I’d have to keep doing it…

It’s a particularly busy time for everyone with Children’s Book Festival.

Want to know how everyone is getting on this October?  go here, here, here, here, here and here.

In the meantime here is something to ponder, it might give us all a reason to do more and better all year round.

Overheard in a bookshop last Thursday evening. A mother talking to her friend about her young son. “I wouldn’t want to start reading to him at night because then I’d have to keep doing it”

School Library Budget cuts – put ‘em under pressure

Martina Devlin has an opinion piece in today’s Irish Independent about the cut to the school library budget.

It didn’t cost a lot, at around €2m a year, but it made a difference. It meant books — not textbooks but attractively packaged, recently-published novels and non-fiction books — were introduced into the classroom.

After almost 40 years, the scheme has now been discontinued. There is no School Library Grant for 2009 — the budget is gone. Not reduced but removed. Teachers and librarians expected some decrease, in view of economic circumstances, but to their dismay it has simply vanished.

The impact of the cuts for children, teachers, authors, illustrators, publishers and suppliers is huge. If you feel as strongly about this as we in CBI do, please please tell your elected representatives local, national and European.  You might also want to Talk to Joe about it. The more we can raise our voices the better.

There is also a good report about how the scheme operates available from Wexford Libraries here

Ebooks, digital publishing and children

Publishing, But Not As We Know It

For the first time, we have a generation of children who are reading more off screens than they are off paper. With developments such as eBook readers, writers producing novels and comics for mobile phones, online fan-fiction, digital book piracy and the panic-inducing Google Book Settlement, the book industry is in turmoil. Text is evolving and the traditional methods of production, marketing and even education are being left behind. This is nothing short of a revolution, and everyone involved in the book industry is faced with embracing it or losing touch with young readers.

CBI brings a panel of speakers together to discuss how to carry children’s books forward into this new age of publishing.

The Irish Writers Centre, Parnell Square, Dublin 1 Thursday June 11th 6.30-8.30pm

Chair Oisín McGann

Panel - Georgina Byrne, County Librarian, South Dublin Libraries; Sam Holman, Director, Irish Copyright Licensing Agency ; John McNamee, President European Booksellers Federation ; Peadar Ó’Guilín, Author

More information on www.childrensbooksireland.ie | 01 872 7475 info@childrensbooksireland.ie

PS – Eoin Purcell has some terrific links and thoughts  related to e books

Events Epidemic

Lots of events happening in the next week……..

First up is Pj Lynch, in St Patrick’s College on Thursday 23rd April at 6.30pm. In celebration of UNESCO World Book Day, Cregan Library, St Patrick’s College Drumcondra, Dublin, will present a special event with P.J. Room E201, St Patrick’s College Drumcondra.To RSVP, email info.library@spd.dcu.ie

Also on Thursday, in Cork city library- French graphic artist Stéphane Heuet will be in town not only to launch a new graphic novel by teenagers with author John Sexton and illustrator Alan Barrett but he will also be participating in a public event on Thursday afternoon. For more information please contact cork libraries 021 4924900- libraries@corkcity.ie

On Saturday Walker Books and Church of Ireland College of Education in Rathmines are presenting ‘The Story in the Picture’ on 25th April 2009 in the College in Rathmines. Featuring illustrators Patrick Benson, Bruce Ingman and Niamh Sharkey along with Deirdre McDermott and Lizzie Spratt from Walker Books.Cost €35 (students €20) to include coffee/tea and lunch. For further information contact vcoghlan@cice.ie or telephone 01 4970033.

On Saturday April 25th from 2.30pm, Derek Landy will be celebrating in the National Gallery of Ireland as part of Family Fun day. Derek will be in The Shaw Room from 3pm and will be signing books as well- more info from the National Gallery of Ireland – www.nationalgallery.ie or info@ngi.ie

On Monday 27th at 7pm, US academic Jack Zipes will be addressing the theme of The Reconfiguration of Children and Children’s Literature in a Globalised World. St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra. More information from celia.keena@spd.dcu.ie or janeohanlon@poetryireland.ie

Toddling round the bookshops

I’m a big fan of Shelftalker, a booksellers blog from the US.  A recent post about toddler book choice is a fascinating read.

