Dashing Off

After last week's excitement of The Chalkface Challenge Winner, Jill Atkins - (do go and read Jill's winning entry - it's what 7-9 year old readers LOVE) and Nick's excellent takeover on this spot, at 6pm we have the Chalkface Shadow Results.
It's the most interesting part of the competition and highlights what we all know: that to a great extent, judgements about our work are subjective. The shadow judges would like to have picked the same as the children - check in at 6pm to find out if they did.

This week somebody close to me, thinking I might like it, played me this:




I'm not sure I do like all of it it. I've always thought of grammar enslavement as the enemy of voice  - particularly an authentic child's voice. Children are more creative and find much more interesting ways to express themselves and make sense of their feelings. What do you think?

On the other hand Catriona's dashes are definitely something I need to revise as I do all punctuation as you can probably tell by this dash-filled post. Correct punctuation is definitely voice's friend as well known from the danger of the missing comma when calling Grandma for dinner - Let's eat Grandma!

Nicky's debut series is going to be fabulous (actually I already know it is) if her first interview with Jo Franklin is anything to go on and I loved how Jo, the not-long-arrived went so well with Philippa's nearly-there. 

What a great week for illustration too. If you're anywhere near Mottisfont Abbey (near Romsey in Hampshire) and are a paid up card carrying National Trust member you can't afford to miss the exhibition of children's illustration on at the moment. If you go on August 3rd you may catch SCBWI Member, 2014 Chalkface Challenge teacher and W&P sub editor, Lorraine Cooke reading. And already I'm getting excited about this year's illustrators' juried exhibition which premieres at the conference...

Conference bookings now open - WHAT a line up!

Alex Wilson, our new featured illustrator, won best portfolio at last year's conference. If you haven't yet taken a look at his gallery please do NOW - I want it all on my wall!

For line ups you can't go wrong with Nick Cross - every week I love his choices and this week was no different though it does add lots of 'to do's to my list e.g.

  • hire a skip
  • frame and hang more of my own children's early artwork 
  • possibly buy bigger house with more walls
  • Book for next year's YALC 
Again many thanks to Nick for taking control of this spot last week.

Don't forget: Chalkface Challenge Shadow results will be up at 6pm today!
Did the shadows choose the same as the children?

and on stonkingly good opportunities, you have…


one week to enter 

the Christmas in July Slush Pile Challenge!

Next week look out for:

  • Not one but TWO more debuts - Liz de Jager and Jeannie Waudby
  • A guest blog break from Philippa as it's Nick's turn for a holiday
  • Edinburgh based literary agent, Lindsey Fraser

Though dashing off a post is challenging, me dashing off to Edinburgh for a few days on Wednesday isn't - excited!
Stay cool if you can,

Jan Carr




Jan Carr is the editor of Words & Pictures. Her fiction is all over the place, she blogs occasionally and loves to write in magenta. You can contact her at editor@britishscbwi.org.

1 comment:

  1. Dashing off ideas have almost influenced around the students who have even developed more of the concerning objects and would almost be able to regard about further.

    ReplyDelete

We love comments and really appreciate the time it takes to leave one.
Interesting and pithy reactions to a post are brilliant but we also LOVE it when people just say they've read and enjoyed.
We've made it easy to comment by losing the 'are you human?' test, which means we get a lot of spam. Fortunately, Blogger recognises these, so most, if not all, anonymous comments are deleted without reading.

Words & Pictures is the Online Magazine of SCBWI British Isles. Powered by Blogger.