St Albans Literary Dinner

We held on Thursday the 2nd July our second Literary Dinner at the beautiful setting of the St Albans Abbey. As with most groups we run a lot of events for children throughout the year and decided last year that it would be really good to hold something for adults. I reprised the role of compere again this year and think I did a pretty ok job! We were really lucky to have a great line up of authors who all spoke about their books and writing and read from their books.
To open the evening Philip Ardagh gave us some anecdotes about his writing and his love for Aussie tv show Neighbours. Next Leander Deeny, actor and author, read from his book Hazel's Phantasmagoria' and acted out the scene from the film Atonement which he appeared in alongside Keira Knightley. To round the evening off we had Kevin Crosseley Holland - a writing hero of mine! - who told us about his writing and his love of myths and legends and old england!

On the whole it was a brilliant evening and one which we hope will be happening every year!!

Carnegie

It's great news to see Siobhan Dowd's book Bog Child win the carnegie. It's a brilliant book that doesn't have to have a fast moving plot that has adventure at every turn, but a book that you can enjoy reading because of the high quality of the writing. There is so much to think about in all her books which makes it even more of a shame that beyond Solace we will have no more of her books bless our library shelves.

We had our own carnegie party with our shadowing group in the library. 40 odd students with strawberries, pizza, prizes and a whole afternoon of fun. As always we didn't pick the right winner and we voted instead for Knife of Never Letting Go to win the Carnegie and Varmints winning the Greenaway. We weren't too disappointed though, we all enjoyed it, especially the pizza!!

Alan Gibbon's e petition

For all those that support Alan Gibbons and his quest for the book I urge you to sign the e-petition on the 10 Downing Street pages. If you follow link http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/literacy/ it will take you to the correct sign. This petition should be signed by all those that feel we have a right as citizens to libraries, information, books, reading etc etc. As a school librarian myself this is something that I feel everyone should get behind. Libraries in schools are a fundamental part of a childs education in life. A library encourages a love of reading, opens the doors to so many possibilities and has such an impact in every part of our lives that they are neccessity.
I urge everyone to sign the petition and hopefully together we can get things changed!

RHCBA

WOW what a ceremony and a great result for reading general!!

I was really lucky to not only enjoy a great ceremony but to meet some really great people at this years Red House Children's Book Award Ceremony. The ceremony is always one of the massive highlights of the year and this year was by no means an exception. The whole atmosphere was buzzing from the very moment that the children started to arrive. You could feel their anticipation as they met their favourite authors and gathered numbers of signatures from those whose books they had spent the last year reading and enjoying.

For me it was great to see so many people having fun and enjoying themselves in the name of books and reading. That is what the Award to me is about. It's not just a recognition of all the books that have been read through the year and all the work that the organisers and children have put into it. But its also a recognition of great writers, writing books that we enjoy and ultimately it's about reading. Celebrating a love and enjoyment in its art and giving something back to that act which has given us so much pleasure!!

All in all a great day and very enjoyable with a very worthy set of shortlisted authors and winners. Special congrats go to Sophie McKenzie - Blood Ties is a great book!