It is strange habit but I do often find myself lurking in bookshops watching parents and kids make book choices. Over the past wee while there are a couple of things I’ve spotted -

Cover design is the most important factor in kids choosing books. Let me say that again, cover design is the most important thing in kids choosing books. You’d think that as a result good design would be everywhere – it’s not. Often it seems rush, poorly conceived and slapped together. The poorest element is usually the typography. It’s daft because without a decent cover, kids won’t even flick to the blurb. Adults buy based on the blurb, kids buy based on the cover.

The other most important factor in book choice is the adults in the room. Parents so often get in the way. Lots of times I’ve seen kids spot Book A, pick it up, dive in and turn round expectantly to parent. In an ideal world, parent drops down to shelf height has a read of Book A too and they decide together if it will be their choice that day. Alas normally Book A is quickly dismissed as parent shows them Book B which they think they will enjoy. I’m not saying the parents are wrong in their choice, it would just be nice in Book A was given a fair chance.

Bookshop layout and atmosphere  is also key. The best spaces are bright, big and welcoming. Kids don’t mind if its untidy as long as they can reach the books and as long as they are welcomed. The kids from Trim put it best last year when they said

We appreciate helpful staff but don’t stalk us around the shop

A couple of things they also said which didn’t make it to final poster –

Don’t put the sticker over something important, Make the price clear, Display staff recommendation posters and signs, and Don’t over promote one title

Lastly for a treat – direct from Shelftaker – do you see a rabbit or a duck or both?

Library of 100 talents

As promised last week, here’s some more on Amsterdam’s Library of 100 Talents. Karen Bertrams, a library advisor from Holland, visited Ireland last year as part of a symposium presented by CBI and The Ark. Below is a summary of the project. There is some more information and images available online too – Try here and here

The project started in 2002 when a local school was asked to build a model of a new children’s library to be entered in the national contest ‘The Library of 100 Talents’ and by 2007 had resulted in a brand new library building in Heerhugowaard. This library reflects the way that children now use information, create new contexts and share this with other children. How children find and use information is completely different to adults and therefore a scaled down model of a library for adults would not be successful for children. Instead what was required was a different type of building that made it possible to organise and share information in new ways.

The concept of the Library of 100 Talents finds its roots in the educational visions of Reggio Emilia and the theory of Howard Gardner. The Reggio vision calls it the 100 languages of children. The learning theory of Howard Gardner explains how children look at the world in their own way. He distinguishes nine different forms of intelligence: Verbal, Logical, Visual, Musical, Bodily, Naturalistic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Existential.

The Library of 100 Talents offers a framework for developing a truly new library which is conscious of the children’s needs in all its services

Karen Bertrams

Planning and building the Heerhugowaard Library involved consulting with children about the layout, the aesthetics and the programming of this new space. Two hundred and fifty children, 11-12 year olds from 10 different schools, took part in various consultation sessions and master classes. By recording the results carefully in text and illustrations, the architects’ brief for the children’s library gradually developed. This resulted in innovative and child-centred designs including a dome on the roof of the fourth floor where the children can look out over their town, a new way for organising books and materials and purpose built workshop spaces.

Tamar Institute in Palestine wins the ALMA

More international awards for work with children and books and reading…

The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award was announced today in Bologne. The swedes take the legacy of Lindgren very seriously and every year they make an award to an individual, individuals or organisations who are active in reading promotion. And by serious I mean – the prize totals SEK 5 million (equivalent to approx. USD 578,000, 445,000 EUR). Lindgren is an extraordinarily important  figure in  children’s books and the Swedes are determined to celebrate her with this important prize.

As they say

“The prize aims to strengthen and increase interest in children’s and young people’s literature globally. The award is designed to strengthen children’s rights at global level.

This year’s recipient is Tamer Institute for Community Education, Palestine.

Tamer Institute for Community Education
The Tamer Institute for Community Education in Ramallah is an independent organisation that has carried out reading promotion work for children and young people in West Bank and Gaza since 1989. The Tamer Institute was founded to give children access to books and alternative learning as children’s and young people’s schooling, leisure time and lives suffered from the troubles in the area. The Tamer Institute also hands out reading passports. Holders get a stamp for every book they have read. This is a clear symbol of the fact that there are no borders for those who can read books. As Astrid Lindgren said: “Good children’s literature gives the child a place in the world and the world a place in the child”.

