. There is an entire Howard community out there. A bunch of us went out to lunch again, but got back late and I was in time for a two-hour session with the De Lints, who answered questions, played and sang. Charles D is a musician with a wide variety of skills - guitar, mandolin (he taught her, that's how they met), Irish flute, penny-whistle, violin... He sings, too. This session alone was worth the entire trip to WA. It more than made up for missing the concert. There was one more panel, with Zara Baxter, Dave Luckett and me, but Dave did all the talking in the end, as he knows a helluva lot about the price of steeds, armour, swords, etc. and, to be honest, I hadn't had a clue what I had volunteered for, and just made one comment about tournaments. We were actually only too pleased to let him take over and had an enjoyable hour, before the entire con membershio went to the wedding of Lyn Triffit and Lee Battersby. There was more than one moist eye in there. That included mine and I only know them from the ASIM list! What a great idea, having their wedding at a con. After the wedding, a huge bunch of us went to dinner at an Indian restaurant, had the banquet and missed the masquerade, but no matter. It was a pleasant evening and I was seated near te De Lints, Ian Nicholls and a lady called Jessica (?) whom I have only met at this con. The evening ended with Sally and me hosting a room party, which went till 1.00 a.m. The chocolates I'd brought were Much Appreciated. Ann Poore, the harper, brought her instrument and played.You know you're getting old when you start turning into a pumpkin at midnight. I was distinctly orange by then and glad to get some sleep.

Yesterday, Sunday, I spent most of the day on the ASIM market stall, which was a fascinating experience. We actually sold quite a few magazines and several subscriptions, which was great. I finally did my panel on YA fiction with Dave Luckett and Charles D and then, suddenly, it was over. The thing about this topic is that people love to discuss it.

I did get in one more panel, actually someone reading a paper on "The meaning of smell in the Buffyverse" which was a lot more fun that such things tend to be at "real" conferences. The Underused mythologies panel was good, but the room was horribly cramped and I left. We had dinner "in" this time - I ate with Ian Nicholls and Ann Poore (who had been jamming with the De Lints) and the conversation turned serious, about life, the universe and cons. The service was slow, though. Very slow. Oh, well, at least I didn't have time for dessert. The Tin Ducks were awarded and - yay! - one, for best Professional Production, went to Lyn Triffit(now Battersby) for ASIM 11. There was a general party, afterwards, and I brought the leftovers from the room party, including wine. Got to bed around 11.30 p.m.

This morning I had breakfast with Glenda Larke, a genial older woman who is a fantasy novelist. I got to two panels this morning - Surrealism in SF, with Richard Harland, and a lively discussion of writers' workshops. I am hoping to get to one more panel with De Lint and others before heading for the airport this afternoon and then back to the grind.

Later:
The final panel featutred Charles D, Shaun Tan, Richard Harland and Terry Dowling. I'm actually quite a fan of Shaun Tan, as his artwork appears in a lot of books in school libraries. He's a small gentleman, shorter than me, even! And I'm only 5 foot 2. Wonderful artist, though. They just spoke about their work in general and their creativity and how they keep it fresh. A nice way to end the con. I was unable to stick around for the closing ceremony, but Simon Haynes, from the ASIM co-op very kindly drove Zara Baxter (another member) and me to the airport. I saw Zra off, but my plane doesn't go for another hour, so I am sitting at Perth airport, typing this into another kiosk like the one at the hotel.

The con has been delightful, overall, but my suggestion to next year's committee is that they make sure the goody bag contains a map of the area (with YOU ARE HERE on it) and a list of food shops that will be open and - vital! - Internet cafes.

It's been great putting faces to names and seeing some old friends as well. Next stop Continuum, in MY town.

Swancon Day 1.1

2005-03-25T17:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the true day 1. I had the hotel's excellent breakfast buffet, overate and went for a walk in King's Park, which is up a steep hill - one that could compete with the one in Dunedin for the title of World's steepest street. Got lost - how on earth can you get lost in a park? - and found my way back with the help of a lady who was walking on an unfamiliar street. She said she did understand how you can get lost in Kin'gs Park! I organised a bed and a second key for Sally, who arrived late morning. Iwent to some panels, went out to lunch with Sally and Zara Baxter and a couple of others, in one of the few places in Perth CBD on Good Friday and got a vegetarian fried rice for only $5.95. Back at the hotel, I enjoyed a panel on Balancing Writing With your Day job, the first one with Charles De Lint, who seems a pleasant, approachable man. Then I overspent in the dealer's room, getting Richard Harland's new novel, which he signed for me, and spending a LOT of money on a Charles De Lint HC which will never get into paperback. There was then a panel on short ficiton and another on "It came from the slush pile." I've told Sally that I once picked an Edwina Harvey story in a competition slushpile, though it didn't have her name on it. There were some evening events which I attended, but fell asleep, as I do. I had never heard of "Simono, the world's most beautiful fan" but the large audience had and laughed appreciatively. Sue Isle and I went up to her room for tea and an expensive hand-made Easter egg which I'd brought from Melbourne. I fell into bed at 10.00 a.m. This morning, several of us breakfasted together with no pre-planning and I met a lovely couple from NZ (but she's originally from Perth and a friend of Sally's) - Robin and Alan. Sally and I went off to find an Internet cafe - the hotel's dreadful kiosk was broken anyway.

