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Sally Murphy, Australian author

Poetry Friday: The Library at Lunchtime

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This week I spent two wonderful days in the library at Penhros College in Perth, talking with lots and lots of wonderful young people about books and writing.

I haven’t yet received any photos that I can use from my presentations, but I did manage to snap this one of the display the library staff had put together:

 

One lunchtime, I sat in the library during the lunch hour, chatting with girls who came to speak to me, and working in between. It occured to me that the library was very different from libraries of the past, and found myself drafting a poem about what I saw – and what I didn’t see.

 

The Library at Lunchtime

 

No hushes

Or shushes

Or whispered warnings

No glares

Or stares

Or muttered reprimands

 

Only games

And smiles

And laughter

And kids sharing books

Sprawled on bright mats

Or, on their own,

Lost in blissful

Turning of pages.

(Poem copyright Sally Murphy, 2016)

 

Today’s Poetry Friday roundup is hosted by Teacher Dance.

Bookweek Wrap Up

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Last week was Children’s Bookweek here in Australia, and I was lucky enough to spend the week visiting libraries around Perth and talking about books and writing.

A big shout out to the staff at The Grove,  Manning, South Perth, Cambridge, Mt Claremont and Canning Bridge Libraries, and to the staff and students from Cottesloe Primary School, Mosman Park Primary School, Manning Primary School, St Columba’s Primary School, Como Primary School, South Perth Primary School, Floreat Park Primary, Holy Spirit Primary, Moerlina School, Mt Pleasant Primary and the parents and littlies who came along to Storytime at Mt Claremont.

It’s hard to pick out highlights from such a wonderful and joy-filled week, but here are a few:

1. This gorgeous display of pictures illustrating the theme for the week, Books Light Up My World. Bookweek20152. The questions. Some are funny, some are insightful, some are hard, but the questions are one of the best parts of each session.

3.  Sharing my books. Writers spend so much time working in isolation, that a week like Bookweek is a wonderful opportunity to share with audiences. Not only do I get to inspire young readers, but they inspire me equally, if not more.

4. Games! Dressing up, singing, dancing, laughing. Can’t believe this is part of my job.

Bookweek2015b

5. The fact I get to it all again next year. I’ve already started taking bookings for Bookweek 2016. I’m looking forward to coming to a library or school near you.

Since Bookweek I have been to Townsville to speak to the students  of Kirwan State School. That’s the subject for another post.

Free Books??

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Want to read a book for free? Don’t we all! Twice in the past week I was reminded of this by young fans.

First, a young reader emailed me asking if I knew any websites where she could read 1915 for free.

A few days later, another young reader told me she had read Roses are Blue online. This lead me to Google and sure enough I found a site where people could read Roses are Blue for free. The gorgeous young girl who told me about it had no idea that the online version was pirated – and I’m really glad that she told me, and also that this gave me an opportunity to chat with her about why such sites are problematic.

It’s wonderful that kids want to read my books, and I get that often readers can’t afford to buy the books they are interested in reading. But I do wonder if readers, young and not-so-young realise that sites that offer free scans of books (whether in pdf or ebook formats) are illegal, and that this is a form of piracy.

The pirates who share books online think that they are doing the world a favour. After all, authors and publishers are rich, and books are too expensive, so why not just put the books online for free? And the readers who download them, as I’ve said, may not know that it is stealing, and, if they do, they may also feel that it’s okay because authors are rich.

So, here in simple terms is why you shouldn’t read books through pirate sites (or, for that matter, upload books to those sites):

  1. As a reader, you miss out on quality. Often the scans are not high quality, so illustrations are dull, text is fuzzy and overall, production is missing. A scanned copy is not the same as a legitimate ebook (ie one produced by the publisher, and that you pay for).
  2. Authors are, almost without exception, not rich. When you do buy a copy of a book through legitimate channels, the author gets only a dollar or two per book sold. That’s an awful lot of books that would need to be sold every year just to allow the author to pay rent, buy food and so on. When you deprive the author of that dollar, s/he gets poorer.
  3. When authors and publishers earn money from the books you buy, this enables them to go on writing and publishing more good books. So, if nobody buys books, then this threatens the supply of more well written books with high production quality.
  4. Books are already available to you for free. At the library. Libraries are free to use, and if they don’t have the book you want, will usually get it in for you. And while you are there borrowing the book you want, you have the chance to find out about a whole lot of other books.
  5. I’ve said it already but I’m going to say it again – authors are not rich. We are as generous as we can be with our time and our talents, but we do also have families to feed and mortgages to pay. When you steal our book it hurts. When you borrow it from a library, our heart sings because we still get income from the library purchasing the copy, and from a compensation scheme called Lending Rights.
  6. Lastly, books may seem expensive, but if you compare the cost of a book with the cost of a trip to the movies, or a new tshirt, or a takeaway meal, and consider the value of something which can last so much longer than any of these, then a book is a bargain.

I’m not attacking my two young readers. Neither realised that what they were doing was wrong, and I hope my responses to them educated them but didn’t make them feel ashamed. It’s a shame that this seems to be a growing issue, and one that so many people don’t understand. If you, or someone you know, uses pirate sites to steal books – please reconsider.

sallymurphy.com.au