Category Archives: Arts & Culture

Library by mail program brings books to homebound Oregon patrons

Eligible Oregon City residents can now receive library books and certain materials without leaving their homes, thanks to a new program announced by the Oregon City Public Library.The “Library By Mail” initiative allows homebound patrons to check out books and materials that are then delivered straight to their doors. The program is designed to ensure that mobility issues don’t limit access to library services.“Access is a huge element of the library’s mission; mobility issues shouldn’t prevent someone from being able to take advantage of their local library,” said Library Director Greg Williams in a news release. “This will help remove that barrier.”To participate, patrons must complete an application form either online or over the phone. Library staff will review the application and follow up with the applicant, who may select the materials they want delivered either online or over the phone. Approved patrons will receive their library holds every two weeks in a black canvas bag, which includes a prepaid return label and instructions for returning items.“We did quite a deep dive with the postal service to pay for this, and we have money set aside in the budget to provide this service,” said Helen Juarez, circulation coordinator for Oregon City Public Library. “It helps that we recently got a generous donation from the Oregon City Woman’s Club.”Williams said in the release that whether a patron is temporarily bedridden or permanently homebound, “we can still provide books and other resources through this program.”RECOMMENDED•oregonlive

Why was Jamie Oliver’s children’s book taken off shelves?

Photo by Rocket Weijers/Getty Images for Royal Caribbean

Like every other British celebrity, Jamie Oliver has been busy writing children’s books. His first, Billy and the Giant Adventure, came out last year. It follows a child called Billy and a bunch of his friends who find a secret wood full of fairies and strange creatures that need their help – that kind of thing. The second, Billy and the Epic Escape, came out in May. You can’t buy it any more, though. Last week the publisher, Penguin, recalled all copies from sale worldwide, due to its portrayal of First Nation Australians.

Oliver, a man with few connections to Australia, had no particular reason to set himself up for this failure. And for Penguin to pulp every copy of the book, in all countries, it seems like he has failed on a grand scale. The book has been condemned by groups such as the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Corporation for “trivialising” the “complex and painful histories” of real children who were forcibly removed from First Nation families, for implying that such families are neglectful of their children and money-grubbing, and for perpetuating stereotypes of First Nations people as possessing mystical abilities, such as mind-reading. Oliver and Penguin apologised for what the publisher described as “publishing standards” that “fell short”.

What? How did a TV chef from Essex manage to step on this particular rake? What’s Jamie Oliver written a book about First Nation Australians for? What on Earth has he written to prompt a publisher to wipe it from sale? And is Jamie Oliver any good at writing children’s books, aside from its, er, apparent accidental racism?

Getting my hands on Billy and the Epic Escape wasn’t easy. Book pulping moves fast. Canny hawkers have listed signed “first edition” (last edition?) copies for sale for upwards of £100 online. I also, curiously, found I could read it online in German, a language I don’t speak.

Eventually I found a hard copy, for the somewhat unreasonable sum of £45, on eBay. The plot of Billy and the Epic Escape is that four children – Billy, Jimmy, Anna and Andy – are able to travel to a secret woodland world where there are gardens tended by giants called Growers. The Growers turn out to be children from all over the world, who were kidnapped to tend gardens that supply food to a dystopian city which we don’t learn much about. An evil ginger woman with magical powers called “Scary Red” oversees them, in exchange for a potion that keeps her looking young forever which she takes every 24 hours. There is also a source of infinite energy in this world that she wants to get her hands on, and the children have to stop her.

As this summary might suggest, the book is not very good. Young minds haven’t lost out by this book not making it into their hands. There’s too much going on, the characters all speak in the same way, the world-building is patchy and unsatisfying, and the dialogue deals mostly in thudding exposition and moral lessons delivered with all the subtlety of a punch in the mouth. The children are always coming out with phrases you might find on inspirational Instagram posts, such as “I know that pain can be the greatest teacher” and “looking after each other is what friends do”. Many, many children’s books are better written and more nuanced.

