Mechanical Dolphin

Guest Post: The Physics of Reading by Raymond Huber

September 14, 2011September 18, 2011Mechanical Dolphin

Continuing our Kiwi theme, today Books and Adventures is joined by New Zealand author and editor Raymond Huber with a guest post on ‘The Physics of Reading’. A skier, teacher, apiculturist and all-round adventurer, Raymond is currently in Australia promoting his novel for junior readers, Wings.

‘The universe is made of stories, not atoms’ (Muriel Rukeyser). There’s truth in the poet’s words: the universe is only 4% atoms while the rest (mysterious dark stuff) has barely been fathomed. Some scientists believe the universe is geared towards the development of mind – ‘The universe is aboutsomething’ (Paul Davies, physicist) . That’s why I think stories matter.

Consider the mental energy of reading for children. ‘When reading takes place, the brain is forever changed’ (Maryanne Wolf). Reading forges new neural pathways which then become available for innovative thinking. One reason for this is that reading a book encourages the brain to be active in constructing and imagining the story. Imagination is like the electromagnetic force which has infinite range. It’s the force behind the great children’s books. In the Moomin stories for example, Tove Jansson imagines a fantasy world populated with endearing creatures such as brave Moomintroll and the shocking Hattifatteners.

‘In a way, the quakes have pushed us to develop our community role’: Interview with Carolyn Robertson of Christchurch City Libraries, New Zealand

September 12, 2011December 8, 2011Mechanical Dolphin

There can be no greater challenge to a library service than a natural disaster – except perhaps that same disaster repeated.

That’s exactly what faced Carolyn Robertson and her team at Christchurch Libraries when, in September 2010 and again in February and June of this year, earthquakes struck their home city on New Zealand’s South Island.

Yet, as Carolyn explained to me recently, ‘In a way, the quakes have pushed us to further develop our community role. They’ve actually strengthened Christchurch Libraries’ vision of equity of access.’

Carolyn Robertson of Christchurch City Libraries, New Zealand — "We understand the word “library” in the widest possible sense." - Carolyn Robertson, Christchurch City Libraries

I visited Carolyn, Christchurch City Libraries and Information Manager, at the city’s South Library earlier this year. It’s one of the liveliest and most modern I’ve seen in on literacy adventures throughout Northern Europe, the USA, and Australia as well as New Zealand.

The community has clearly taken to this bright, multipurpose space which includes a great café, children’s play area and an exceptional periodicals collection. The only evidence of the quakes is a display of letters from well-wishers around the world, which brightens one wall of the reading area.

Yet this lovely headquarters for the library service is actually a fallback space, taken up as the city’s principal library after the February quake put the Central Business District out of bounds.

In the days immediately following the disaster, the librarians of Christchurch demonstrated the importance of libraries as a community service in times of need – a vital message at a time of increasing financial austerity around the world.

Australia’s Paint the Town Read Scheme Brings Communities Together

August 18, 2011September 1, 2011Mechanical Dolphin

Dr Matt Finch with Behind the Book's Comic Workshop in Brooklyn, NYC

Tonight, Thursday 1st September, I’ll be the guest speaker at the opening dinner of Paint the Town REaD’s Annual Convention in Sydney.

You can find them online at their new home, http://paintthetownread.info/

To discover more about this amazing Australian community literacy scheme, read my recent piece on the website of New York literacy organisation Behind the Book:

http://behindthebook.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/in-australia-communities-come-together-to-%E2%80%98paint-the-town-read%E2%80%99-for-early-literacy/

Writing, Designing and Acting Doctor Who – Holiday courses at NIDA Sydney

August 8, 2011December 29, 2011Mechanical Dolphin

Australia’s Cockatoo Island has a chequered past as a former shipyard and prison turned nature reserve – but recent school holidays saw it transformed once more. The UNESCO world heritage site in the city of Sydney became the scene for intergalactic adventure and time-travelling mystery as the BBC’s Doctor Who came to Australia in a whole new form.

Work from NIDA's Designing Doctor Who Course — A monster design from Designing Doctor Who at NIDA

For three years, NIDA, Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art, has offered a range of Doctor Who-themed holiday courses for children and young people, taught by industry professionals. I dropped in to see what was on offer and speak with the team behind this unique education programme.

