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Which Back Cover blurb?
Sometime between the sixth edit of the book, the final checking of the proof pages and a small nervous breakdown, your editor emails you.
'Quick,' she cries, 'we have to have the back cover blurb done by next week. The cover is going to the printers then.
What do you want to say?'
Me? I'd rather take a short walk up Everest than write the back cover book blurb.
'Don't judge a book by it's cover', every cliché screams, but get real, we do. I've watched kids in libraries,
teachers tell me they do it and (true confession time here) I do it myself. We all look at the cover of the book, turn it over and read the blurb - and then we either take the book home to read or we dump it
right back on the shelf.
Reality check (which most authors really don't want to know): You can write the best book in the world, but if the cover and the blurb
don't grab a reader, your book sinks faster than a submarine hitting an iceberg at 100 knots.
Gulp. So, how to sum up a 71,000 word book you have lived, breathed and slept with for over for two years - in less than a hundred words?
In the end I wrote three blurbs. Unfortunately by then, I was totally brain dead, and didn't have a clue which one was the best.
Meanwhile my editor was breathing hot fumes down my neck. (No mean feat as she lives a thousand kms. away in Sydney.) So in a fit of genius (er…read, desperation) I emailed a few teachers I
knew and begged them to run the three options by kids in their classes. After all, I reasoned to myself feverishly, it is kids who will be checking out the cover and reading the blurb. They are the experts.
Here are the three options. One of them came out a resounding winner. Can you guess which one? (And no getting Shadow Seeker
and reading the back cover. You wouldn't cheat, would you???)
Option 1:
'Kids can create miracles just as easily as adults.'
Oh great, we were talking miracles now — he really did think it was useless. And I hadn't even mentioned the other problem
I had, about Dad fighting for his life in the coming election. Tell a quarter of a million people about the dangers of dioxin, and then drive Pilot Paper right out of town. Easy as mud cake pie. But
hey, at the same time, stay totally in the shadows so your dad still has a job at the end of it all.
Miracles? Mega-miracle country if we managed to pull that off.
Stopping the billion dollar and ruthless Pilot Paper is Tess's' biggest fight yet. And all she has to help her are the three
Green Guerrillas, a stubborn kid sister always underfoot and one dark-eyed karate kicking photographer who can't take 'no' for an answer.
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Option 2:
They saved hundreds of animals from the dissecting knife by delivering white rats in tartan bows to all the top VIPs in town. With
cameras in their hands (and pegs on their noses) they staked out the city dump to nail contractors dumping truckloads of plastics instead of recycling them.
'They' are the Green Guerrillas and their leader is Tess Robertson, a genius at planning action campaigns and getting it all on TV
- but a total failure at spending more than five minutes in either her mother's or her step family's company without getting into a massive argument.
And now Tess is planning her biggest fight yet. She has to stop a ruthless, billion dollar paper mill setting up in town - and pumping
dioxin, one of the world's most toxic pollutants, into the air.
And all she has to help her are the three Green Guerrillas, a stubborn kid sister always underfoot and one dark-eyed karate kicking
photographer who can't take 'no' for an answer.
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Option 3:
You try delivering a rat to the city's top-rating current affairs programme.
I took a deep breath, marched across half a hectare of chrome and carpet and placed the box right in the middle of the
receptionist's desk.
'This is a present for Amanda Brinkley,' I told her. Amanda Brinkley, the anchorwoman of the show, claimed to be an avid
champion of animal rights. Well, rats were animals weren't they?
'Oh, is it a kitten? How lovely.' She leant closer to the largest air hole and looked in.
A small pink eye peered back. A few whiskers twitched in the air…
I wasn't sure if rats could smile, but this one gave a pretty good imitation…
Saving hundreds of rats from the dissecting knife was only the start of the Green Guerrillas' campaign. Their leader is Tess Robertson,
a genius at fighting environmental pollution and injustice – and equally brilliant at fighting with friends and family at the same time.
And now Tess is planning her biggest fight yet. She has to stop a billion-dollar paper mill from being set up in town — and
pumping dioxin, one of the world's most toxic pollutants, into the air. And all she has to help her are the three Green Guerrillas, a reckless kid sister and one dark-eyed, karate-kicking
photographer who can't take 'no' for an answer.
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