But the thing that is especially bonkers about this whole debacle is that First Nation Australians are not remotely integral to the book’s plot. Halfway through, the villain realises she needs to kidnap a new child to become a Grower, and decides to visit the “Borolama community” in Alice Springs, or Mparntwe, in Australia. “First Nations children seem to be more connected with nature – so their gardens produce not just quantity, but quality,” she says to herself. When she gets there, she poses as a charity worker giving funds to community growing projects and, by dangling the promise of such funds, convinces a First Nations woman to leave her alone with a child called Ruby, who she then drugs and kidnaps. Ruby, it turns out, has an inherent understanding of the magical world she finds herself in, and a connection to nature’s power, which in the book is called “the Rhythm”. “‘Ever since I was a little girl, I was always able to feel what people were thinking,’ she explains, ‘And I can feel it even more with plants and animals. My mum always told me that’s the indigenous way.’” During her brief time in the book, Ruby is presented as an eerily mature, flatly angelic font of ancient wisdom due to her indigenous background. “‘Look after the Rhythm, and the Rhythm will look after you,’ said Ruby.”

It clangs. Oliver does not have the writing ability to pull off a nuanced portrayal of (I fear) anybody at a register appropriate for children. Why would he? He is a chef.

That said, and far be it from me to pity a man much richer and more successful than I will ever be, reading the book made me feel just a little sorry for him. There are flashes of the thing Jamie Oliver really knows and cares about amid all the inept fantasy world-building: food. One of the giants cooks a “grisotto”: “I cut a pumpkin in half and put it on the fire so the outside burns, but the inside goes sweet and soft. Then I stir that through grains from the edge of the garden. Oh, I think I might even still have a bit of salted cheese in the shed.” At one point, one of the kids pushes a “handful of squished Garibaldis under the tiny space beneath the door” to feed someone stuck inside a room. Andy shows another child how keeping a toastie between his bum cheeks provides just enough body heat to melt the cheese. And at the back, there are recipes linked to the book like “Bilfred’s garden soup” and “Andy’s special cheese toastie” (minus the bum cheeks).

All this is endearing, and reads like it was written by someone who understands what they’re writing about. Books are best when they’re written by someone with specific passion and talent. Children’s writing should be a profession in its own right, not something that rich and famous people do in their spare time. Instead, we have supermarket rows of mediocre books authored by stars that stores feel confident will sell on the basis of parental name recognition, rather than because children might actually find them compelling. The whole circus degrades the quality of the literature that is most readily available to kids.

Oliver said he was “devastated” to have caused hurt, and that it was “never [his] intention to misinterpret this deeply painful issue”. I’m sure it wasn’t. But this was a can of worms he didn’t need to open, and shouldn’t have. One small mercy, though. Perhaps this will be a lesson to the small number of remaining celebrities who have not authored a children’s book. Stick to what you’re good at.

[See also: The dismal world of David Walliams]

Topics in this article :
Children’s books

Jensen family gifts book “Just Like Caitlin” to second graders locally and across the state

As the giving season approaches, the Dickson and Luann Jensen Family is excited to give the book, ‘Just Like Caitlin,’ to EVERY second grader in the state of Iowa. This book tells Caitlin’s story and includes many important life lessons such as dreaming big, working hard, valuing relationships over winning and more. Dickson and Luann Jensen are proud Iowans, business owners, coaches, parents, and grandparents.Dickson is an Audubon High School Class of 1982 Wheeler! The Jensen family is proud of Caitlin and believe she is a great role model for all kids. Because of their love for children and desire to impact the next generation, they hope this book inspires kids to believe their future can be greater than they imagine. “We hope the kids enjoy the book…the concept of the book is to dream big, work hard and keep life in perspective. Any second grader can become whatever they want to be or do whatever they want (in life). Caitlin is an inspiration to the young people across Iowa and beyond and students can have unbelievable careers.” Dickson explained.The Jensens had 50,000 books printed with 40,000 going to second graders in Iowa and 10,000 to students in Indianapolis, Ind., where Caitlin is a basketball guard for the Indiana Fever.

RVS College students visit Book Fair at Rabindra Bhawan

Mail News Service
Jamshedpur, Nov 22: RVS College of Engineering and Technology organized an educational visit to the book fair at Rabindra Bhawan, in association with the National Digital Library of India (NDLI).
A group of 50 students, led by Dr. Rahi Das Kumar, Jaymala Dhruva Sundi, and women’s hostel warden Bina Ambastha, explored the fair, purchasing books on literature, science, and technology from various stalls. Publishers also offered discounts on select titles.
After the visit, students held a discussion on ‘The Importance of Books in Human Life,’ guided by Dr. Rahi Das and Jaymala Dhruva Sundi. Dr. S.P. Singh, the College’s central library in-charge, highlighted the success of the program and its alignment with NDLI’s objectives.
The visit not only inspired students to appreciate literature and knowledge but also encouraged many to register with NDLI, amplifying the event’s impact.

