IN MY MAILBOX - GREAT BOOK COVERS

I was very excited to receive Dee White's Letters to Leonardo in the mail this week. I've listened with interest to Dee discussing her ten-year-journey from idea to publication and am looking forward to reading the final result. The cover looks wonderful. Dee's cyber launch is happening here on 1st July and her blog tour begins on 24th June at Sally Murphy's Writing for Children Blog with Dee and Matt (the main character) talking about promoting Letters to Leonardo online. 25th June 2009.

Talking of brilliant covers bring me to Little Bird by Penni Russon. Unfortunately this book didn't arrive in my mailbox, it came in to The Reading Stack and another reviewer saw it first. It's a cover no reader could ever go past. First in first served, and I was too slow. I'm going to buy this one as I thoroughly enjoyed her previous title in the Girlfriend fiction series, The Indigo Girls. A chance tweet led me to Allen and Unwin's Alien Onion blog where other designs by the same graphic artist are featured. Definitely worth a look here.

WALK-IN WEDNESDAY

I have just discovered Teaser Tuesday thanks to Just Listen Book Reviews - where I also discovered some great reviews and a teaser for Penni Russon's Undine that has me hooked. Tuesdays are the day for opening your current book at a random page and quoting a few teaser sentences. Whose brilliant idea was that I would like to know!

Unfortunately I discovered this on Wednesday. So tonight I am doing a variation on the theme and inventing my own Walk-in Wednesday. I love the beginning paragraph of books - where I walk-in to the story and decide whether I'm going to hang around for the whole narrative. It's also my favourite part of the writing process and often my preferred piece in anything I write. When I started to write for children I learned that the first paragraph has to grab the editor regardless of what the rest of the manuscript holds because research has shown primary readers make their decision whether to continue reading right then and there. Adults and YA will allow a bit more latitude - if they think a story is slow but a friend has recommended it they'll continue on a bit longer in case it improves.

So here if the first paragraph of the book I am currently reading and it's brilliant. From Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book:

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. The knife had a handle of polished black bone, a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately.

The knife had done almost everything it was brought to that house to do, and both the blade and the handle were wet.

On a different day I might quote one of my first paragraphs but I'm not silly enough to follow on after that wonderful beginning.