Dream on
There's a lively discussion at Leaf Salon about the shortlist for the NZ Post children's book awards. Some contributors feel that Elizabeth Knox's young adult novel Dreamhunter should have made the list. The first post is by Fergus, who writes, "This will probably sound like sour grapes, but..."
Knox's husband and publisher is the estimable Fergus Barrowman. I wonder if by any chance they could be related?
Knox's husband and publisher is the estimable Fergus Barrowman. I wonder if by any chance they could be related?
posted by Stephen Stratford at 7:58 PM
7 Comments:
Maybe the judges just didn't like it. Rightly or wrongly, I don't know. But some people on those posts seem to think there was an agenda.
Does seem a strange omission... I have a copy & shall read it to decide for myself.
I shall also be asking fergus to comment should SunnyO not make the Netguide awards shortlist.
Hey, SunnyO! I thought we had a deal - we support you for the last lot. The Netguide's are ours!
Not that I really care about awards. Of course.
The judges always get them wrong. Look at the Grammys. And the Oscars. And - according to last week's Sunday Star-Times, the NZ honours system, otherwise known as the Gong Show. Nearly as bad as the NZ Post children's book awards.
Absolutely Rob, I'd still like Fergus (a neighbour) to have an outraged bleat though. Should the occasion arise.
Knox's Dreamhunter is about to come out in the US. Booklist has this to say: 'Readers pining for a fantasist to rival Philip Pullman or Garth Nix may have finally found what they seek in New Zealander Knox...'
The NZ Post Award judges would perhaps 'not have liked' Pullman and Nix either?
Fergus came back to the topic, to explain why he was so mad: "... prizes are by far the most widespread and powerful instruments for the creation of cultural capital, and cites children's literature as one on the few fields of cultural consumption in which prizes have a more direct and powerful effect on sales than video porn.
"In the Montanas, the very complex system of categories and specialist advisers essentially exists to give credibility to a process that delivers its commercial benefit almost exclusively to one or two winners.
"But the NZ Post shifts significant quantities of all the shortlisted books, which is why it matters, and why it is a mistake to regard it cynically as just a lottery."
I have to say that I agree there.
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