This year, Designing Doctor Who students spent three days creating their own detailed alien worlds and artefacts, while Writing Doctor Who students got the opportunity to devise mini-scripts performed by students on the Acting on Screen: Doctor Who course in front of an audience of parents and friends.

The holiday activities including location shooting on Cockatoo Island, where one student-penned adventure saw the Doctor and his companion Amy pursued by Fashion Police opposed to bow ties and short skirts!

Peter Mountford, Manager of Youth and Holiday activities at NIDA, said, “This was the third holiday program at NIDA to feature Doctor Who themed courses and I am pleased to say that it was the most successful yet. Both tutors and students had a fantastic time filming their self-devised Doctor Who stories out at Cockatoo Island – a setting that is perfect for time-travelling adventurers!”

Interview: Rebecca Wallace-Segall, Writopia Lab

July 16, 2011December 12, 2011Mechanical Dolphin

A lot of the schemes we feature on Books and Adventures involve encouraging reluctant readers and promoting literacy in the family or wider community. Some, like Wales’ Young People’s Writing Squads, offer support and encouragement to those who already have a talent for writing and want to develop it.

New York’s Writopia Lab project is one of these schemes.

So why do Writopia kids want to write?

‘I just want to have fun writing for myself, and do it for the rest of my life.’

‘I watched my friend cry when she read my story – I want to make kids feel things.’

‘I like to read newspapers and magazines. I want to be part of the conversation that I hear going on.’

That third “kid” was Rebecca Wallace-Segall, who grew up to found Writopia Lab in 2007. A journalist in New York, Rebecca spun off a residency at a private school into a non-profit organization giving children and young people the chance to hone their literary skills with professional writer-instructors.

Rebecca and I met earlier this year at her New York headquarters on the Upper West Side, a cosy place of pine floorboards, comfy sofas and beanbags, its walls decorated with images of books where the children can write the names and titles of their own work on the spines. These are the ‘library walls’ which provide a record of success for Writopia participants, but the available spaces are quickly filling up. ‘We’re going to end up having to go on the ceiling!’ says Rebecca.

She began by explaining to me how Writopia Lab’s mission differs from community literacy programmes which seek to engage reluctant readers and writers.

Teaching and testing – the Finnish case

July 11, 2011December 12, 2011Mechanical Dolphin

Helsinki Panorama by Flickr user Huzhead

A tweet from Trevor Cairney, a fellow writer-educator based in Sydney, led me to David Sirota’s recent article on Finnish education in Salon.com.

Sirota’s article gives the lie to claims that a culture of rigorous testing is the only way to improve standards in US schools – pointing to Finland’s success in creating a world-class education system by cherishing teachers, rather than imposing tests.

The Finns have a remarkable system which produced top scores in the last PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) study by the OECD.

Teaching staff lie at the heart of Finland’s achievement. Well-trained, well-supported and given a great deal of independence, Finland’s teachers are trusted academic professionals, choosing their methods and materials themselves. Testing is used as the teacher sees fit – for self-evaluation and development, rather than for league tables and outcomes.

The Finns’ success is a great riposte to forces in the UK and US who continually push intensive testing regimes on our schools. As I said at the House of Commons last year, the current culture of testing and targets is so harmful to learning, especially in the field of literacy.

Nnedi Okorafor Interview, Part 4: ‘Chittim’ and Earning for Learning

July 6, 2011Mechanical Dolphin

Find the first part of this interview here.

One of the most distinctive inventions of Nnedi Okorafor’s new novel Akata Witch is chittim – a currency earned by magical practitioners when they learn an important lesson, delivered in the form of a shower of varying-sized metal rods falling from the sky.

‘I liked the idea of earning something for your knowledge, for learning,’ says Nnedi. ‘The rods are based on objects used in real-life magical practices, but I don’t know where they come from in the world of the novel! They’re not from God, they just…fall from the sky when you learn something new.’

Like most writers and teachers, I could always do with some extra currency, and I love learning, so I adored the idea of chittim.

Nnedi offered her own example of a ‘chittim moment’ from her teenage years as a tennis player:

‘When I was about seventeen, I was in California playing the nationals. I don’t know what part of the draw I was at in the tournament. It was early on. Not the finals or semi-finals or anything. I was playing this girl. Both of us were there alone. No parents or friends or siblings had come with us. But we were battling. We were evenly matched. We had no audience.

