JOHNNY SWANSON

Johnny Swanson is in the shops now, and has been greeted by wonderful reviews.  You can read some of them in full lower down this page, but here are a couple of tasters. Philip Ardagh in The Guardian said:

Updale writes with such obvious relish that fun exudes from the ink on every page. This is real entertainment. Johnny Swanson is just the kind of book for which the term "joyous romp" was invented.

Amanda Craig in The Times said, ’Updale doesn’t put a foot wrong in this marvellous tale’.

Here’s a picture of the (rather unusual) cover. You may already have seen the front of it, but I thought you’d like a look at the whole thing, including the flaps that wrap round the book.

 

 

PICTURES FROM THE LAUNCH PARTY

We had a great time at the launch. 

Because the book is set in 1929, I dressed up in the style of the time. This is me, outside the Kew Bookshop before the party started:

And here I am with Jacqueline Wilson...

...and Francesca Simon

If you want to come and see me talking about Johnny Swanson, I’ll be at  the Edinburgh Book Festival on 15th August, and the Cheltenham Festival on 16th October.

 

JOHNNY SWANSON is very different from my Montmorency books.  It’s set in 1929, more than a decade after the end of World War I, when any glamour associated with the war had well and truly worn off.  The book features advertising, tuberculosis and murder.  The main character is a boy whose efforts to help his mother end up threatening her life - and he is the only person who can save her.  That sounds more grim than the book is.  There’s plenty of humour, too.  I hope you’ll get to love Johnny, Winnie, Hutch and Olwen as much as you love Montmorency and his friends.

REVIEWS

Here is the Text of the Guardian review from May 8 2010.  You can find the original at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/08/johnny-swanson-eleanor-updale-review

When researching her first foray into children’s fiction – the marvellous Montmorency novels – Eleanor Updale found herself deep beneath the streets of London in a public sewer. It’s unlikely that any such strenuous preparations were required for Johnny Swanson, save perhaps a trip to the former sanatorium of Craig-y-Nos Castle in Wales, which is today, rather conveniently, a hotel. This latest novel is, I would suggest, pitched at a slightly younger audience than Montmorency (though a thoroughly enjoyable read for this adult), and is in an undeniably lighter vein.

The story has three main strands: the schoolboy Johnny Swanson earning income from the personal ads; the spread of tuberculosis in the 1920s; and the up-to-no-good skulduggery – what other kind is there? – that somehow bridges these first two strands.

Johnny gets into the personal ads business when he sends off a two-shillings-and-sixpenny postal order to find out the SECRET OF INSTANT HEIGHT. (Their capitals.) If you’ve no idea what two shillings and sixpence is, or a postal order come to that, you’ll soon find out. Johnny doesn’t have that much money, so he "borrows" it in the not-actually-asking-but-having-every-intention-of-paying-it-back sense. When buying the postal order from the local post office, he creates a fictional Aunt Ada, pretending that she’s sick and will be spending the two-and-six to buy a train ticket to come and stay with him and his mother. The response (the secret of instant height) when it finally arrives, is not quite what Johnny expected. It is to stand on a box. He feels outraged and more than a little stupid.

Rather than seek revenge, he sees the potential in such a scheme, or rather scam. He soon starts coming up with advertisements of his own. To do this, his fictitious aunt has a new use: as the "adult" placing the ads for whom he is apparently running errands. When Johnny’s mother is taken away and charged with a serious crime, "Aunt Ada" takes on an even more significant role. She’s the nonexistent responsible adult supposedly looking after him, thus freeing him to do the best he can to prove his mother innocent.

At one time, a quarter of all UK deaths were attributed to tuberculosis and, right up until a cure was found in the 1940s, tens of thousands of people were affected every year, many of whom died. In 1929 – when this book is set – a supposed cure, known as Umckaloabo, was advertised in the press; an advertisement even less honest than Johnny’s "official portrait of the king for one shilling". (Anyone who sent off for that one received a postage stamp. Well, there really was a picture of the king’s head on it.)

When Johnny plays detective, don’t expect a story of intricate, multilayered plotting and subtle subterfuge. Johnny Swanson is very much of the plot-exposition-as-dialogue-overheard-by-an-eavesdropper-conveniently-under-the-table-at-the-time school of detective fiction. There’s no real need for the strenuous application of little grey cells here. Events move at a fair lick, and revelation follows revelation. Updale writes with such obvious relish that fun exudes from the ink on every page. This is real entertainment. Johnny Swanson is just the kind of book for which the term "joyous romp" was invented.