More tomorrow (I hope!)

Swancon Day 1.1

2005-03-25T16:46:00.000-08:00

It's Saturday morning as I write this. Yesterday, which was the real Day 1, was good fun. I got up early, wrestled with the Internet machine downstairs, got lost in King's Park and had to ask directions, when I finally got out, of an older lady who was walking along the unfamiliar street. However, I found my way back down the VERY steep street, which could have competed with that famous street in Dunedin for the title of "World's Steepest Street" and managed to get into the panel on "TV Vampires". I would have enjoyed this more if it hadn't been in a tiny room with no windows. Finally I had to get out, though I would have liked to stay. I found some friends and spent a pleasant hour before lunch. Sally Beasley, who was sharing a room with me, arrived and I fixed up her room key, then a group of us went to lunch. Not much is open in Perth on Good Friday, but with a native guide, we found an open cafe where I got a vegetarian stir-fry for $5.95, very nice. We were mostly members of the Andromeda Spaceways Co-op and tried to avoid discussing our magazine so as not to bore the only non-member. After lunch, I went to the first panel of the day featuring Charles De Lint, with Robert Hood, Cat Sparks, Dave Luckett and Lee Battersby. It was on the subject of balancing a day job with writing, something of great interest to me, as I have to do precisely this. Mr De Lint, of course writes full-time now (since he got made redundant at his record store job). He seems a pleasant, approachable gentleman. I hadn't realised that Robert Hood, the only person allowed to write YA horror fiction for Hodder, has a full-time day job, just like me. Dave writes more or less full-time, but doesn't earn as much as you'd think, though, after all, this is Australia and you have to be Sarah Douglass to be earning in the six figures!

After this, I caught up with Sue Isle and bought some books in the huckster's room, shelling out $65 for a Charles De Lint Hardcover that will probably never make it to paperback, asnd buying the new Daikaiju collection, which is great fun - pity I never got around to submitting! When I took my copy of Moonheart to be autographed I let Charles D know that it was this book that had got me beadlooming, among other things. He said his wife, who was with him, would probably enjoy having a look at my belt, but I'm not wearing it, the threads have frayed and need fixing.

Then I went to a short fiction panel. Let's face it, short fiction is where the new writers are coming from in this country and it's where all the new work is happening, unless you want to read/write fat fantasy trilogies.

Follwed this with the "It came from the slushpile" panel, which was fun, but more about what editors do and don't want to see than about, "the weird experiences we've had" (a little of that). One of the panellists, Anna Hepworth, showed me, afterwards, a little trick I didn't know my Macintosh could do, so i can't wait to try it at home.

"Economies of (Dragon) Scale" was about mediaeval economics and how you really need it to make a story make sense. Nice. Dinner was pizza, after which Sue Isle and I went up to her room to drink tea and share a Hahndorf's easter egg I'd brought with me. This was followed by evening events - the Alternate History Game Show, run by Lee Battersby, and "The Simono Retrospective" by Simon Oxwell, who has a character called Simono, "The world's most beautiful fan" - very entertaining stuff, the man could be a stand-up comedian, but I found myself nodding off. Too late and my body was still on Melbourne time.

Today is going to be interesting. I have volunteered for a panel I haven't a clue what it's about. Sally and I went off and found an Internet cafe, where I'm typing this. More tomorrow.

Swancon Day 1

2005-03-24T15:55:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am at Swancon 2005. When they invited me to be on a panl with Charles De Lint, I had to come. of course. After all these years of staying at YHAs, it's kind of nice to be staying in a room that's all mine (though I have offered a bed to Sally Beasley for a couple of nights, because it seemed weird to be all on my own in such a big room). Arrived from Mebourne last night. They sent about twenty minutes looking for a passenger who hadn't turned up, then another ten waiting for a space to leave. Stilll , it got in only about fifteen minutes late and though I had to wait while the shuttle bus driver waited for the next planeload (I ended up being his only passenger) I got here at least in time to hear Charles De Lint and his Missus doing their last song. Pty - I was looking forward to it. The room is nice and big - it has a sfa, a desk and a corenr where you can make meals, even a microwave. There is a shop downstairs with basic stuff you can take upstairs if you want to have breakfast or a snack in your room - microwaveable pies, etc. Very fan-friendly. Fans are going to do this anyway, so the hotel might as well profit. I sang in the shower this morning and was delighted fto find the acoustics were great, it made me sound good. There was a buffet breakfast downstairs and I ate all sorts of stuff I'd NEVER at at home, where breakfast is a fruit salad or herbal tea and toast. everybody was very friendly last night, but I had an earlish night, beause after only 3/12 hours sleep and a long flight and a change of time zones, I was zonked out. Today I will be attending several panels and hopefully running into a few people I know or making friends with others I don't know yet and hopefully going out to lunch with them. I'm writing this frm one of those awful Internet kiosks that overcharge and are hard to use - a sort of red ball for a "mouse" - hany, though. I will write some more each day and then use this as the basis for a con report.

