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”

libraries and publishers – how it can work

During 2008 we tracked 255 author events, including the big name ones. They generated book sales of £36,229 and were attended by 14,433 readers. In addition more libraries are now tried and tested venues for author events.

The Reading Agency in the UK has been pioneering a new way for libraries and publishers to work together for the last four years. Helped significantly by The National Year of Reading 2008, last year shows a bumper year for Reading Partners. It is almost too obvious an idea isn’t it – strategically matching publishers and libraries but you would be surprised at how little is does happen. Libraries are a phenomenal literary infrastructure with committed staff, some extraordinary buildings and a regular audience but it isn’t always easy to get publishers and libraries to work together. CBI’s work during Childrens Book Festival is often spent brokering relationships and building partnerships for events and it s very rewarding when events come together and even more rewarding when long term relationships are built.

More about the scheme over on bookbrunch today

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

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.

Bravo Poetry Aloud (and famous Seamus of course)

Seamus Heaney has been awarded the ninth David Cohen Prize for Literature. A popular winner Seamus accepted the award with his usual wit and warmth.

A great part of the prize? – he gets to select a recipient for the £12,500 Clarissa Luard Award and he choose Poetry Aloud organised by The National Library of Ireland and Poetry Ireland. Congrats to one and all.

Photo below via Book Brunch featuring Seamus and Maire Heaney along with Aongus O hAonghusa of the National Library and Jane O’Hanlon of Poetry Ireland. In accepting the award Jane said it was

“A heartening expression of support which acknowledged the organisations’ commitment to high-quality literary arts practice with young people.”

Libraries with Teeth

David coined that great phase recently when a passionate librarian responded to a Kevin Myers article which questioned the need for publicly funded arts and library spaces.

The library employees will stay on the state payroll while the bookshop closes and its owners and their employees go on the dole. Precisely what are the benefits of that for any town, or any minister for finance?

Moreover, what is the actual cost of keeping both theatre and library going, in terms of maintenance, heating, depreciation, plus the salaries and lifetime pensions of the public servants who work in them?

Discussion of libraries and their role continued in the Irish Times with a piece about their increased use in times of recession. Based on Library Council input the article outlines how

More people are coming in to use computer facilities – some 97 per cent of the State’s libraries offer free internet access – to look for and apply for jobs. “People are also joining simply because they now have less money and more time on their hands,” he (Brendan Teeling, The Library Council) believes.

The books being borrowed have shifted, again with the budget books now competing with self-help books for readers’ attention, although both are overshadowed by the demand for the popular fiction of Marian Keyes, Cecelia Ahern and Maeve Binchy, who all routinely feature in the top 10 most borrowed books in Ireland’s libraries.

Libraries are an extraordinary community resource and in so many cases, with the comittment of staff, community and other organisations become vibrant hubs for literature. Sometime I wonder though if they try and be too many things to too many people. Nurturing the creative flair of some library spaces may just allow them to excel in a particular area – children’s services, local history, music etc. I’ve been lucky enough to meet with some library teams from Holland who push to develop the range and ambition of library services. More on the inspiring Library of 100 Talents tomorrow ……

Who was the most borrowed authors in Irish Libraries in January 2009?

A consequence of the launch of Public Lending Renumeration this week is the start of a flow of information about what books are being borrowed by irish readers. Details have been available from UK Libraries for some years but with the arrival of PLR.ie we get some access to Irish Library statistics.

So who was most borrowed author? – Binchy? Barry? Keyes? JK Rowling?

Nope it was Francesca Simon and author Tony Ross for their Horrid Henry creations- it certainly surprised me!

Most borrowed book was not so creative  – The Official Driver Theory Test

Interesting chat about other implications of PLR over on David’s blog

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.

Judy Blume’s new touring model

Random Person: What do you do?

Me: I work in children’s book

Random person: ehh really, is that a real job? I suppose you’ve read the  Harry Potter books then  and I suppose its important that kids do read books.  I remember really like Roald Dahl as a kid and oh yes those books that got passed around school with the important bits highlighted.

Me: Do you mean Judy Blume

Random Person: YES! thats the one, Forever was playground contraband in our place.

Okay so I’m generalising here but Judy Blume is a hallowed name in writing for young people. She’s still controversial for some adults. In fact Forever was the second most challenged book of 2005, according to the American Library Association and she is recognized as one of the most banned children’s authors in the US.

Anyway to celebrate her most recent titles, she’s touring book blogs – Its a great idea, creating sustained interest across the next few weeks and reaching people who are interested in her work.

First installment over on Big a Little A

Barack Obama, Philip Pullman and Alan Gibbons

Many of you might have spotted an article in Guardian/Observer featuring Philip Pullman’s appeal to a comprehensive in Chesterfield to keep its library open. Meadows Community School is ditching their library (and librarian) in favour of a ‘virtual learning environment’ and a reading room (without librarian).

Author Alan Gibbons has been motivating a campaign about similar issues – you can follow progress over on his blog. He’s even managed to weave in Obamania with these quotes

Guardians of truth and knowledge, librarians must be thanked for their role as champions of privacy, literacy, independent thinking, and most of all reading.

The critical importance of language, of writing, of reading, of communication, of books as a means of transmitting culture and binding us together as a people.

The library represents a window to a larger world, the place where we’ve always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts.

In an Irish context the evidence overwhelmingly points to the success of school libraries. The snappily titled Junior Certificate Support Programme Demonstration Library Project continues to show what can be achieved when a properly resourced and dedicated space is contributed to the school environment. The Room for Reading Report on the project is long but a terrific source of evidence of the importance of school libraries in Ireland. As one young reader said

It’s brilliant, you can learn more and learn about things you know nothing about and it helps with project work. It’s easier to learn and its very relaxing.”