Amanda Craig’s review in The Times can be found at 

http://www.amandacraig.com/pages/journalism_01/journalism_01_item.asp?journalism_01ID=116

Here’s what she said:

Johnny Swanson would make a splendid TV drama, if any of the TV stations could wrest their budgets away from the tat currently on offer. Much as I enjoyed the Montmorency series, Johnny Swanson is of a different order, and it deserves to win prizes. Too often, modern authors use fantasy as an escape from the real evils that classic children’s literature confronts – much as adult literary fiction currently, and shamefully, uses history. This, at long last, is a corrective.

 

MICHAEL MORPURGO  chose Johnny Swanson as one of his ’Hot Tickets’ in The Times.  Here’s a picture of that article.  You can imagine how chuffed I feel to be sandwiched between Outnumbered and Carol Ann Duffy.

 

 

And here’s what the Daily Mail had to say on May 21st:

 

 

LINKS TO OTHER REVIEWS:

People have been very kind about Johnny Swanson on various websites and blogs.  Here are some links:

Write Away:  
http://www.writeaway.org.uk/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,5539/Itemid,99999999/

The Book Bag:   

http://thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php?title=Johnny_Swanson_by_Eleanor_Updale

Bookwitch:

 http://bookwitch.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/johnny-swanson/

Adele Geras:  

http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2010/04/reviews-by-adele-geras.html

Armadillo:

http://sites.google.com/site/armadillomagazine/teenage2#TOC-Johnny-Swanson

Readplus:

http://www.readplus.co.uk/blog_detail.php?id=1152

Like all my books, JOHNNY SWANSON is a mixture of fact and fiction; and as usual, some of the most unlikely things are the real ones.  There really was something called Umckaloabo.  You’ll have to read the book to find out what it was.  Do you know what a ’clong’ is?  Probably not.  Read Johnny Swanson to find out.

MONTMORENCY

I’m really excited about JOHNNY SWANSON, not least because the publication of the fifth MONTMORENCY book looks further away than ever.  To everyone who has been so kind - emailing me to ask for more - I can only say that I want another episode as much as you do.  But I don’t publish the books.  Of course I won’t spoil things by telling you what is going to happen next, but I don’t think it will do any harm to reassure anyone who is worried about Montmorency’s plight in that hotel room in Paterson.  He survives.  But that’s all I’ll tell you for now.

PRIZES

I’ve cut out a lot about MONTMORENCY to make room for the latest news on Johnny, but never fear - dear old M is still very much on my mind, and you can read more about Montmorency on the ’Books’ page of this website.  Here’s a quick reminder of some of the prizes the various books in the MONTMORENCY series have won:

The Blue Peter Award for ’The Book I Couldn’t Put Down’

The Silver Smarties Prize

The Medway Book Award

the Southern Schools Book Award

the American Library Association ’Best Book of the Year for Young Adults’ (twice)

New York Public Library: Book for the Teen Age 

USA School Library Journal: Best Book of the Year

USA Book Sense 76 Pick

USA National Public Radio: Recommended Summer Read

The Children’s Book Council of the USA chose Montmorency on the Rocks as one of the Outstanding International Books for 2006.

All the Montmorency books have been on awards shortlists, including the Askew’s Torchlight Award, and the Branford Boase Prize. MONTMORENCY’S REVENGE was included in the School Library Association’s list of Riveting Reads.

SAVED, published by Barrington Stoke, was longlisted for the UK Literacy Association’s Children’s Book Award.

 

NEWS ABOUT ME

I recently wrote an article for the Times Educational Supplement in which I argued the case against homework.  I have had masses of emails agreeing with me.  You can read the article at:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6043047

The full text is pasted at the bottom of this page

I have spent the past academic year working as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow.  That means I spend two days a week in a university, advising people from all subjects, and at all levels, about their academic writing.  It’s a wonderful job -- and, lucky for me, I have been sent to Queen Mary, University of London, which is where I did my PhD. I’m pleased to say that they are letting me stay on for an extra year.

You can read more about the scheme, and get writing tips, at www.rlf.org.uk

 

I have just become a member of the UK Donation Ethics Committee, which discusses matters of principle relating to organ transplantation.

CONTACT

If you would like a signed copy of Johnny Swanson, or of any of my books, contact the Kew Bookshop at 1-2 Station Approach, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3QB (phone:020 8940 0030  email:orders@kewbookshop.co.uk). If you buy a copy from them, they will call me and ask me to sign it, and then send it on to you.

