This week I attended the Cardiff roadshow for Children’s publishers and librarians, hosted by the Reading Agency. I came as a guest of Curious Fox, who published my book Soul Shadows.

It was my first trip to the wonderful city of Cardiff (an easy two hours train journey from London Paddington). The roadshow was based at the city’s main library, which is enormous and looks like a joy to wander around and lose oneself in. I arrived just before lunch, in time for the last of the publishers’ presentations.

Speed-dating

The afternoon was organised in a kind of ‘speed-dating’ format. Each publisher sat at a table and they were allotted ten-minute chats with each set of librarians. These were strictly timed, and when the bell sounded, the librarians would leave and another group would arrive.

I sat with Clare and Cat from Curious Fox. I think that having me on the ‘panel’ helped, as what CF were doing, apart from advertising their existence to librarians, was offering the prospect of author visits to libraries. I told them a bit about what I’d do on these visits, and the age groups I’m trying to reach. Most of the librarians were from Wales or the West Country, and seemed enthusiastic, as they didn’t often get author visits, but some did say that money could be a problem. (Wales has escaped most of the library cuts affecting England, and are even opening new libraries in some areas – but funding for these sorts of extras still appears to be a problem, at least for certain authorities.)

Creepy events?

Clare pointed out that some libraries charge a small entry fee for author visits, which has a counter-intuitive effect of raising interest in the event and attracting larger audiences, as well as enabling libraries to cover basic costs. It was also suggested that we try tying in the event to a themed evening, e.g. Halloween, or the Summer Reading Challenge Creepy House, as Soul Shadows is in the horror genre. If we could bring in ghost story tellers, shadow puppeteers and other attractions, it could certainly increase public interest. We’ll see what transpires…

The Golden Ladder

I’ve been rereading Jenny Wagner’s On Writing Books for Children recently. It was published over 20 years ago, but is full of abundant good sense as relevant today as ever. This is from the final chapter:

‘Whether we like it or not, our society thinks of children as lesser beings – not just smaller than we are but less important; and everything to do with them is thought to be less important, too…. Somewhere the misconception has crept in that children are really an inferior form of adult, to be judged according to how well they fit in with the adult world…. This Golden Ladder view of literature, in which children’s picture books are seen to occupy the bottom rung of the ladder, with junior novels on the next rung, novels for young adults further up, and the nirvana of adult literature at the top, seems to be gaining ground. Subtly it is invading all our opinions on children’s books; now, if we come across a children’s book and it’s funny and also easy to read we relegate it to the lowest secton of the ladder without even looking for literary merit…. To see children’s literature in this way is to ignore what good children’s writers have been doing for the past hundred years: to bring a literature to children that is within their range of abilities, but which sacrifices nothing in the way of literary content.’

Well said!