So Many Books... - IBBY conference

05:16 pm - IBBY conference

Quite belated write-up on last weekend's event (and will have to be an extremely sketchy one at that), as I'm still way behind on reading blogs, let alone writing my own. And it'll be a while before I catch up enough to be able to play along with some very tempting funness, likejadelennox's and dorianegray's spot 'em and match 'em book quotes (here and here), and Michele's 50 Children's and YA Books meme on Scholar's Blog. And the last evolved from another list on Big A, little a's blog...

The conference was titled 'Time Everlasting: Representations of Past, Present and Future in Children's Literature', which was a good start. It was in the Froebel College at Roehampton - another good start, as I quite liked the idea of seeing the institution from whence my studies are coming near the beginning of the programme. I only visited Milton Keynes when handing in the final essay for the final course, though of course with the OU we had tutorials in both Dublin and Belfast. And summer schools in Manchester and London! But all were other schools'/universities' campuses.




The first speaker was Victor Watson, who's written many works about children's books, including After Alice, which he mentioned because of the title, which I believe related to the idea that children's fiction changed from overtly and primarily didactic before Alice, to less didactic, and therefore (I think it was a cause-and-effect) open to the adult writers' feeling of nostalgia for the loss of childhood innocence. He talked about Alice, of course, and Winnie-the-Pooh and Peter Pan, also of course (leaving Philippa Pearce for Morag Styles to cover). Only problem was that it was very difficult to hear, even from about the middle of the room - a problem I had with every speaker in the main room except Farah Mendlesohn, though I did move quite close to the front for her talk, just in case!

I was pleased when Watson went from discussion of these older classics of children's fiction to mention Saffy's Angel, by Hilary McKay. He quite charmingly admitted to loving it so much in part because the grandfather turns out to have been the one to have saved the day, but the book fit in well with the theme of time anyway, with the flashbacks and gradual discovery of Saffy's past, and the grandfather who's senile at the beginning of the book. I was chatting with him for a few minutes later at the tea (all right, drinks of all kinds, and biscuits) table, and he was clearly pleased that Saffy's Angel had been appreciated and there were a few fellow-fans in the audience. I very much enjoyed nattering about why the books were so great.

Anyway, back to the talks proper! Next up was Celia Rees, whom I've never read (Witch Child sat around here for ages, and I'm pretty sure OD pronounced it 'dreadful' - though it's entirely possible that I'm misremembering and/or she was), and she was grand about historical research and all, but said nothing that inspired me to want to read her books.

Then Jamila Gavin and Mary Hoffman 'in conversation', with MH talking about the Stravaganza books and Jamila Gavin talking at least about Blood Stone, though I've kind of lost the names of other books in the series, if series it actually is. Again, OD is the only one who's read any of these, but she stopped at Stravaganza, which she'd got for Christmas from me because of Venice, as she was in a serious mask craze then. And we'd all liked Hoffman's Amazing Grace, un-PC though it might (or might not) be to admit it. Jamila Gavin went right on the TBR pile, where she should have been before, but MH - well, saying that straight fantasy (vs. historical fantasy or slightly alternative historical settings) is 'boring' because you only have one point of view of the world didn't do much to please.... And when she started describing the woes that made the present-day teens more susceptible to becoming stravaganzas or time-travellers, and it was all too Angst-of-the-week for words, I lost any desire to read these.

All I remember of the IBBY announcements is that the UK group was successful in its bid to host the world conference in 2012, which was good. Not being involved in the organising, it sounds a huge distance away, but I'm sure they feel entirely differently!

After lunch I trotted off alone to the 'optional session' (not sure why it was called that, and it seemed a bit rude to her) with Theresa Breslin, talking about the research she did on da Vinci for her book The Medici Seal. She was a very engaging speaker with a lovely Scottish accent, and fun about her delight at the thought of the research requiring her to go to Italy - a lot - especially during winter in Scotland, contrasted to her editor's horror when presented with the idea. Again there was a problem of not hearing well, but there were slides and two extracts from the book read, and it's one I'd definitely like to read now.