If you want to contact me, you can go through the ’Contact’ page of this website, or email me direct on eleanor@eleanorupdale.com

 

Here’s the homework article:

Children’s author agrees with her former headteacher that learning should remain in the classroom

I have an unusual DVD at home. It is a brief news item from late 1959 in which a posh reporter interviews the headmistress of a south London primary school about an apparent increase in creativity and articulacy among very young children. The report features a six-year-old reading out a story she has written. The child is me, and that is why I am interested in the film, but everyone else will probably find a line from the headteacher more remarkable.

"Of course," says Mrs Owen, "we don’t have any truck with homework or anything like that." Her tone of voice, and the "of course" suggest that the statement was unsurprising 50 years ago.

These days, it would probably be the most noteworthy thing she said. She would face hostile questions from the TV crew, followed by outraged articles in the press.

By the time my three children started school in the 1990s, the tone and tempo of every evening was determined by a combination of work and apparently pointless tasks set to fulfil the demands of the homework timetable.

It sometimes seemed that teaching the "heartsink" subjects (such as comprehension, spelling, and maths) had been subcontracted to me, and that if my children failed to deliver, it was my fault.

Yet in some ways we were lucky. I hear that the quantity and seriousness of homework are increasing, with family life blighted even at weekends and half-term.

Looking back on my children’s early years, my greatest regret is that I always supported their schools. In my experience, a task that takes 30 minutes in a classroom takes 90 minutes at home, with all its power play, distractions and interruptions. I nagged, shouted, bullied and bribed my children to complete their work.

I realise now that I should have stood up against homework inflation, and fought for us to spend more time as a family, doing things that related to, and consolidated, our lives together. I’m not saying that education is unimportant - I was liberated by mine - but I do feel that learning takes place in many locations other than school, often by non-academic means. Modern families are short of shared time. To pollute their homes with the values and anxieties of the classroom is a mistake.

Children need space to themselves, free from the imperative to perform. In the muddle of undirected activity they may discover interests that last a lifetime. Only with time can a child learn the joys of reading for pleasure; and apparently mundane domestic activities, incidentally, help all family members learn to balance work and real life.

Politicians complain that today’s children are turning into couch potatoes, slumped in front of their TVs or computer games.

But what drives those children out of the garden, away from the kitchen table and in front of the screens in the first place? What gives them the excuse to cut themselves off? It’s homework.

I suspect that Mrs Owen’s opposition to homework did not spring solely from a respect for family life. She knew, as the head of a school where many parents were hostile to education (or in some cases disengaged from it because they were in prison), that to rely on the home to deliver key elements of education was to exacerbate disadvantages and to limit equality of opportunity.

The current obsession with binding parents into education, while apparently laudable, can be carried too far. It can make children the prisoners of backgrounds from which they are entitled to have the option of escape by means of their own, private, contract with their teachers.

Schools themselves can be victims of homework. It needs setting, marking, policing and feedback, which eat time from the school day. Cutting homework would reduce the burden teachers have to take home with them, diminishing the negative effect of their jobs on their own families.

About ten years ago, I read a study conducted at Durham University which suggested that, in maths at least, homework might not make any difference to primary pupils’ performance. Is there any up-to-date evidence proving that it is impossible for pupils to progress entirely through study in school time?

Teachers I have asked about this often say that they set homework because parents want it. I understand that. I know people who are terrified that their children might fall behind without homework, and at parents’ meetings I felt I had to pretend that I wanted it too.

Mrs Owen spoke about parental pressure 50 years ago: "Even here in an infants’ school I have children brought to me at five years old, and the first thing the mother says is, ’Good morning. My child is coming to school. Can you give him some homework? I want him to go to a grammar school."

She recognised their concerns, but she knew that homework would not necessarily address them. The crucial difference between Mrs Owen and teachers who might agree with her today is that she felt she had (and, indeed, genuinely enjoyed) the freedom to stand up to those parents who pushed for extra work and teaching to tests.

In 1959, I was too young to know what she was talking about, but hearing her words now stirs firm agreement in me.

For the sake of children, families and teachers we must break away from the automatic assumption that homework is a good thing, or at least test objectively whether it really is.

Freeing the family from its grip might even result in a more positive and productive partnership between parents and teachers, and a richer life for all, with less anxiety, fewer tears, and more time to reflect and grow.