Issue 137

The ELR team speak to author, creative writing teacher, and literary agent Danielle Binks on the importance of the Educational Lending Rights scheme and the symbiotic relationship between children’s authors and schools.

Danielle, tell us about your work in the literary community.

I teach creative writing at RMIT University; specifically, writing fiction for young adults. I’m also a literary agent for Jacinta di Mase Management, representing authors, illustrators, and comic book creators. I’m also an author in my own right; some books that you may know me from include Begin, End, Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology (editor and contributing author), The Year the Maps Changed, and the World War I homefront story, Shakespeare in the Orchard.

How has the Educational Lending Rights scheme helped you, as an author?

Many of the books that I wrote have been studied and are on the curriculum at various schools, and one of the ways that I really benefit from this is via income earned from Educational Lending Rights. I don't know if you know this, but there's not a lot of money in being a children's author! According to the Australian Society of Authors, the majority of authors in Australia are living well and truly below the minimum wage in terms of the profit that we make from sales of our books alone. Supplementary income for children's authors comes in the form of visiting schools, doing school talks, workshops, Q&As, book clubs, and speaking engagements. This is true for me: as a children’s and young adult author, I make the majority of my income from visiting schools.

But the other way we make income in order to sustain ourselves and have a creative career, is via the Educational Lending Rights scheme. ELR helps us be compensated for the sales we would have otherwise made from our books being taught in schools and circulated in school libraries.

Why is it important that school libraries support the Educational Lending Rights program?

I think this goes hand in hand with why students need school libraries. School libraries are the beating heart of any school community. We know that librarians, teacher librarians, and English teachers utilise their school library in numerous ways, and one of those is talking about appropriate books for curriculum and classroom study, and inviting authors to come and talk about the book, the themes, the characters. It is the highlight and honour of my life getting to write for young people and then actually meeting those young people in classroom and library environments, and having the most engaged discussions about my books. It’s a wonderful symbiotic relationship children’s authors have with school libraries, and the Education Lending Rights scheme allows that relationship to remain healthy and be a kind of two-way street.

It also helps authors in that it extends the life and reach of their books – we don’t just make one book and then it fades away and you never hear about it again. Having books in rotation in school libraries helps to maintain discussion around them. Libraries simply ask students: “hey, take this book away and if it impacts you that’s beautiful, but bring it back so another student can be impacted by it, too.” It’s the best kind of harmonious relationship there is, especially in the society and community we live in right now. Educational Lending Rights helps authors to keep making more books, and continue that relationship.

What Australian children’s authors did you read when you were young? Do you think it was important for you to see yourself reflected in the books you read?

An absolute favourite for me – that I didn’t read in school, but read with my family (my Mum, my Auntie, and my Grandma) – is Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta. This book changed my life. I do not genuinely think I would be an author today had I not read this book as a teenager. I’m from Melbourne, and this is set in Sydney, but I recognised the locations. I understood the suburbia that was being written, and the various factions of public and private school. I recognised the language on the page, the kind of Australian slang that would pop up. When I read Looking for Alibrandi, I realised, oh, you mean Australian stories matter? That Aussie teenagers can tell their stories in books, and they can be really big and impactful and heartbreaking? This was the first book I can remember that feeling: that our stories mattered, and it was important to see yourself on the page.

What do you love about writing for children or young adults?

One of my favourite books is East of Eden, by John Steinbeck. There is a quote in that book describing the transition from childhood to young adulthood; Steinbeck describes it as an aching kind of growing. And that's just stuck with me. It is, I think, imprinted on my heart, and it's the way that I go forward in all of my storytelling. I'm fascinated by that transitional period, often called paradise lost, where kids step into the adult world. So when I write for kids, I'm very much back in that precipice, feeling how enormous everything felt and how painful everything was because you were feeling it for the first time. I love being in front of students and letting them see, hey, if you were moved by this book, that’s something I wrote. That’s something I’ve also felt at one point as a human being. Maybe we have something in common? Maybe we can learn from each other. That’s teaching empathy. That’s teaching community. That’s teaching awareness to kids in little big ways via art and storytelling. And I think that’s just magic.

Describe any standout memories of your own school library. What did that space mean to you?

My old primary school library, Warren Park Primary, contained one of my happiest memories of any library association, because our school library organised to have Paul Jennings come to our school. It was at the height of Round the Twist fame. And I can remember sitting on the school library floor, just looking up at him, in fits and giggles, as he read from his books. It’s one of the first memories I have when I realised, oh my gosh, real people make books. He’s there. He’s sitting in front of me. Authors weren’t this amorphous idea anymore. It was a very, very, very big deal and one of the happiest memories I have.

Why is it important that children read, especially in a digital age?

Look, the fact of the matter is, generationally, we're not reading as much. We're not reading specifically for pleasure as much. We're heading towards mass illiteracy and a drop in critical thinking and media literacy right at the time when, in the digital age, we're seeing deepfakes and generative AI come up again and again.

Reading has also been proven to improve vocabulary and literacy. If that matters to young people in terms of grades in school and education, fantastic. But more than that, it will make them a better member of society. It will grant them empathy and the ability to sympathise with other people. If they can care about a fictional character that’s not real, then they can also care about somebody on the other side of the world who's going through something that they may never experience themselves. And that is a gift they can then pass on to others, and use to raise them up.

In Term 3, invitations will be sent to schools selected to participate in the Educational Lending Right (ELR) School Library Survey. Ten minutes is all it takes to support Australian creators. Learn more here.