Of new toys and new technology!

2004-11-14T23:55:00.000-08:00

I had to do it sooner or later. Most new films and TV shows are coming out on DVD these days. You can still get videos, but with my local video library gradually changing over to DVD only, I felt as if I was still using vinyl in the era of CDs. (Mind you, there are some people who still refuse to use CDs, but that's another story). I knew DVD players were a lot cheaper these days - you can buy one at the supermarket for less than $70! Now, if any time, while I had some money from book royalties, was the time to invest.

And so, my friend Bart and I went out one night to Myers' Megamart store in Moorabbin. Bart loves new toys, whether they're his or someone else's, and is very good at choosing. I had to buy a new TV as well, because the tiny 34 cm set that has graced my lounge for 10 years just wouldn't take a DVD player - not in stereo, anyway. So we went all out. TVs are cheaper these days too. I'd hoped to get a Panasonic, a brand I have been happy with in the past, but the only Panasonic TV available for a price I could manage just didn't have the features I wanted, so I went for the LG, a new brand which is still inexpensive but good quality. It is 51 cm - quite big enough for me - and stereo. Bart and I decided on a video/DVD combo, because they're so cheap these days that if one part of it breaks down, it's not going to be a hassle to replace. It also meant that the old TV and video could go to my room and I could watch in bed. Bart bought me a DVD he saw me looking at, the special edition of Spartacus, and we did a very good deal on my new goodies, with delivery virtually thrown in.

A new era has begun. It's strange to remember when I recorded Star Trek on audiotape from the TV (I still have those). Then my thrill at the new VCR, and taping absolutely everything I'd ever loved. And now I have another new toy, which will let me keep my favourite stuff from being damaged, and gives me more room on the shelves while including more material. Wonder what's next?

But then, the years have brought me a lot of new things. I wrote my Honours thesis using a typewriter, and I was thrilled to have an office model instead of the portable I'd used in high school. Then my first computer at work, an Apple IIE, which didn't have a hard drive - you just shoved a program disk into one drive and your word-processing disk in the other. At home, I had an electronic typewriter which I'd bought with my winnings from the Mary Grant Bruce Award for children's fiction. It let you word process one line at a time before printing out. When I met Bart, he helped me get my first home computer, the Mac Classic II, which I still have and was still using only a few years ago, before I got a laptop lease at work. I'm on to my second laptop and the latest Mac OS.

And here I am, blogging on the WWW! My Dad, nearly 80, has become a "Silver Surfer" who needs his daily "fix" of the Net.

Go technology!

The "new" National Gallery of Victoria

2004-11-12T19:34:00.000-08:00

I've only been back to the National Gallery of Victoria twice since it re -opened, with a flourish of publicity. I have to say, I miss the old one. They made a big thing of the fact that they didn't, after all, remove the water-wall, but last weekend, it was painted over - so you really couldn't see the water. The former Great Hall, with its stained-glass ceiling doesn't feel like a "Great" Hall any more. There are about four eating-places - one wasn't enough? Two, even?

What really bothers me, though, is that the large, warm, comfortable galleries have been reduced to small rooms, mostly dark, with hardly anywhere to sit and admire the paintings. Small though they are, they feel big because they're virtually empty, with maybe one small bench in the middle. The wood-panelling and the sunshine in the main entrance area are gone. Metal ramps from one floor to the next and the place is a rabbit-warren, with "exit" signs that just take you to the next gallery, not out on to a landing. Heaven help you if you want to visit the facilities! As for the displays of pottery and other relics, they're for all the world like the Homewares department in Myers!

Bring back the gallery I grew up with!

Prehistoric hobbits

2004-10-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

So Tolkien was right! It's all over the newspapers about this race of tiny people whose skeletal remains have just been unearthed in caves on an Indonesian island. They're a different species, but co-existed with homo sapiens, and villagers put out food for them, like Europeans did for the fairies. The average height was only a metre, smaller than pygmies. They've been nicknamed hobbits. They were a lot brighter than their small brains would suggest, and I like to think they might have been refugees from the Shire.

