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Posted: 24 Mar 2013 08:19 AM PDT

Alice-Miranda is set for more adventures.

IN Alice-Miranda At School by Jacqueline Harvey, the titular character makes a phone call to her parents and is greeted with "Oh, darling, so it really is awful? We'll come and get you straight away."

Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones is not your average seven-year-old. For one, her full name is a mouthful and she's in her first year of boarding school at the posh Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale Academy for Proper Young Ladies. Imagine going through the first day of boarding school with a long name like that. Then, instead of crying to mum and dad about how awful it all is, Alice-Miranda loves every minute of it – much to the dismay of her clingy parents!

In an exclusive telephone interview from Singapore where the Australian author is currently on a whirlwind book tour, Harvey explains how the whimsical book series about a very articulate and affable young girl came to be.

"I started writing Alice-Miranda as a character for a picture book. Over time, I realised that she had so much more to say so I decide to expand it into a book," says Harvey.

Could the inspiration for Alice-Miranda have come from Harvey's life experience as a teacher at boarding schools? After all, till October last year, Harvey served as deputy of development at a girls school in Sydney, Australia.

"No, Alice-Miranda is not based on any specific student that I personally know. But I've met a lot of children in my line of work and I can say that some of them have inspired me to write Alice-Miranda."

The Alice-Miranda series has been around and growing in popularity since 2010, when In School was first published. Since then, Alice-Miranda has gone from adventures in school and on a cruise to New York city, and now to a fashion runway in Paris. Harvey is delighted to talk about the latest Alice-Miranda In Paris book.

"The book is the seventh one in the series and it follows Alice-Miranda on a school-trip to Paris. As usual, she goes on an adventure, solving mysteries and meeting new friends. One of them is a fashion designer who says he's been robbed. Alice-Miranda also finds out that there's more to the fashion designer than meets the eye."

Harvey describes Alice-Miranda as a "perpetually positive seven-year-old", someone who will stop at nothing to help anyone in need. In the first book, Alice-Miranda In School, for instance, where Alice-Miranda is very much the new kid on the block, she decides to take matters into her own hand to a couple of troubled characters she meets. The new girl also encounters bullies (one of them is snooty Alethea Goldsworthy – hell hath not seen fury like a spoilt child scorned) and a seemingly hostile headmistress (the appropriately named Miss Grimm).

"What I really like about Alice-Miranda is that she chooses to see the good in everyone. Whenever someone is mean to her, she sees past the behaviour and often thinks that there is a valid reason for someone to be that way."

For Harvey, the process of writing Alice-Miranda is about "finding the right voice". Bullying is a prevalent theme in the Alice-Miranda series and Harvey thinks it's something that a lot of her young readers can relate to.

"It's such an age-old issue. I think any school that says bullying doesn't happen on their premises is lying. In fact, most parents don't know how to talk to their children about how to overcome bullies."

Apart from Alice-Miranda, Harvey also has another series for younger readers. Clementine Rose is a charming series which revolves around the adventures of a little girl and her pet teacup pig, Lavender. So far there are three books in the series and Harvey happily says that Clementine Rose will crossover with Alice-Miranda.

"Oh yes, it's going to happen. Readers have to watch out for the next Clementine Rose book!"

> Jacqueline Harvey's books are available at Times bookstores Malaysia as well as other major bookstores. The books are distributed by Pansing.

Haunted by the past

Posted: 24 Mar 2013 01:19 AM PDT

An author attempts to explain today's driven Chinese through the lives of three women who grew up during the Cultural Revolution.

The Bathing Women

Author: Tie Ning

Publisher: Blue Door, 368 pages

THIS book has a huge span, from the Cultural Revolution all the way to the go-go years of modern China. And just as vast as that period, just as much China has evolved in that time – that is how much change the characters in The Bathing Women undergo.

In the end, as China begins to move awkwardly into modernity, the characters come to terms with their own identities, accepting their personalities that have so acutely been shaped by their country's history. Still, there are voids, strange voids.

A feminist fiction set against the backdrop of tumultuous revolution and economic reform, this book is an allegory that focuses on misogyny, deprivation, rivalry, friendships, and romance.

Having grown up during a period of history when no one is spared grief, the four characters of the story emerge as adults among the early waves of China's race to modernise. But the pain they suffer from the past continues to haunt them.

Fei, a beautiful orphan whose mother was condemned publicly as a female "hooligan" for bearing a fatherless child, grew up using arrogance as her defence and beauty as her weapon. She walks into an adulthood in which men become rich overnight but have not learned to conceal their vulgarity, and withers away, failing to find true love and be united with her biological father.

The contrast between the younger and older Fei is striking, though it emerges slowly as Fei, after all, is not the main character.

The central characters, Tiao and Fan, are sisters who have hazy recollections of a childhood during which a suffering people succumbed to the nihilism of failed political dogma. As the intellects are wasting away doing hard labour, their children bob around, observing pain and experiencing suffering. Tioa and Fan witness their mother's affair with a "small-eyed" doctor, who impregnates her despite his eager clumsiness. The new, youngest, daughter, the apple of their mother's eyes, falls into a manhole one day, an "accident" perpetrated by Tiao and Fan and their friend Fei.

Or was the tragedy caused by the voids in them, the holes caused by not being loved, not being cared for, not having enough to eat?

Such voids can't be filled, not even with the abundance that ensues when China opens its doors to the world.