After that were the parallel workshops (you could go to one group of two out of ten, so frustration was almost guaranteed) - I was signed up for Charlie's but we saw that Linda Buckley-Archer, author of Gideon the Cutpurse was giving one of the others. This was something of a serendipitous discovery, as I'd just heard about the book from a rave review by Gaul Guthier. That sent me to the fantastic website, which left me stupidly thinking that the book was published in the US and not due out for a while anyway. But Linda's editor had been there with a mini-Simon & Schuster table and I'd found that I'd been all mixed up, and it was already out here. Her talk was 'Pandora's Box: The Ethics of Time Travel' , and with Charlie's encouragement, I switched. (I had already read his paper, in several versions AND heard a practice run, so this was no reflection on its interest level. For everyone else, it was on prehistoric sites as portals in children's fantasy, and gave an overview of ways such sites have been used in books and TV shows and then focussed on Alan Garner's Elidor and Catherine Fisher's Darkhenge. I haven't read Elidor, but it's a wonderfully insightful reading of Darkhenge, illuminating things I freely acknowledge I'd never have seen about the book.)

The other speaker in that group was Sara Reis da Silva, on 'Discourses of History in Portuguese Children's Literature', and I was desperately making notes on the bibliography she gave us so I could tell generalblossom which books she was talking about. I hadn't realised how difficult it would be to recognise a Portuguese title or author by sight! A bit frustrating as apparently none of the books have been translated into English and this paper is part of a bigger work, of course - I think it would be fascinating if I could read it or the books. She was lovely and I was chatting with her a bit after the workshops. Of course she apologised for her English, which seemed highly unnecessary to me.

Linda's talk was very entertaining, with readings from both Gideon and the sequel - though as she said, the sequel has just been handed over to her editor so nothing read may end up in the published version. I thought it was very interesting that she went the SF way of seriously investigating the scientific possibilities of something like time travel, rather than a more time-slip fantasy approach, and wonder if it really makes the least bit of difference to most readers. I suppose there are those who are allergic to anything smacking of either SF on the one hand or fantasy on the other, but along with the (majority? no idea) who don't much care, there'd be all the historical fiction fans, who'd read it primarily interested in its historical setting. (Accurate with the odd liberty taken for the sheer fun of it.) I was getting her email after to get a copy of the paper if possible, and ended up with her copy of it handed to me, which Charlie and I read on the train back to Bristol, so I just sat back and enjoyed instead of trying to take mental notes.

After tea/coffee and chocolate cake for Philippa Pearce, Morag Styles gave an appreciation for her work, which was probably very well done, but I was a bit lacking in caffeine at that point and that's about all I can say. (It was nice recognising many of the references, as A Dog so Small and Battle for Bubble and Squeak are texts for the first module. Oh, then was Margaret Meek. Renowned, famous in the field, etc, but all I can remember of her was that she talked a lot about Piaget (or it seemed a lot!) and I'd just been reading a book which made Piaget sound more than a bit dodgy on some of his rather reductive ideas (of course - ground-breaking, extremely influential etc, etc, etc).

Then (late in the afternoon at this point) came Farah Mendlesohn's talk, which was extremely entertaining, enough to wake up tireder listeners than me, and had a great title and the best visuals I've seen in a talk in a long time - possibly ever. 'With Mechanno to the Stars' it was. This was on the book about science fiction books for children, and so I hadn't read that many (except for Epic, which made a nice 'that one I know' break in the middle), but the ideas about what made a good SFal book for kids weren't at all less interesting for not having read them. Many, many more books added mentally to the TBR pile - even the one which generated lengthy 'things that made me scream' list, just for the sheer fun of it.

Finally, Philip Reeve was interviewed. He was excellent - sort of geeky hot (if the description can be excused!) and a wonderful speaker. Yet again, I haven't read the books, but OD read and loved Mortal Engines, and I think we may have all three (?) of the books in the series here, and Here Lies Arthur, which is due out fairly soon, I think, sounds wonderful. I'm afraid I may not get this quite right (even having asked steepholm to remind me), but I think he said he wanted to do Arthur as an early thug, sort of Tony Soprano-ish, and Merlin was his spin-doctor, and it ended up that Arthur was more Tony Blair than Tony Soprano. Anyway, whatever he said, it made me determined to get hold of the book.

I came home with, as is apparent, many books on my mental TBR pile (tower!) and even a few in hand. Two ARCs and - totally unexpectedly - a free copy of Gideon the Cutpurse. I went to Linda's editor at the S&S table after the workshops session to explain that I'd been interested before in getting the book and was definitely getting it after Linda's talk, but couldn't right then because my ATM had been stolen and my Sterling running very short. She said the bookseller had gone home and so they were giving the copies they had out free at that point. I'd have loved to get it signed, but unfortunately didn't run into Linda when she was free after. Other things had to be read before I can do more than what I got through on the train trip, but it'll be up soon.

I've the odd thought floating around about freebies and conferences of various sorts, but they'll have to wait...