Combine your Book Week and footy day celebrations with one exciting event.

Felice Arena, award-winning author of the Specky Magee series, is hosting a fun and interactive presentation for Book and Literacy Weeks only. Suitable for prep to grade 6, Felice will have the whole school buzzing with excitement. Get into your footy gear, practice your marking skills and get ready to show off your best slow-motion replay, Specky Magee is coming to town!

Take this flyer to your next meeting and call us to book your session. Smaller schools could consider teaming up with neighbouring schools to make one big event.

Earlier this week Rob Forbes, an English teacher at Kyneton Secondary College, wrote a thought provoking opinion piece in The Age. Titled‘Corporate-speak sucks the life out of our education system’ the piece discussed the power of language in shaping thought and identity and the way this power is increasingly misused across different parts of contemporary society including politics, the education sector and the corporate world. The danger of this corporate speak, Forbes wrote, is that it can ‘deaden’ minds and ‘contract our horizons’; a scary proposition when considering the role of education.

Reading the piece brought to mind three events from over the past week. The first was a type of booking enquiry we regularly receive from a secondary school teacher asking for guidance in selecting an author capable of engaging a less academically inclined English class. The others were at various events – standing in a crowd of spell-bound folk listening to Cate Kennedy read a poem at the launch of her latest collection on Friday and sitting at the launch of The Emerging Writers Festival and hearing Meg Mundell sweep the audience into another realm with the artistry of her words. For Rob’s piece closes with the question ‘who do we want to help create the minds of future generations – rigid-thinking bureaucrats, or vibrant real people who speak and write language young people understand?’ Over the last week, as per any week of the year, various ‘Booked Outers’ have been visiting schools, libraries and festivals doing just that – using their skills as wordsmiths to engage, excite and open up new worlds.

• Tanya Massy, Booked Out.

Cath Crowley’s Graffiti Moon just goes from strength to strength with a shortlisting in the Young Adult category of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards to add to her recent win in the 2011 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Morris Gleitzman is also shortlisted for a PM award, in the Children’s category for Now.

In other literary news, Karen Healey has won the Aurealis Award for best Young Adult Novel with Guardian of the Dead. The awards acknowledge the best writing in Australian science-fiction and fantasy. Her latest novel The Shattering has been receiving stellar reviews also. A name to watch!

Author Steph Bowe is the first in a long line of speakers Booked Out has arranged to conduct online residencies for the Brisbane Libraries online project, iBrary. The project hosts each author for a month, running a blog and then also online discussion boards. Take a look at what she’s been up to so far, over at iBrary.

It appears this month many Booked Outers are pondering the same thing: is literature sexist?

As mentioned earlier in a news post, Dr Leslie Cannold gave a fantastic lunchbox/soapbox address at The Wheeler Centre on the importance of female fictional characters across the entire virtue spectrum from the good girl to the villainess. This was published in The Sydney Morning Herald as the opinion article Fighting for the right to be equally mediocre.

Benjamin Law’s article, A prize of one’s own: the case for an Aussie Orange over at ABC’s The Drum has attracted a lot of heated discussion. He weighs in on the debate over literary prizes that are open only to female authors. There’s been a push to introduce an Australian version of the UK’s Orange Prize which is awarded only to women. Benjamin – in his trademark witty/crass/intelligent way – unpacks the pros and cons and ends up not only backing the idea, but offers some inspiration as to potential corporate sponsorship.

According to a recent Guardian article, the problem isn’t just for grown-ups. Children’s literature is also male-dominated according to a recent study. A concept children’s author and illustrator Sally Rippin explores over at her blog in a post today, Is the Hungry Caterpillar a boy or a girl?

Is there a collective noun for authors? Last weekend a herd/pod/mob of Booked Out authors headed north for the sparkly Gold Coast Literati Festival.

Angela Savage has treated us to an insightful write-up of the literary weekender, in two parts here and here.

Angela was paired up with fellow female crime writers, LA Larkin and PM Newton for the aptly named panel Deadlier than the male? as well as the adorable Kate Holden for a discussion of the impact of setting on a story. Daniel Ducrou was also up there to talk about setting in his session on “Slightly obscure” towns. Nick Earls and Max Barry spilled the beans on being published overseas. And Gregory Day, David Astle, Tony Wilson and Peter Rix shared some of their trade secrets with aspiring authors.

Congratulations to Cath Crowley for winning the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature in the recently announced 2011 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.

Graffiti Moon is Cath’s fifth young adult novel and has been one of our fave YA picks in the office of late.

The full list of award winners can be found here.

Morris Gleitzman has just released his 32nd book, Too Small to Fail.

Who better than Morris to tackle the issue of the global financial crisis and use it as the backdrop for a comic and poignant account of one boy’s longing for a caring family and love for a puppy.

At The Little Bookroom last week the book was launched by a very confident and funny 12 yr old. Harriet Walker – a name to watch – held the audience with great humour and insight as she gave her review about the hapless Oliver and his merchant banker parents who give him everything the wants except love and a puppy.

The talented Bec Kavanagh recently interviewed Meg Mundell for the A Thousand Words newsletter. We’ve taken a snippet of the Q&A below and the full interview can be read here.

A Thousand Words has a competition for readers under 18 years of age to win a free copy of Meg’s debut novel Black Glass. To enter email bec@athousandwordsfestival.com.au and describe what smell brings back the strongest memories for you and why.

The ‘moodies’ (characters who control the atmosphere of a room by altering peoples sensory experience) are fascinating. Where did the idea for these artists come from?

Partly that came from my past experience working as a DJ, watching how different sounds would affect the behaviour of a crowd. Also I’m interested in space and the senses, and how we experience different places through sound, colour, touch, smell. And I wanted the Moodie to be a creative character who has to face some tricky moral questions – is it ethical to secretly control people in this way? Where does art stop and greed take over?

What kind of research did you do to be able to describe so well the kinds of scents and sounds that the majority of readers would respond to in the same way as the characters?

Well, I did a lot of sniffing! Strange, but true. I looked into the effects of certain smells, colours and sounds on human behaviour. There are all sorts of theories and experiments circling around out there. For example, about half of the casinos in Las Vegas pump special smells through their air-conditioning systems to encourage people to stay longer and spend more money. Apparently fast-food restaurants often use the colours red and yellow, which stimulate your appetite, so you eat fast and move on, leaving your table free for another customer. And at some train stations overseas they play dodgy, uncool “muzak” through the speakers to discourage teenagers from hanging around. Those sorts of ideas found their way into the book.

A Thousand Words is an Australian literature festival that celebrates children’s stories, brings books out of the classroom and helps to develop a wide-reaching network for readers and writers. The [missing asset] festival runs September 23-24, 2011.

Fans of the cryptic crosswords appearing in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald will bring recollections of many hours spent wrestling with words to find solutions planned out by the puzzle creator, DA.

More recent initiates, fans of SBS television’s Letters and Numbers will have more to go on: a face and a full name to put to the initials.

This man is David Astle, and he is the subject of a large scale portrait by Melbourne artist Amanda Marburg, which is a finalist in this years 90th installment of the prestigious Archibald Prize. Marburg’s art practice has long relied on painstaking reproduction, in oil on linen, of plasticine sculptures she makes of her subjects.

The Archibald continues at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until 26 June, before going on tour around Australia.

Amanda Marburg’s image is used courtesy the artist, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Rex Irwin Art Dealer.