Fei's helplessness epitomises the helpless feeling of many Chinese women who chase after their dreams in such economic tides. The void inside gnaws at her soul, and the eventual disease washes her away.

Tiao looks for love all her life, though true love is right next to her and has been since childhood. His love is indiscernible, as if anything from the vacuum of the past is highly improbable. "Kindness and forgiveness with a reason do not exist, that's for fairy tales," writes author Tie Ning, reflecting on the scepticism Tiao feels for human benevolence.

Tiao's younger sister Fan becomes an oddity, confused about her own identity in a foreign land and in her own bitter jealousy over her own sister.

Tiao is said to have pulled on Fan's hand to stop her from rescuing their illegitimate sister. But was it Fan who had a more decisive pull on Tiao's hand?

That tragic part of their lives has left a void, blurring their memories. But keen readers know – they both stopped each other from averting the tragic death from happening. That denial has left a void, giving Fan a reason to despise her sister.

This book is not just about suffering and how it is borne; it is about the affliction of pain in a dark period when every existence is denied, and that denial is firmly etched in people's mind as a norm of society, causing them to distrust and disbelieve.

"Some events out of the past are taboo subjects," writes Tie Ning.

China has already developed beyond this stage at which Fei, Tiao and Fan live in this entertaining, coming-of-age as adults fiction, and taboo subjects that come out of China's past continue to shock and dumbfound the rest of the world.

If the lives of Fei, Tiao and Fan exemplify life under the old regime and the beginnings of the economic tidal wave, we wonder how many other lives are also haunted by China's dark history and to what extent have personalities been shaped by it.

Whether or not the stiff translation has done the book poor justice, or whether the context is dated because the book was originally published in China in 2000, The Bathing Women does provide a glimpse into the old "forbidden kingdom" and an explanation for why Chinese distrustfulness, desperation, and burning desire to disassociate themselves from the past may somehow force the return of a meaningless revolution.

Not an easy job

Posted: 24 Mar 2013 01:16 AM PDT

THE late Maurice Sendak, or his work at any rate, is never far from my thoughts. He is my favourite write-illustrator although I do not always like his art. Believe it or not, I feel more enthusiasm for some of his stories than I do for his illustrations.

Higgledy Piggledy Pop, which my friend the author Rukhsana Khan thinks is rubbish, fills me with unaccountable (Rukhsana would roll her eyes) delight. Very Far Away is, to me, the most perfect and subtle portrayal of sibling rivalry and resentment, and the need children have to feel valued and heard. The Sign On Rosie's Door introduces readers to the most singular sensation who ever lived, on the earth or on the page. (I suspect my daughter is Rosie made flesh.) Where The Wild Things Are is exciting, astonishing and tender, full of anger and energy and love. Surely it's the best handbook for mothers of little boys.

I recently bought The Comics Journal's special issue on Maurice Sendak (who died last year aged 83). Among other interesting material there are two long interviews (the last interviews) with the man, totalling 71 pages (bliss!). In a retrospective on Sendak's work and life, the writer of the article, Philip Nel, says: "It seems wrong to limit him to the realm of children". Indeed, Sendak did more than write and illustrate children's books. He also designed album covers, dust jackets for novels, posters, and ballet and opera sets.

He is of course best known as a children's book illustrator and writer, but he didn't like the association because, in my opinion, he felt it caused people to think less of him. This is a problem everyone working in the field of children's literature faces. The ignorance and prejudice is mind boggling and, I suspect, will always exist: I don't think the world will ever be rid of narrow-minded donkeys, and we will always have to contend with insecure snobs who need to dismiss what they don't (or refuse to) understand in order to make themselves feel better and special.

In Malaysia (and perhaps the rest of the world too), it seems that there are a great many people who wish to write because they think it will bring them fame and fortune. A portion of these people choose to write for children because they feel it's easier than writing for adults. Then there are those who shrink at the mere suggestion that they write for young readers: "How dare you! I'm too good for that!"

Those of us who do write (for readers of all ages) will attest that it's bloody difficult to write well for anyone, and that it's laughable to imagine that you're too good for one or the other, or, indeed, good at all. We're all learning all the time, and hopefully we get better the more we do it but it's the slippery slope to nowhere to think you're god's gift to the writing world.

The Asian Festival of Children's Content will be on again this year in Singapore. Anyone who's thinking of writing or illustrating children's or young adult books should consider attending the Writers and Illustrators Conference (May 28 and 29) which is part of the festival. It's a good place to network with writers, illustrators, editors, publishers and others in the industry, and also to find out the reality of how things work in the region.

Speakers this year include the inspiring and talented illustrator and writer Naomi Kojima from Japan, the entertaining and effervescent Australian author Susanne Gervay, Golda Mowe the author of the brilliant Malaysian fantasy novel Iban Dream, and comic artist and Eisner nominee (the Oscars of the comic book industry) Sonny Liew. Malaysian speakers include Tutta Dutta-Yean, the author of several anthologies inspired by Asian myths and legends, and award-winning short story writer and young adult novelist Teoh Choon Ean. I too will be there at a panel discussing Asian themes in children's books.

While you won't get to meet anyone as exciting as Maurice Sendak, I don't doubt that the line-up at this year's festival will offer much food for thought and fodder for discussion.

> Daphne Lee is a writer, editor, book reviewer and teacher. She runs a Facebook group, called The Places You Will Go, for lovers of all kinds of literature. Write to her at star2@thestar.com.my.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 24 Mac 2013

The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

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