‘As our match drew on for hours, other kids finished playing each other and went home for the day. But she and I kept slugging it out. We split sets (she won one set, then I won the second). We played for over FIVE HOURS. No one knew we were there on that far tennis court in the sun. No one cheered. No one was on the edge of his or her seat. But we were battling. We both wanted to win even if no one else cared.

‘I eventually won and there were no cheers. We sat together drinking water, quiet, smiling occasionally, sweaty as heck. It was awesome. It didn’t matter who won, that’s what I learned that day. It was all about the game, pushing yourself, and playing your brains out.’

Nnedi’s perspective on education is shaped by such experiences, and the notion that learning as embodied by chittim is not about formal study:

‘I was a late bloomer – I struggled with tests, and didn’t blossom until grad school. I felt I had missed out because of assumptions made at an early age about which class you were put through.

‘Exams and learning are sometimes really in conflict. It’s not about passing the test, it’s what you learn, the things you choose to develop. I don’t know how many chittim you would get from taking a formal exam…maybe one if you were lucky!’

‘I feel that kids should be given space to change. There’s so much pressure now on young people to achieve and conform. The whole idea of “Tiger Mothering” and “Helicopter Parenting” is also connected to people trying to control fate.

‘As a mother, I understand parents wanting to choose the destiny of your child. But you must let your child become her/his own person – and resist your urge to take control!’

With her writing appealing to a young adult audience, Nnedi has taken her work into high schools in the U.S. and beyond.

‘My last school visit was in Trinidad, a peaceful place where I was very comfortable! They really got Zahrah, because the world of Ginen reflects that same mix of peoples and cultures you find in Trinidad. They identified with that.

‘I had the students do a writing exercise – to work together and create a character, as a group.

‘I was delighted with the result – a mixed-race boy with pink hair…and he could fly!’

Nnedi’s future plans include more schools outreach work and contact with inspiring young writers like the students in Trinidad. In the meantime a film of Who Fears Death is in the works and, of course, Akata Witch is available in all good bookstores!

Nnedi Okorafor Interview, Part 3: Palm Tree Banditware – The Future of the Book

July 1, 2011September 30, 2015Mechanical Dolphin

Find the first part of this interview here.

During our interview in Chicago, Nnedi showed off one of her prized possessions, an object which stands as a manifestation of her fantasy world in ours: a Kindle which has been decorated to resemble a giant folded leaf.

Reminiscent of the ‘Sandpiper’ laptops built from natural materials in William Gibson’s Idoru, Nnedi’s Kindle is a real-life emblem of the kind of distinctive technology which exists in her fantasy world, Ginen – a realm which blends plants and hardware, where the term ‘techno-organic’ has more to do with sustainability than the Borg or H.R. Giger’s Alien.

The defining technology of Nnedi’s stories, however, is one that’s already centuries old – the book. Time and again books play a key part in her novels, whether it’s Akata Witch’s Fast Facts for Free Agents – an unreliable, conservative set of rules for young wizards – or the Forbidden Greeny Jungle Guide of Zahrah The Windseeker, which is virtually a character in its own right.

Uncooperative and all too fallible, the Guide is Zahrah’s only source of information on the mysterious jungle into which she must venture. The device is reminiscent of science fiction’s first and greatest guidebook, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – and that’s not by chance.

‘Hitch-hiker’s was my first sci-fi experience, and the first book that ever made me laugh out loud,’ admits Nnedi. ‘The physics, the jokes, the way Douglas Adams writes. It was inspiring.

‘I added some extra features to the e-book of Zahrah to give it that Hitch-hiker’s feel. You can read entries from the Forbidden Greeny Jungle Guide on my website that don’t appear in the novel – including real creatures, like the suicide ant!

‘For the Zahrah e-book, I wanted pop-up ads – palm tree banditware, obnoxious recipes by the author – but it had to be exactly as I envisaged it, like in the book, and the technology’s not quite there yet. But just you wait!’

Fast Facts for Free Agents, the book given to Akata Witch’s hero Sunny as she enters the world of wizardry for the first time, is just as unreliable and prejudiced as Zahrah’s Guide.

Nnedi chalks some of this perspective up to her postgraduate studies, especially in journalism.

‘In grad school, I learned a new way of reading. It taught me that you can’t just ‘get information out of a book’. You need to know what forms of information exist, what angle they take.