It's great every now and then when you get some news that tells you it's okay to dream.

I wonder what it was like, being such a small human in a huge world, confronting huge humans, giant rats - but oddly, dwarf elephants.

Writing projects

2004-10-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

When you write, you get stressed out without a project. I got a very pleasant surprise when my ploy of sending my education title about archaeology to a publisher worked. It was accompanied by a note saying, "This has sold 31,000 copies so far, got any work for me?" As it happened, my former editor from Allen and Unwin, who is now series editor for a sort of junior version of the True Stories series, for which I wrote two books, did have some work for me and was pleased to hear from me. So I'm working on a juvenile book about spies. It's surprised me how quickly I've managed to get through most of the first draft - I think it's all the education writing I've done, where they give you about 3 months to do a non-fiction title, complete with research.

Jack Dann once told me that you always have to "hustle" for writing jobs. He was right. I have been hustling for projects for years now. I watched him at work once, his ears pricking up when I introduced him to my then-publisher, his hand reaching into his pocket for a card... Whether I will ever be as successful as he is, I don't know. I doubt it. But you don't have to be a massive bestseller to be able to consider yourself a professional writer. If you "hustle" and get work, if someone is prepared to pay you to write for them, you're a professional writer. I've found it pays not to be fussy - fiction or non-fiction, juvenile or adult, if someone is buying, I have a go. And while I'm establishing myself and letting my name be known to those who are buying, I can still get on with the SF and fantasy that are my first love. I've sold a few of those stories too!

Six degrees

2004-07-23T23:41:00.000-07:00

I've heard of this "six degrees of separation" business. Well, sometimes it seems to work. I have just worked out that there are about that many degrees between me and Herbert Dyce Murphy. HDM was an Australian who spied for British Intelligence early in the 20th century. I came across him while researching for a book proposal for Allen and Unwin (still waiting!). HDM had to dress as a woman for his job and was actually quite attractive. He claimed to have been painted by E. Phillips Fox, an Australian artist, in his famous painting "The Arbour", now in the National Gallery of Victoria. Fox was married to artist Ethel Carrick Fox, who once painted a still life, which was bought some time in the 1940s by Sunshine Technical School, now a part of Sunshine College, and I work on the campus that used to be Sunshine Tech. I was also the first person to be shown the painting when my friend Desi the art teacher unearthed it in an old store room.So I have a connection with a very strange part of Australian history!

Perhaps it's just another way of saying it's a small world. I have recently re-established contact with two old friends. In one case, she had gone to Russia just after the fall of the Soviet Union and that was the last I heard of her until a mutual friend (I didn't know she was a mutual friend) told me recently that she had regards for me from the other friend. In the other case, I had lost contact with a much-loved penpal. Recently, I got an e-mail from her eldest daughter, who, like me, is on the Harry Potter list Harry Potter For Grownups.Monita had wondered if I was her mother's old friend - well, Bursztynski isn't a common name. So I am back in touch with my friend Gail because I like Harry Potter. Another time, I went to a Council of Adult Education course I had chosen by sticking a pin in the catalogue and found myself sitting behind TWO old friends I hadn't seen in years!
Not quite the six degrees thing, but certainly small world.

I do have less than six degrees between me and my current close friend Bart. Bart went to uni with a lady called Sharon. Years ago, my then-library technician, Anne, went to work with Sharon at Sunshine West Secondary College. Later I met Bart and then a few years on, worked with Sharon. Another friend, James, worked as library technician at Flemington Secondary College before I did and before we knew each other.

Degrees of separation between me and famous restaurateur Stephanie Alexander? Stephanie A was originally a teacher-librarian. She worked at Princes Hill Secondary College. I eventually spent some time in the same library.

This is fun!

Meeting former students

2004-07-13T19:22:00.000-07:00

This morning, I met a former student at the railway station. I remembered him only as a mild nuisance, not truly nasty. He was very happy to see me and told me enthusiastically about his job as a painter, which he was enjoying, and that he played professional table-tennis. He asked about some of the other staff and laughingly said he'd been "a little shit". I always like to see students who have done well. They don't have to be academic, just happy. It's one of the pleasures of working in the school system. It lets you know that you've done okay, too, especially when you get a visit from a kid you yelled at (as I have, several times).

Of course, sooner or later, you get reminded of your age when a teenager says, "You taught my mother." Ouch! :-)

Introduction to me

2004-07-12T16:55:00.000-07:00

My name is Sue Bursztynski. I write children's books, do book and film reviews and run a library. I love things Arthurian and things science fictional. This site will be about all of the above at some stage and whatever else I feel like writing about.

I'm a member of the Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine Publishing Co-op, which publishes a bi-monthly magazine dedicated to the lighter side of SF and fantasy. Stories range from funny to serious, with a prefernce for funny or at least light. We need some humour in this dark world.