The Tamer Institute is the hub of a network that works with writing workshops, storytelling, drama and literary discussion for children and young people. They supply libraries with children’s books and they train librarians and parents. A national reading campaign is organised every year, culminating with National Reading Week. In 2008, the campaign reached 52,000 children in refugee camps and remote villages and communities, who took part in literary discussion, drama and drawing and writing workshops.

The Tamer Institute also carries out youth activities. The young people, who have often participated in Tamer’s work since they were children, publish their own newspaper, Yara´at, among other things. They use it to publish their thoughts, poems and stories. When the Tamer Institute was founded, there were virtually no Palestinian children’s books. The organisation has now published more than 130 titles and several of the children who attended the Tamer Institute’s writing workshops have started to write their own books as adults.

Despite difficult circumstances, the Tamer Institute works tirelessly on many levels to create a better situation for Palestinian children and young people via literature. Their conviction that words can tear down walls has resulted in innovative reading promotion activities of an unusual breadth, for which reason the Tamer Institute has been awarded the 2009 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

www.tamerinst.org

on boys and reading

The Times Online carries an article by author Joe Craig about creativity and boys. It’s similar to a talk Joe delivered last year in Cork city libraries during Children’s Book Festival

The biggest change comes in Year 7, which statistically is also when there’s the biggest drop off in reading – especially in boys. Now, it perhaps seems obvious that the withering of originality is greatly caused by reading less. But I think it’s also the other way round: they read less because their creative spark is consistently doused. Their connection with stories, with ideas and imagination, is stifled by the school environment. If the fun has gone from stories, why read?

Oisin McGann talked about something similar at Teenage Kicks, The LAI conference in November. You can access the full text of his often very funny talk here.

When boys are at that age, we’re basically just little cave men. We have simple tastes, which – in some cases – we never grow out of. I firmly believe that most of the cave paintings that have been found around the world were painted by men, simply because they are largely pictures of a buffalo or a mammoth being shot in the arse with an arrow. If women had been doing the painting, they would be pictures of marriages, girls becoming best friends, or people sitting round dealing with social issues. Or they might possibly be recording the invention of the shoe (I wasn’t sure if I’d get away with that one). But the boys wanted to shoot a mammoth in the arse with an arrow and six thousand years later, we haven’t changed.

Very Hungry Caterpillar is top bedtime read

Happy New Year to one and all.

According to a recent poll Very Hungry Caterpillar is the top bedtime read – the book you understand, alas not this humble blog.

As reported in the Daily Telegraph British parents are turning to safe options for bed time reading. With many deciding traditional fairy tales are just too scary or too unPC for their little tots

Three quarters of mothers and fathers try to avoid stories which might give their children nightmares and half of all parents would not consider reading a single fairy tale to their child until they reached the age of five.

Top bedtime stories of 2008 in Britain:

1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle (1969)

2. Mr Men, Roger Hargreaves (1971)

3. The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson (1999)

4. Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne (1926)

5. Aliens Love Underpants, Claire Freedman & Ben Cort (2007)

6. Thomas and Friends from The Railway Series, Rev. W.Awdry (1945)

7. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (1908)

8. What a Noisy Pinky Ponk, Andrew Davenport (2008)

9. Charlie and Lola, Lauren Child (2001)

10. Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Robert Southey (1837)

Top 10 fairy tales no longer read:

1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

2. Hansel and Gretel

3. Cinderella

4. Little Red Riding Hood

5. The Gingerbread Man

6. Jack and the Beanstalk

7. Sleeping Beauty

8. Beauty and the Beast

9. Goldilocks and the Three Bears

10. The Emperor’s New Clothes

Festive Fear

Lots of things have been getting in the way of posting lately – Pj Lynch, parties, Budapest, stemming the flow of 2009 leaks

Normal service will hopefully resume next week – In the meantime here are some scary stories from CBI’s recent Derek Landy competition to keep you amused.