Have you ever picked up a book just because the cover attracted your attention? I know I have. Lots of times. This is one of my favourites - The Eye of the Beast, the first book in the Moonshadow series by Australian author Simon Higgins. Set in feudal Japan, there's samurai, ninja and plenty of action.

Book covers are a very important factor in our reading choices. First of all, the over tells us important basic information – the title of the book, maybe a subtitle and the author’s name. Sometimes this alone is enough to help us make a decision. I know I wouldn’t hesitate to read every book that had the words Skulduggery Pleasant on the front or Derek Landy’s name. (Is anyone else a Skulduggery Pleasant fan?)

The style of the book cover is designed to catch the reader’s eye and most often this is the one feature that decides whether we pick up a book. A cover might encourage us to ask questions about the story. It might indicate the target age of the readers. It might also indicate the genre of the book. One look at the cover of Eye of the Beast and I immediately thought:- Japan, manga, sword and samurai. I couldn't tell from the cover whether it was historical or fantasy but I suspected a bit of both. The cover told me enough for me to know I wanted to read it.

Don’t forget the back cover. There you might find a ‘blurb’ – a few lines or maybe a paragraph designed to tell you just enough to hook you into reading the story. There might also be endorsements from other writers who write similar novels. On the back cover of Andy Griffiths ‘Just’ series are quizzes to determine if the reader is just disgusting, just annoying or just shocking.

Here’s a chance for you to judge a book by its front cover picture:
































What can you deduce about each of these books? Things to think about are the target readers (age, boys, girls), the genre, the story, where it is set. Let me know in comments what you can work out. Bonus points if you recognise the book. I have been very sneaky and cropped off all the titles and authors! (Hint: There is one clue in this post!)

There are awards for the best book covers. You can see the Australian Publishers Association Award winners for 2010 here. What do you think of the choices? Do you have a favourite book cover from a book you have read or seen in the library?

Here is a YouTube on how book covers are made. While the book is one for adults, it is interesting to see how the elements are carefully chosen to convey a particular message about the story.

It's a really busy week for me, because it's Book Week. In three days I have spoken to almost 750 kids at 9 schools and visited 5 libraries. It is exciting, fun and exhausting. I have four more Book Weeking days to go. Did you have an author or illustrator visit for Book Week? Has anyone read any of the Book Week shortlisted books? One of my favourite ones was Pearl Verses the World by Sally Murphy and it was selected as Younger Readers Honour Book.

I am working on a special blog post for you about book covers - making a bit of a quiz so you can try to guess what is inside the cover. But it's taking me longer than I thought to find all the tricky covers, especially when I am visiting so many schools. So we'll do that one next week.

I thought this week maybe you would like to ask me a few "Ask the Author" questions. I'll start off by telling you the question I have been asked the most in the last three days. Probably once at every school I visitted. So that must mean it is something lots of people want to know.

Where do you get your ideas from?

And the answer is...drum roll... everywhere! Ideas are like flies, they are buzzing around all over the place. The hard part, just like with flies, is knowing how to catch them. You catch them with questions! Who, what, where, when and why. Whenever you see, hear, smell, touch or taste something interesting, ask questions and you will find a story idea!

On the weekend I went to the breadshop to buy a sausage roll for lunch and on the way out I saw someone had dropped a pie in the street. Splat. It was squashed flat! I started to think about what might have happened. Who dropped it? Why did it fall? I wondered whether some really hungry person had to go all day without anything to eat. Or maybe two kids were riding their bike down the pavement, pushing and mucking around until the pie fell out of the bike basket. Or... how did the pie feel? Maybe it was saying "I wish somene would tread on me and then I could travel all over the world on the bottom of a shoe." Sometimes I tell this story as an example - I do a great imitation pie voice.

I got the idea for Samurai Kids when I read that to be a samurai, you had to be born into a samurai family. It's not like deciding to be a teacher or a doctor. You can't decide to be a samurai, not even if you are really good at sword fighting. So I started to think about kids who didn't want to fight but had to - because that was the job they were born to do. And then I thought: what if they weren't any good at it? What if they weren't any good at it because they only had one leg? That's when a sentence popped into my head: "My name is Niya Moto and I am the only one-legged samurai kid in Japan."

Once I had that sentence I started to ask even more questions. What was Niya like? Who were his friends? What did samurai kids learn? Who would want to teach Niya? What worried Niya about training to become a samurai warrior? Suddenly I had lots of story ideas. Enough for a whole book!

So who has a different question they would like to ask me?

Whenever one of my favourite books is made in to a movie or a television series, I can’t decide whether to watch it. I don’t mind if the director changes the story a bit – but not too much. I liked how Paul Jennings short stories were made into the first two series of Round the Twist. Even though the characters in the individual short stories weren’t related, in the television series they were. That was okay with me but I don’t like it if whole chapters get changed or new main characters with new roles are added.