Author Bill Newcott to sign new books Nov. 23

Browseabout Books will host Bill Newcott for a signing of his newest book, “More Right Wrong Turns,” from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 23, at 133 Rehoboth Ave., Rehoboth Beach.A follow-up volume to Newcott’s 2021 book, “All the Right Wrong Turns,” the book’s subtitle calls it a collection of “continued true (and sometimes twisted) tales of Coastal Delaware from the back roads to the beaches.” The subject matter draws upon new material and adapted versions of articles he’s written for Delaware Beach Life magazine.
Newcott, a Lewes resident, is a film critic for The Saturday Evening Post. He was formerly the National Geographic magazine expeditions editor and a longtime travel editor for AARP the Magazine.

‘I thought, geez, this is a happy story’: Helen Garner on her footy book

The acclaimed writer spent a season watching her grandson play football. The result is a story of love in the face of time’s passing.Credit: Robin CowcherNormal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeHelen Garner’s decision to write a first-person account of her grandson’s junior footy team, its travails and triumphs and her exploration of both the game and his exit from adolescence, was replete with self-doubt. She wondered whether she was up to the task of writing a happy story. Aged 81 when she began following the Flemington Colts, she was unsure whether she was capable of completing the book.Throughout The Season, Garner also flaunts her lack of footy knowledge, asking Ambrose or his footy-head father to decipher the arcane rules and rites of an obsessively followed code.“I’m used to writing about people who are in traumatic states, but they’ve lost everything and people have died and there’s been a murder or something like that,” says Garner of her excursion into footy, via a suburban under-16 team. “I thought, geez, this is a happy story. How am I going to write this?”So why do it? “I was bored. And I thought, I was, what, 81. And I thought, is it over? Am I done?”Far from it. The Season is her first standalone book – as distinct from a collection of short pieces – since the heavy-duty true crime/Greek tragedy This House of Grief, about a man who drove his sons into a dam and was convicted of murder in a trial that captivated the nation.If the sporting subject surprises some readers and denizens of Australia’s small literary village, Garner has taken on what Ron Barassi called one of the world’s great inventions – Australian Rules football – with the same approach that defines most of her writing.The Season is marked by her unsparing eye for detail and that superpower of detachment – a narrator who sees everything yet who is also deeply involved in the story, with emotional flourishes that rise when she watches her grandson.AdvertisementIt reads like she’s a visitor to a foreign country, as in Mark Twain’s account of Australia (especially the Melbourne Cup) or even Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th century French nobleman, observing the United States for his tome Democracy in America.But it’s just plain old footy, too. She calls it “a nanna’s book”.Garner agrees that she came to footy as a visitor. “I couldn’t say that I know footy. I follow the Western Bulldogs. I really care about what happens there. But I don’t understand the finer points of the game,” she tells me.Helen Garner at the suburban ground where she watched her grandson play.Credit: Darren JamesThat said, Garner’s observational gifts – and sparse, effective use of language – are comparable to her favourite Bulldog Marcus Bontempelli’s in reading the game; she finds meaning in the mundane routines of footy, her grandson’s training sessions, and in watching the Bulldogs, that remind mundane footy writers of their own literary limitations. Garner locates insights into footy that the obsessive or expert don’t notice.She had kept a diary when watching “Amby” train and play for the Colts, in their western suburbs local under-16 competition, during 2023. Midway through the season, she realised that a book was feasible.Over the course of this 2023 season, Garner became a participant, which she said was evident when she began calling the Colts “we”.Advertisement“I just became emotionally involved,” she says. “I mean, I sort of scream and rave at watching the Western Bulldogs on TV, I get really emotionally involved with those matches, and you know things that I see about footy can make me burst into tears of rage like watching people boo Buddy Franklin.