2010 Wish List

Now that the 2009 Children’s Books Ireland conference is behind us, we’ve been evaluating the weekend and beginning to think more about who we might feature in 2010. This can be the most fun part of programming – wish lists and notions and ideas floating around. This year’s speakers were so fantastic though that we are quite nervous that expectations for next year will be even higher.

We asked delegates to suggest some speakers  – have a look at their wishlists below and for those who attended and are still hungry for some more Shaun Tan – BookBrunch has a great post that mentions him today.

Delegates Wish List

Robert Munsch
Kelly Armstrong
Katherine Patterson
Holly Black
Madeline L’Engle
Oliver Jeffers
Alexis Deacon
Emily Gravett
Carol Ann Duffy
Philip Pullman
Quentin Blake
Neil Gaiman
Jon Berkeley
Anthony Browne
Maurice Sendak
Marcus Sedgewick
Mal Peet
Judi Curtin
Jenny Valentine
Jane Mitchell
Kevin Waldron
Malorie Blackman
Philip Reeve
Chris Riddell
Michael Scott
Elisabeth Zwerger
Lisa Evans
Darren Shan
Roddy Doyle
Conor Kostick
Sarah Dessen
Megan McDonald
Mo Willems
Raymond Briggs
Clare Benton
Leslie Patricelli
Scott McCloud
Kveta Pacouska
Jane Ray
Jan Pienkowski
Sally Nicholls
Mini Grey
Cressida Cowell & Neil Layton
Russell Ayto
Peter Horace

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

CBI Conference – full line up released

The full timetable for the CBI conference has been announced over on CBI’s Homepage. Its a cracker of a line up – ok so I am a little biased but even if I wasn’t, it’s a great great line up. AND we get to enjoy the National Gallery as the conference venue this year -

Direct from the blurbs

On the home front, Ireland is well represented by the talents of Celine Kiernan (The Poison Throne), Andrew Whitson and Caitríona Hastings (An tSnáthaid Mhór), Orla Kenny & Mary Branley (Kids’ Own) and Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl, Airman), who will close proceedings on Sunday in conversation with Robert Dunbar.

Making perhaps the longest commute ever in the history of CBI conference speakers will be the celebrated Australian author and illustrator Shaun Tan (The Arrival, Tales from Outer Suburbia) who makes his first visit to Ireland especially for the conference.

From the UK, CBI is delighted to welcome illustration expert Martin Salisbury (Play Pen), award-winning authors Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go) and David Almond (Skellig, Jackdaw Summer), as well as writer and publisher Verna Wilkins (Tamarind Books), who will present this year’s Ibby Ireland session.

You can see full details including speaker biogs and timetables here.

See you there (I’ll be the frazzled one, desperately hunting for bottled water and microphone connections!!)

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.

TED.com – The nature of genius?

I’m a TED addict.  It is one of my favourite online resources. I don’t always agree with the speakers but I can usually find something there that gets me interested.

TED 2009 has just finished and they have uploaded some of the sessions including this one from author, Elizabeth Gilbert about the nature of genius. Gilbert’s  theory is that by externalising genius in some way – a fairy, a daemon, a spirit in the corner-  it frees artists and writers to do their part. I’m not sure I agree with her but she makes several good points about artists and writers along the way.

Don’t let the fairies, daemons or spirits put you off – This is really worth a watch

Scott Mc Cloud- making me understand comics

I was never a big comic fan as a kid, mostly I think because one of my brothers was Asterix mad and I was determined to avoid anything he liked…..

So it’s left me with a huge gap in knowledge – Recently, the  DFC among other things has made me go and do a bit of research. Luckily Scott McCloud has been writing books for people like me… Understanding Comics is an extraordinary way in to comics. Laid out as a comic big it introduces all the main concepts with plenty of humour and skill.

Scott McCloud has been a previous visitor to TED – worth a watch here.

More Comic Stuff over on The Independent (UK) to mark the arrival of ComicCon in New York.

ISSCL Conference, Nation, Translation and Migration

The ISSCL conference runs tomorrow and Saturday in St Patrick’s Drumcondra – It’s a really varied programme with papers about Michael Morpurgo, Terry Pratchett, Stereotypes in Swedish young adult fiction Shaun Tan and Siobhan Dowd.

More on  ISSCL.com

A bit of nice-ness-ness

I adored Patrick Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go and am so pleased that he is coming to the CBI Conference next May. – details here

The sequel is due around conference time as well. Educating Alice has the scoop. It’s made me even more impatient to get my hands on the book.

She’s taken these details from the book jacket.

Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd has carried a desperately wounded Viola right into the hands of their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss.

Immediately separated from Viola and imprisoned, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the Mayor’s new order.

But what secrets are hiding just outside of town? And where is Viola? Is she even still alive? And who are the mysterious Answer?

And then, one day, the bombs begin to explode. . . .

The second thrilling volume in the Chaos Walking trilogy, The Ask and the Answer is a tense, shocking, and deeply moving novel about resistance under the most extreme pressure.

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.

All Ireland Symposium – ISSCL

The Irish Society for The Study of Children’s Literature are hosting a special symposium in November.

CONNECTIONS:  Children’s Literature and Culture
1st All-Ireland Symposium of The Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature (ISSCL)
Hosted by the School of Languages, Literatures and Performing Arts in Association with the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast
November 22, Seminar Room, Postgraduate Centre, 18 College Green

Speakers include

A  Keynote Lecture and Discussion by Prof. Dr. Emer O’Sullivan (Leuphana University, Lüneburg): about the representation of foreign nations in ABCs and picturebooks.

Brief presentations of current projects / research activities:
•    Dr Áine McGillicuddy (Dublin City University): “Images of Germany and Alsace in the work of children’s author and illustrator Hansi”
•    Prof. Máire Messenger Davies (University of Ulster): “Screen Adaptation: authenticity and audience”
•    Alexandra Cochrane (University of Ulster): “Storytelling on children’s television”
Beth Rodgers (PhD candidate, Queen’s University): “’On the Borderland’: Adolescent girlhood in the fin-de-siècle literary marketplace”
•    Jane Carroll (PhD candidate, Trinity College Dublin): “The landscape in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence”
•    Jessica d’Eath (PhD candidate, NUI Galway): “The portrayal of World War One in Italian Children’s Literature over time”
•    Nora Maguire (PhD candidate, Trinity College Dublin): “Childness: Childhood tropes in contemporary German literature”
•    Anne-Marie Herron (PhD candidate, St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra): t.b.a.
•    Kate Harvey (PhD candidate, Trinity College Dublin): “Children’s Shakespeares: text and production”
•    Carrie Anderson (des. PhD candidate): “Mrs Sherwood and the popularisation of didactic literature”
•    Aoife Murray (des. PhD candidate): “Author and authority in children’s literature”

And a round table concluding debate – Developments in Children’s Literature Studies in Ireland with Dr Mary Shine Thompson, Dr Amanda Piesse, Ciara Ni Bhroin, Valerie Coghlan, Celia Keenan, Dr Pádraic Whyte and Martina Seifert.

The event ends with author  Colin Bateman reading  from his children’s books