wild awake, this time in australian

Here's the Aus & NZ cover for Hilary T Smith's incandescent debut novel Wild Awake, published here by HGE.

Things you earnestly believe will happen while your parents are away: 

1. You will remember to water the azaleas.
2. You will take detailed, accurate messages.
3. You will call your older brother, Denny, if even the slightest thing goes wrong.
4. You and your best friend/bandmate Lukas will win Battle of the Bands.
5. Amid the thrill of victory, Lukas will finally realize you are the girl of his dreams.

Things that actually happen: 

1. A stranger calls who says he knew your sister.
2. He says he has her stuff.
3. What stuff? Her stuff.
4. You tell him your parents won’t be able to –
5. Sukey died five years ago; can’t he –
6. You pick up a pen.
7. You scribble down the address.
8. You get on your bike and go.
9. Things … get a little crazy after that.*
* also, you fall in love, but not with Lukas.

Both exhilarating and wrenching, Hilary T. Smith’s debut novel captures the messy glory of being alive, as seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd discovers love, loss, chaos, and murder woven into a summer of music, madness, piercing heartbreak, and intoxicating joy.


Click here and here for more.

my cover or yours - back again!

i think that necro-sexpections might be against the law.

also, if you like it then you should have put a crow on it. *doing beyoncé dance*

the bean enchiladas

this is my kind of cookbook. a lovely cover, mexican food and a cute little chicken making a joke.



my abuela's table, daniella germain (hardie grant)

my cover or yours? revisisted

'tis a curious thing to have the same photo on multiple books. here are two (or is that one?) that came into the shop last week.


the memory of love, aminatta forna (bloomsbury, april 2011)
someone knows my name, lawrence hill (4th estate, october 2009 - pb ed)

on one hand i think it's kind of cheating, just taking photos from the interwebs. wouldn't it be better to have an original cover. i suppose one has to think of the $ and the time it takes, too. but i do love seeing how designers can be tricky though - taking away (or maybe adding?) a scar here or there, changing the brightness and light, the colours. it's very clever. one day at my interny home recently i was shown lots of different covers for one book to see how they came to the final choice. things like make up put on, make up removed, hair, skin, background design...it was really quite impressive.

think i shall away to master photoshop...

previous my cover or yours? here.

sigh...again??

so i've got my review of across the universe by beth revis almost ready to go (up tomorrow - i liked it) but it was so disappointing and anger-making when i read yesterday that they've altered the cover photograph between the reading copy covers and the final released product and now the male (so the character 'elder') looks less black and more caucasian. elder the character is supposed to be a homogenised mix of all earth's races and is described as having dark skin and almond-shaped eyes. make of that what you will.

i think the issue is bigger than these individual covers (see my posts about other 'whitewashed' covers here and here) and raises important questions about our perception of beauty and attractiveness (how angry i got at the comments yesterday that said "oh they just made him better looking" wtf?!?!), about publicity, as well as our global perception on race and ethnicity and how it is represented in popular culture.

if you want to read more about this particular issue, click on the linkys:

best damn creative writing blog

the interrobangs

review : trash

trash, by andy mulligan (david fickling books)

"my name is raphael fernandez and i am a dumpsite boy."

and thus part one of trash begins. eleven-year-old raphael is frank and unrestrained as he describes his daily work in the dumpite of behala, sifting through the city's rubbish to find something they can sell (tyres are good, so's plastic) and you're with him completely by the time he finds a bag among all the stupp (shit) and inside the bag: money, a map, a key, an ID card and two photos of a little girl. we already know, raphael has already told us, that this is an 'unlucky-lucky day, the day the world turned upside down.'

the story is told in the enigmatic voices of raphael, his friend-brother gardo, the smart and solitary rat (real name jun-jun, renamed 'because he lived with the rats and had come to look like one'), the kind father julliard and the naive, well-meaning olivia. they take it in turns to spin the tale, speaking from some point in the future when the story is over. they recount just how they all became involved in this tale of money, corruption, police brutality, real poverty and real hope. there are similarities to the film slumdog millionaire here, as other reviews have noted, and certainly those who enjoyed that film will also appreciate trash.

the characters come alive in these pages and remain with the reader long after they finish the book. the writing is wonderful and very evocative and the codes and puzzles in the story work nicely. although this book is quite confronting, when i think about the scenes in the prisons and the two chase scenes towards the end and not to mention the terrible conditions these kids live in, this would be an excellent read for children 10+ and particularly excellent for families to read together. and grown-ups should read it too, even if they don't have kids. and just look at that cover - beautiful.

and oh! the ending! it's wonderful!

trash goes onto my top ten list of favourite books of the year. easily.

andy mulligan's website is here.

and the spud goes to...

why have they made a different cover for the third spud book (aka spud: learning to fly, by john van de ruit)? my mild, self-diagnosed OCD is not happy.

i love the spud books. LOVE them. i mean even just on the surface they are hysterical: it's basically adrian mole, but set in a almost archaic south african boarding school with the most hilarious caricatures for teachers, an insane group of dormmates (quickly christened the "crazy eight")...and vern. cannot go past 'im. the best 100% bonkers character to come out of a book since...mrs rochester??? but more entertaining.

i love how authentic it is: spud learns a new word, or is introduced to a book by the guv and spells it phonetically until he realises how it's really spelled, what it really means. fab.

but the the new, weird, cover? less fab.

but i'm sure in the inside bit it's awesome.

i'll know soon - this book is already in my possession and aching to be read.

spudspudspud...

(also can't wait to see what dad and the wombat are up to now)