“[But] I’ve never had a personal connection with anyone in a team before. Ambrose has been playing since he was eight.” Ambrose’s older brother played briefly and his older sister Olive played with Melbourne University’s “Muggers”.I’m trying to write about footy and my grandson and me … A record of a season we spend together before he turns into a man and I die.Helen Garner“I just watched those girls play and they were fabulous … but I wasn’t close enough to the end of my grandmother-hood to realise that this was something, that this is my last chance to see.”At my partner’s urging, I propose that Garner and I meet at the very Kensington oval where she spent so many hours, watching the Colts complete “match sim” (simulation) and regulation drills in flood-lit evening training, along with games on weekends.She’s seated on the same bench, just behind the goals, that was her vantage for The Season – straw hat, white shirt and glasses dangling on a string over her neck. The rain soon sends us to the pavilion, where she’s prepared by packing a groundsheet we can sit on. I’ve provided coffees from a local cafe.AdvertisementThe question of why this project – and not another topic, presumably something more serious – is answered succinctly on page 92 of the book.“Why don’t I keep my mouth shut when people ask me what I’m writing? I’m surprised how many jump to the conclusion that it’s something polemical, a critical study of football culture and its place in society, informative, analytical, statistical. Really I’m trying to write about footy and my grandson and me. About boys at dusk. A little life-hymn. A poem. A record of a season we spend together before he turns into a man and I die.”We turn to that passage. “It’s the last grandchild and I’m suddenly thinking I’m not going to be around much longer,” Garner explains. “I reckon I’ve got maybe 10 years, touch wood. I thought my grandmother life is almost over and how can I let this go past without giving it a really good look?”She did ponder the question of why she was focused on men. “If you’re a woman in this world and you’re a feminist, you’re writing about men, there’s always this little voice saying ‘oh why aren’t you writing about women?’ And I thought ‘because I want to write about my grandson, that’s why’ – this is about me and my grandson on the deepest level. And the whole matter of women’s footy is to me a whole world apart from what I know, even though my granddaughter [played].”“I’m not scared any more.” At 82, Helen Garner no longer fears negative reactions to her work.Credit: Darren JamesSo she drove Amby to training nearly every session, watched the team and discovered a cast of characters within the team, most known by nicknames, such as “Boof”, “Meth” and “Remy.” The book has parallels with the American football classic Friday Night Lights (which Garner hasn’t yet read nor watched the fictionalised TV series) about a high school football team in a Texas oil town, in how the reader is drawn into real lives. This is less pronounced in Garner’s book – her focus is primarily Amby and herself.But as with the earlier book, you wonder how far the Colts will go. I won’t give away the ending – whether this is a fairytale or near-miss. Towards the end, Garner has a vivid dream that she finally reveals as the Colts reach their denouement.AdvertisementDid the season together change the grandmother-grandson relationship? “No, not really. It’s deepened it. As you can probably tell, we were already on pretty good terms. He’s an affectionate, open sort of kid, easy to get on with … we’ve always got on well, because I live right next door to them, so I’ve been in his life since he was born.”Garner has been living next door to her daughter Alice and her husband and their now three kids, in Flemington for 25 years. “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, bar none,” she says.The book started from a place of curiosity. “I just wanted to see what he was like as a person … I thought ‘I wonder what he’s like out there’, and it was very interesting to me to watch him functioning in the world.”The Western Bulldogs are the book’s counterpoint and subplot, since they are followed by the merged households and especially by Dave, Amby’s father, who grew up in St Albans and is visibly shattered when the Dogs are upset by West Coast. Garner had realised years earlier that “to hang with this family I was going to have to learn more about footy”.In the book, she recounts how she followed the club ever since watching the documentary Year of the Dogs (1997), her faith secured when Chris Grant, the club’s champion, explained why he’d stayed with the impecunious Bulldogs.Garner explains her conversion to the Bulldog breed thus: “He said ‘I got a letter from a young boy. “Dear Chris Grant, please don’t leave. I haven’t got much money. This is all I can give.” And he’d sticky-taped on to the letter a fifty-cent piece. So of course I couldn’t leave, could I.’Advertisement“I got off the couch, went straight to the computer with my credit card, and joined his club,” Garner writes.Garner finds much that is noble within the game. I tell her how I saw Bontempelli at the funeral of young football journalist Sam Landsberger, a matter of days before the Bulldogs played Hawthorn in the elimination final. Landsberger’s father, Jake, had served as the club doctor for decades.