Teaching Guide for Epic written by Conor Kostick

O'Brien have posted a Teaching Guide for Epic written by Conor Kostick. This contains discussion points and activities for classroom use. I enjoyed reading this. An interesting excerpt:

This activity demonstrates how a bias in a system can quickly lead to huge unfairness. It requires two to four packs of playing cards depending on class size and time. Explain the rules in advance.

• Place squares of paper in a box, all white apart from six that are yellow.
• Ask everyone to pick a square. Those with the yellow ones are Central Allocations (CA).
• Hand out two playing cards randomly to every person but three to CA.
• Everyone then has a few minutes to swap cards with each other if they want to.
• At the end of the trading time you add up the value of the cards, with Aces being 3pts, King, Queen, Jack, 2pts, the rest 1pt.
• Now, the critical bit! If 2 cards are the same suit, add 2pts to the score. If a CA player has a set of 2 the same suit they add 2pts, if they have 3 of the same suit they add 3pts. The top six scores become the new Central Allocations.
• Collect all the cards, except those possessed by the CA members, who get to keep theirs. Repeat.
• If time allows, repeat again.

It should be clear to everyone that all the cards are going to end up in the hands of CA and it has become impossible to get on the committee if you only have 2 cards. Stop the game at this point. Ask the class what can be done about the unfairness of the game. Possible strategies for those outside CA include refusing to play, co-operating to get an individual up into CA by pooling cards, refusing to return cards, persuading CA people to give back their extra cards. If they can’t decide upon any of these then you might wish to declare the person with the most points as inner. I played a version of this game once. A group of about 10 of us pooled our cards, collectively giving us a very high points score, although the game ended in confusion because the rules didn’t allow for 10 people taking up 1 place on CA. It was interesting though, as by the second round we realised something had to be done to change the rules.

New Blue cover for Epic in Germany

German online bookstores have a new blue cover for Conor Kostick's Epic. Apart from the colour change the only new thing appears to be a tag line:

Ein Fantasy-Thriller aus der Welt der Computerspiele

The original red cover for Epic can be seen here.

Conor Kostick in German language wikipedia

Epic seems to be doing very well in Germany and Conor now has an entry in the German language wikipedia. The new wikipedia article is not quite as extensive as the English language entry, but it adds that Conor was born in 1964 in Cheshire.

Epic extract in Krash (Australia)

Krash is a boys general interest magazine that is published monthly and distributed in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia. Recently they featured Epic in a four page extract.

Competition in Chill magazine (Australia)

Chill is the children's section of Adelaide's newspaper, The Advertiser. Recently they held a competition to win a copy of Epic:

EPIC, by Conor Kostick is described as a blend of Lord of the Rings fantasy and the virtual reality world of the Matrix. A boy named Erik is living on New Earth where Epic, a sword and sorcery virtual reality game, determines what happens to you. Erik subverts the rules of the game, and he and his friends are drawn into a world of power-hungry, dangerous players.

Epic poster in Disney Adventures (Australia)

This monthly magazine is targetted at boys and girls aged 9 to 13 published by Australian Consolidated Press in Australia and New Zealand. The dragon is from the Australian cover of Epic. Pity the poster doesn't have Conor's name...

Review of Saga in the (Irish) Sunday Independent.

The review, which isn't online, is by Celia Keenan, who is the Director of the MA Programme in Children’s Literature and Lecturer in English at Saint Patrick’s College, Drumcondra (Dublin City University) and the president of The Irish Society for the Study of Children's Literature.

Contemporary and futuristic fantasy can provide a powerful critique of dehumanisation and help explore ideas about identity. […] Conor Kostick’s Saga falls into this category. Saga, the sequel to Epic is suited to a slightly older readership (15-16 yrs) because of the challenge of the narrative form, the shifting point of view and the sophisticated structure based on virtual reality games.