Exhibition and talks to celebrate Children s Book Week

Date: Monday, 3rd August 2009

Children’s Book of the Year author James Moloney will visit Townsville next week to celebrate Children’s Book Week.

Moloney will visit school students on Monday and Tuesday and talk about how he comes up with his ideas and forms them into stories.

For primary grades he will focus on his books Swashbuckler and 68 Teeth, while for older children he’ll concentrate on a ghost story called The Pipe. For all ages, he will talk about his popular fantasy series The Book of Lies, a series whose third instalment was released last month.

James’ talks are entertaining but he also likes to convey the importance of reading, and the writing process.

During his visit, Moloney will also launch the 2009 Children’s Book Week Exhibition at CityLibraries Thuringowa, with Bohlevale State School students. The exhibition, titled ‘Book Safari’, consists of 20 artworks by students throughout Townsville.

In the evening there will be a panel discussion about the future of books.

Panellists will consider the current state of publishing in Australia, and the impact of new visual media such as Google Print on the reading habits of Australians. They will also examine how the Australian Copyright Act will be affected by new parallel importation provisions.

The discussion will be facilitated by Dr Allison Craven, a lecturer in humanities at James Cook University. Panel members will be:
• James Moloney
• Jeanie Adams from Black Ink Press
• Lisette Ogg from Queensland Writers’ Centre
• Sue Cole from Mary Who Bookshop

Panellists’ biographies:

James Moloney was born in Sydney and moved to Brisbane when he was seven. After university he became a teacher and then a teacher librarian. In 1977-78 he began teaching in Cunnamulla, “a little outback town” with many indigenous Australians. These turned out to be important years for his writing.
After travelling the world, James worked at Marist College, Brisbane, where he stayed for 15 years. He became interested in writing for young people, initially using ideas and experiences from his time in Cunnamulla, mixed with his thoughts and reflections from overseas.
After his early attempts were rejected, his first novel, Crossfire, was published in 1992. In 1997, James’ fifth novel for young adults, A Bridge to Wiseman’s Cove won the Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award. He left teaching and became a fulltime writer. Since then he has won many Australian awards for his children’s and young adult novels. James visits schools around the country and has conducted a number of Writer in Residence programs. In all his books, James’ characters live through his unerring and sympathetic perception of young people from various backgrounds.

Jeanie Adams is a writer, illustrator and publisher. After living in Aurukun for a number of years, Jeanie was surprised at the lack of books written for Aboriginal children. It was there that she wrote and illustrated her two children’s picture books, Pigs and Honey and Going for Oysters. Since leaving Aurukun, Jeanie founded Black Ink Press, a business working to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors and illustrators turn their manuscripts into novels, and illustrations into picture books.

Lisette Ogg is a Graduate of Queensland University of Technology’s Publishing and Editing course and the Youth Artists Mentoring Program offered by Youth Arts Queensland. Lisette has worked as a feature writer for magazines and within the public programs team at the State Library of Queensland.

Dr Allison Craven lectures in humanities at James Cook University. She has published on Disney film, gender and globalisation, and children’s literature and education. She is currently working on a suite of papers concerning Australian films set in Queensland.

Sue Cole has been manager and co-owner of the Mary Who? Bookshop for nearly 20 years, and has a degree in English Literature from James Cook University. Mary Who? has been a vibrant and essential part of Townsville`s culture for three decades, and Sue is passionate about the role of independent bookshops in society.