“I think Bont is pure class and he’s one of the players who bring the nobility of football you can’t help…” She didn’t need to finish the sentence.Garner excitedly extracts from her phone a poignant photo of Bontempelli with his arm affectionately around injured teammate Josh Bruce. “He’s just done his knee for the second time and Bont is just comforting him. That’s straight out of Virgil and Homer.”Is The Season her most personal book? That would be saying something, given her frequent mining of her experiences, her celebrated career having been launched by Monkey Grip, a grimly realistic semi-biographical novel of bohemian share-house life in 1970s Carlton and Fitzroy.Monkey Grip, I tell Garner, often comes to mind when I see “Aqua Profonda” on the wall at the Fitzroy pool. This prompts her to roll up her sleeve. “I’m marked all over from the times I spent at that pool … skin cancers I’ve got, I’m covered with the bastards.“It was worth it.”Most personal? “No, I wouldn’t say that, but it’s up there … I like to write that way. It seems to be the only way I can get a grip on things, but … I did find it a wonderful experience for me, to follow the team. I learned so much.”One of Garner’s discoveries was what she perceived of the better angels of masculinity via football.“I get sick of hearing the phrase toxic masculinity. And I know that people don’t mean to say that all masculinity is toxic, but I think that a lot of boys probably absorb it as that, there’s something about them which is irredeemably toxic. And having two grandsons I know that’s not true.“And I know there’s so much more going on in the lives of young boys that is very quiet … there’s a lot of inner struggle going on, I think, to be a boy and to turn into a man.“And I thought … I’m just going to walk around looking at men and watching what they do. And so that’s why I sprinkle through the book all those little tiny themes of men doing things that I find either hilarious or beautiful or graceful – or in the footy, brave. Like those two tradies who run to get those two kids out of the smashed bus.“I wanted to show that, I just wanted to say ’I like men and look at these things they do, and look how faithful they are to their sons, they stand in the cold and watch their sons running around [a] football ground.”Garner had been warned about the ugly parents of local footy. “I’d heard all about the brawls. But to think that’s what it’s all about is so wrong. I’ve watched these fathers, they were exemplary as fathers. They had practical love for their sons … which had found a pragmatic path to expression and I was moved by that.“I reckon by halfway through the season I could see there was a book in it.”She says she took “massive” notes – whole pages after training. “Particularly now that I’m getting older and forgetting things a lot.“By the time I realised there was a book in it, I was delighted and happy and I thought ‘I can do this’.”The embedding was organic. “I didn’t get permission – I spoke to the coach, but I already knew him. And he said ‘oh, why don’t you just turn up?’ So I turned up. And it was going to training that made all the difference. Because never before had I been to training ever, and I just loved it so much. That’s when I really sort of got hooked.”Garner’s social observations are unsparing. “I hope so.” While some writers would be forever haunted by the reaction to The First Stone – an older, second-wave feminist’s narrative and musings on the early ’90s sexual harassment scandal at the University of Melbourne’s Ormond College – Garner views this generational conflict, which became quite public, as conferring artistic freedom on her work.“And I think that I got a shock … I was really told that I’d set feminism back 20 years and I got absolutely abused. You should have seen the letters I got from people.“But after I sort of got through that, and I thought OK it’s quite bracing to be hated, and then I thought, and the best thing about [it] is I’m not scared any more. I’m not scared of people hating me for what I write, and now I’m free, and I can say what I really think and what’s before my eyes and I don’t have to sort of mould things, so I don’t offend the sensibilities of people.”She says Text, her publisher, is hoping for a crossover audience of “people who read anything you write and don’t give a shit about footy, or people who’ve never heard of you and love footy passionately”. A question the former group would want answered – in the negative – is if The Season might be her last book.“I don’t know. I’d like to think I could do another one but see I’ve always had a lot of gaps between books … I have a lot of downtime and in the downtime I used to do bits of freelance journalism just to make a living and years could go past.“I don’t want to write something just because it seems like an interesting idea. I’m always waiting for something to make me feel like I’m busting to write about it.”The Season is published by Text on November 26, $34.99. Garner is in conversation with Leigh Sales at the Capitol, Melbourne, on Nov 26; with Michael Williams at Sydney’s City Recital Hall on Nov 28; and with Kate Mildenhall at Elwood Bathers on Dec 6. Jake Niall is a Walkley award-winning sports journalist and chief AFL writer for The Age.Connect via Twitter or email.Most Viewed in Culture