hate those recaptcha things? think again

I hate those recaptcha text things which make you verify your status as a human by asking you to identify words. I can never identify them and usually after about 4 attempts I have to seek help. However this little piece from youtube has made me think differently…..

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

World Book Day want to know your guilty secrets

In the run  up to World Book Day, they want to know your guilty reading secrets -

Ever pretended to have read a book you hadn’t?

Ever stayed up way too late to finish a book?

Survey here - It’ll only take a couple of minutes and it would be nice to have Ireland  represented

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I went through a Dick Francis stage when I was about 13!

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

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.”

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

Age banding and some unforseen outcomes

The age banding debate has continued to circle – there was some healthy discussion over at the Society of Authors Children Writers and Illustrators Group Conference in Cambridge last week.

You can read about proceedings over at notoagebanding.org and this includes Philip Pullman’s impassioned statement as well as input from  Kate Wilson from Scholastic and Becky Stradwick from Borders. However it’s Anne Fine’s piece that really interested me. As part of the opposition process they canvassed writers and some interesting things came to light.

When we set up notoagebanding.org, it became clear very soon that we were getting a huge number of responses along the lines of, “It’s all very well for the likes of Philip Pullman and Terry Pratchett and J.K. Rowling and Anthony Horowitz. But I’ve not got their clout.”

So we invented notmuchclout@notoagebanding.org to gather information. And it became clear that authors fall into all sorts of brackets of how they are, and how they see themselves:

• Prestigious but not highly selling
• Not prestigious and not highly selling
• Been around and quite famous but know from their royalties that they’re – to put it brutally – a bit of a has-been, commercially-wise.
• There are the new authors with little or no experience of publishing.
• There are the new authors still utterly in thrall to anything said to them by that wise editor who was foresighted enough to take them on.
• There are shy authors who can’t say boo to a goose, let alone stand up to some of the toughies who run publishing houses now.
• There are a huge number of authors who are terrified that actually, for years now, their editors have been itching for an excuse to heave them off the list and pulp what little, if anything, is left of their lovely back lists

I think perhaps its an overly pessimistic view of a writers relationship with their publisher but I think its interesting stuff and it vocalises something that is very clearly worthy of further debate.

Uncovering Tomi Ungerer

A colleague mentioned illustrator Tomi Ungerer to me recently and I think I met the mention with a blank stare.

Jump forward to France  a few weeks later and I encounter a full display of his work in one of the many bookshops I was poking around in  and I’m smitten. Only the Barbarpapas could distract me (but that’s a whole other story!) According to this NYTimes article, (via Scamp.ie) he’s now living in Ireland.

‘The Three Robbers‘  will be rereleased this October.  In 1998 he published a memoir of living as a child in Nazi occupied France.

Off to research more about the man and his work – I really like what I’ve found so far

The age banding debate

There has been something of a kerfuffle among authors, illustrators and publishers in recent weeks concerning the inclusion of age guidelines on the cover of books for children. Publishers argue that adults need some guidance when choosing books for young people, authors and illustrators are countering that fundamentally what is best for the child should prevail.

Young readers are notoriously diverse, in interests, in ability and in enthusiasm for reading. It is likely that whatever age range might be attached to a book will be inaccurate for about 40% of the readers. A 7 year old who is a strong reader might be enjoying the same book as a 10 year old who isn’t so strong. And there in lies the problem… a one age range fits all will never fit all. If you are a poor reader aged 9, your confidence is not going to be helped by realising most of your reading material is branded 7+.

Equally confident readers may find there material curtailed by an over enthusiastic adult, librarian or bookseller. Darran Shan is convinced this will go one step further and end in publishers controlling more and more what ends up in books for young people. Darren put up a spirited opposition to the new idea on George Hook’s show on Newstalk last week. He has also been busy commenting on Achuka’s Blog and The Bookseller.com and Publishing News

Many of the heavyweight UK authors have signed up to www.notoagebanding.org including Michael Rosen, Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine and Melvin Burgess. Meg Rosoff seems to be a lone dissenting voice, among the authors certainly, over on the Guardian’s Book Blog.

I’ve a feeling that we are heading towards patchy age ranging with some publishers going ahead with age banding and others bowing to pressure from their authors and not proceeding. What yet may be the most interesting aspect of this is when age branded and non age branded titles go head to head in bookshops…..