‘Especially in Nigeria, authors of guide books are often almost yelling at you to convey their perspective –every ethnic group says their way is the best. There are no ‘facts’ in writing about some of the Nigerian villages – it’s always shaped by a perspective, by some writer talking down to you – yet these documents nonetheless contain real information.

‘The same is true of Fast Facts and the Guide – they’re examples of how to look at information, reminders to not always believe, and even when you do believe, always consider the perspective of one who gave the information.’

In the fourth and final part of my interview with Nnedi Okorafor, we talk about ways of learning, and the most distinctive inventions of Nnedi Okorafor’s new novel Akata Witch, chittim – a currency earned by learning , delivered as a shower of metal rods falling from the sky.

Nnedi Okorafor Interview, Part 2: Nigerian/American, Athlete/Nerd – Labelling Magic

June 25, 2011September 30, 2015Mechanical Dolphin

Find the first part of this interview here.

Nnedi Okorafor has received great acclaim for her young adult writing, but her work spans journalism and academic research as well as short stories and novels for a more adult audience.

From an acerbic early short story skewering the notion of the ‘Magical Negro’ through to Who Fears Death, a mystic science-fictional meditation on weaponized rape, Nnedi’s writing is difficult to pigeonhole – and she wouldn’t want it any other way.

‘I read everything when I was young – literary, mainstream, only a little sci-fi but a lot of fantasy. I wasn’t specifically looking for genre writing.

‘I was a product of the creative writing program at Champagne-Urbana, which was great, but my instructors spent so much time trying to get me not to write speculative fiction, fantasy or sci-fi. The change for me was going to the Clarion workshop at Michigan State, where they welcomed exactly that kind of writing!’

Even within the bounds of ‘genre fiction’, Nnedi’s work is especially resistant to conventional boundaries.

Zahrah is set in Ginen, a world inspired by African cultures and societies, while The Shadow Speaker takes place in the year 2070, bringing together magic and teen adventure in a post-apocalyptic Niger. And woven subtly through each novel are clues suggesting that all of these tales may be taking place in a shared universe.

Over lunch in Chicago, Nnedi laughs when I ask her about the problem of labels.

‘I’m very much a neither-and-both person: Nigerian/American, athlete/nerd – and that goes for my writing too. I don’t know who I am, on or off the page.

‘Even my first piece of non-fiction, “The House of Deformities” was magical – a memory of being 8 years old and venturing to the back of an old house in Nigeria to find pink ducks, bulldog puppies and an outhouse that looked like the mouth of hell!

‘My editor describes my work as ‘magical futurism’ – I love the term, but what even IS that?’

Who Fears Death, which features an adolescent protagonist but deals explicitly with issues such as rape and female circumcision, crosses boundaries of fantasy, science-fiction and even horror writing.

‘The closest comparison I can make for Who Fears Death is the movie Pan’s Labyrinth,’ says Nnedi. ‘Both the book and the movie cross a borderline between adult and young adult material, with a young character going through a world which is dark both in terms of monsters and in terms of politics.’

Nnedi’s most provocative literary tool in dealing with these issues is Ginen, a science-fictional world which echoes African cultures and societies.

‘Ginen comes from a lot of things: happy childhood memories of Nigeria, the wishes I have for the future of Africa, and my huge American love of gadgets and technology!’

Ginen isn’t a utopia, except in the most literal sense of the word. Zahrah faces conservatism and prejudice among the populace of her home town. In The Shadow Speaker, Earth and Ginen collide – and Nnedi is scrupulous about documenting the flaws and virtues of both sides in the conflict.

Seeing the best and worst in more than one culture comes easily to Nnedi, with a perspective which is both Nigerian and American at once – something that her publishers initially found challenging.

Nnedi’s children’s book Long Juju Man was pigeonholed as an African novel, with Macmillan only releasing it on that continent, but the proud use of a provocative Igbo term in the title of Akata Witch brings together African and American contexts – a move which is typical of Nnedi’s work.

Akata – a derogatory term for foreign-born black people in Nigeria – came to the author after her editor suggested she change the proposed title Sunny and the Leopard People.

‘A Nigerian man had recently told me, “You’re not really one of us, you don’t speak Igbo, you weren’t born and raised in Nigeria. You’re an Akata!”

‘It’s a word that comes up often if you challenge the patriarchy. African-American women get accused of being lazy, ignorant and loose – corrupted by foreign influence. It’s a powerful slur.