A year ago one of my favourite books, The Tale of Despereaux (which is about a mouse) was made into a movie. Just in case you are thinking a book about a mouse doesn’t sound exciting, don’t forget Stuart Little. Before the movie, there was the book by E B White who also wrote Charlotte’s Web. And if you are looking for a really exciting mouse story, you should read the Redwall series. Those mice live in an Abbey and have heaps of weapon-filled adventures! Guess what? I went to find a link for the books and here I found it has been made into an animated TV series!

When I saw the pictures of Despereaux I was worried. He looked too cute. I had a different image in my head. Then the reviews of the movie came out and everyone hated it. And everyone I knew who saw it hated it. So I didn’t go because I didn’t want to see my favourite book turned into an awful movie. Here is the movie website if you want to take a look.

Have you ever been to see a movie or watched a television series that was based on a book, or comic? What was it and which did you like best – the movie or the book?

Here are some of the movies I’ve seen that were based on book: The Chronicles of Narnia, Spiderman, Lord of the Rings, Lockie Leonard TV series, Bridge to Terabithia, Harry Potter (all of them!), Round the Twist TV series, Stuart Little
….. and lots more.

Sometimes I even see the movie first and then find out later there’s book. Then I have to read it to see which one I like best. Sometimes I even like the movie best. That’s how I felt about The Never Ending Story. Which do you think should come first – reading the book or seeing the movie? I visited a website devoted to the Never Ending Story and found this comment which is really relevant to what we are talking about today:

There have been three movies based on Michael Ende's novel [The Never Ending Story]. Many people complain that these movies don't live up to the novel, and it's true. The novel goes so much beyond the stories and themes of the movies, but that's the inherent nature of novels and movies. It should be noted that the movies have sparked the imaginations of millions, and as Mr. Coreander says to Bastian, "There are many doors to Fantasia, my boy." Getting to Fantasia is more important than how nice the path is.

Hi everyone, If you want to download the spreadsheet with all your first line finds - and like me do a tick and flick to see which ones would make you read on - click on the post heading to open up the full post first and click here.

First – a wave across cyberspace - hi Smithfield! I was sitting at my desk wondering what to write – when I thought why not start at the very beginning? Because that’s my most favourite part of a book – the very first line, then followed by the first paragraph and then the first page.

How far do you read before you decide to give up on a book? I always read at least the first page. If I get to the end of the first page and I don’t like it I force myself to read to the end of the chapter. But if I don’t like it then – I usually stop reading. Sometimes I might keep going if a friend has recommended it. Last week I was talking with Manor Lakes Specialist College about different genres and the kids were very keen on supernatural and horror stories. I don’t read a lot of horror because I get too scared but I am going to check out the first paragraphs of the recommended books and see if I might like to read them. We decided to start a page for recommended books so if you have any titles to add just let me know. And feel free to join in and comment on our genres discussion.

Recently I read a book called The Undrowned Child. And it was very slow to start. I picked it because: I liked the cover (I hadn’t read a book about mermaids for ages) and I was hooked by the word ‘undrowned’. We often hear about drowned people but never ‘undrowned’ – because that’s what we all are! So I kept wondering how close to drowned you had to become to be undrowned but not drowned. The book got better quickly when the mermaids started to talk like ship captains – with lots of salty language – because that was the only English they had heard. If you visit the website and click on the Eat button you'll hear a mermaid burp!

Here is a selection of my favourite first lines:
Valkyrie Cain hit the parapet and tumbled, unable to stop herself, and with a panicked gasp she disappeared off the edge. - Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing with Fire, Derek Landy

Morgoroth, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, former Baron of Gorlan in the Kingdom of Araluen, looked out over his bleak rainswept domain and, for perhaps the thousandth time, cursed. Rangers Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan – John Flanagan

Aubrey Fitzwilliam hated being dead. It made things much harder than they needed to be. – Laws of Magic: Blaze of Glory – Michael Pryor

Here are some of the first few lines I wrote:
Why isn’t that boy dead yet? – Jaguar Warrior
‘Aye-eee-yah!’ – White Crane
Yoshi’s voice booms across the deck, through the thick gloom and above the waves pounding against the hull. “Man overboard.” – Shaolin Tiger

My all time favourite first page is from Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, this book has won heaps of awards. I liked it so much that for a long time after I read it I could recite the whole page. It’s very suspenseful and guaranteed to make you want to read on. There’s a man in the house with a knife and the only person still alive is the baby… You can see the book trailer here.




Do you have a favourite first line? Let’s see if we can find some really good first lines – maybe in the library or a book you are reading? Some people collect stamps or Pokemon cards but I collect first lines. I have a book I write them down in. Here’s your challenge - find five random books on the library shelf or somewhere else and write down the first lines from each. Post a comment with at least one of the lines in it and if I like it, I’ll add it to my collection. If it’s really good I’ll be adding the book to my To Read List.