‘At one level, Akata Witch is all about the conflict between and complexities within the world’s African communities – something I’d been meaning to address ever since I started writing. So akata was a perfect word to use in the title.

‘I decided to reclaim it wholly, positively for me – as a compliment. It marks you out as different, and although it denotes ugliness to Nigerians, I refuse to buy into perceived notions of beauty!

‘The same goes for witch – it’s a word that has a lot of weight in Nigeria, where men often use it – not always harshly, to be fair – to signify unmarried, independent and ‘different’ women.’

Next time on Books and Adventures we’ll be looking at books and technology in the novels of Nnedi Okorafor. Find part 3 of this interview here.

Nnedi Okorafor Interview, Part 1: ‘Is everything written? And if it is, can you rewrite it?’

June 19, 2011November 29, 2020Mechanical Dolphin

The novelist Nnedi Okorafor is one of today’s most compelling YA authors. Her books offer a unique mix of African culture, science fiction and fantasy adventure, at once accessible to a wide audience and definitively rooted in a non-Western tradition.

In her latest novel, Akata Witch, all the tropes of Harry Potter and its ilk – the hero’s journey of a young magician, schools of wizardry, teens caught up in a battle for the fate of the world – are rethought and refreshed through a cosmopolitan, transnational perspective that ditches the grey stone and largely white faces of Hogwarts for a tender yet uncompromising Afrocentric vision of the cosmos.

Nnedi’s debut Zahrah the Windseeker won the Wole Soyinka Prize in 2008 – and Akata Witch (which I reviewed here for Brooklyn Rail), takes her writing to new heights.

Sunny, the 12-year-old ‘witch’ of the title, is an albino African-American who returns to Nigeria, her parental homeland, only to be doubly ostracized for her pale skin and US background. Sunny gradually discovers that she has magic powers, and is destined to play a small but vital role in a conflict that threatens the future of humanity.

As Nnedi explained when we met in Chicago’s Senegalese restaurant Yassa, ‘Destiny has always been something I’ve grappled with. Is everything written? And even if it is, can you rewrite it? I’m fascinated by destiny, but I also resist it.’

Nnedi’s own career owes directly to such acts of irresistible fate.

Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, she was a teenage tennis star until surgery for scoliosis left her paralyzed and bedridden at the age of 19.

‘Until then, I’d never have thought to pick up a pen. I was only nineteen, really athletic, but scoliosis painted my life. I left college as an athlete – and came back using a cane!’

A friend recommended that Nnedi take a creative writing class, beginning a journey that took her through journalism, short stories and a PhD thesis en route to her current career as a novelist.

‘My bout of paralysis was terrible, brutal and completely changed my life in a very specific way. In the same way, the kids in Akata Witch are at the mercy of their powers – those gifts are part of who the kids are, but they can’t be chosen. Destiny is brutal, it does not care about you.’

This philosophical perspective shapes even the most action-packed moments of Nnedi’s writing.

In Zahrah, a key moment involves the teenage heroine’s encounter with a giant, deadly ‘whip scorpion’, from which she is ultimately saved by an even larger jungle beast.

Nnedi admits during our interview, ‘I actually stole Zahrah’s escape from the whip scorpion from the first Star Wars prequel – the sea creature chasing our heroes gets eaten by a larger monster, and Liam Neeson says, “There’s always a bigger fish.”

What seems corny in George Lucas’ hands (for a while, I wondered if ‘There’s always a bigger fish’ was going to replace ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’ as the inane Star Wars catchphrase), here ties in to Nnedi’s ideas about humility and fate.

In Akata Witch, Sunny is no Harry Potter, a ‘chosen one’ destined to be a key player in the battle for the survival of the world.

Sunny and her friends are explicitly told by their mentors that they are expendable in the fight against evil: ‘The world is bigger than you are, it will go on without you.’

Nnedi’s writing offers one balm for this uncomfortable truth: the realization that we must appreciate the gifts that life chooses to grant us.

The thrill of Sunny’s first soccer match grips the characters, and the reader, just as much as the climactic final showdown. Akata Witch may puncture the comforting notion of a guaranteed “special destiny,” but it also celebrates the shared adventure of everyday life on our planet.

Next time on this blog, more from my interview with Nnedi Okorafor, as we discuss her genre-busting position as a Young Adult writer whose work refuses to be pigeonholed.

Find the second part of the interview here.