Countdown to NCRCL/IBBY UK 2018 – 10 Days to Go!

25th Annual NCRCL MA/IBBY UK Conference

‘Crafts and Hobbies in Children’s Books’

Saturday 10th November 2018, 9:30 a.m. – 5:15 p.m.

Tickets are available here.

This short blog series will span the next ten days, counting down to the 25th Annual Conference. It will be showcasing some of the papers anticipated for this year’s NCRCL/IBBY UK conference. Each day we will be turning the spotlight on to a different parallel session, giving an idea of what’s to come! You can expect lots of exciting content from well-known illustrators and craft practitioners, academics, and key figures in the children’s literature world!

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This year’s closing plenary will be given by Jemma Westing. Jemma is an award winning book designer and paper engineer who has worked with DK publishing, and has created a range of slot-model kits and innovative interactive books. In 2013 she also founded the not-for-profit workshop BrilliantBuilds which encourages children and families to be creative using recycled materials. 

Countdown to NCRCL/IBBY UK 2018 – 11 Days to Go!

25th Annual NCRCL MA/IBBY UK Conference

‘Crafts and Hobbies in Children’s Books’

Saturday 10th November 2018, 9:30 a.m. – 5:15 p.m.

Tickets are available here.

This short blog series will span the next eleven days, counting down to the 25th Annual Conference. It will be showcasing some of the papers anticipated for this year’s NCRCL/IBBY UK conference. Each day we will be turning the spotlight on to a different parallel session, giving an idea of what’s to come! You can expect lots of exciting content from well-known illustrators and craft practitioners, academics, and key figures in the children’s literature world!

Su Blackwell, Wild Flowers of the British Isles

Roehampton Readers: Thornhill by Pam Smy

Review: Thornhill by Pam Smy

By Clare Walters

Cover via  http://thornhillbook.com/

 

Thornhill is a ghost story that interweaves the stories of two girls. The first is Ella Clarke, who is alive and well in 2017, and the second is Mary Baines, who died in 1982. These girls are mirror images of each other, and Ella’s tale is told through the illustrations while Mary’s is told through her diary entries.

Ella, who has recently lost her mother, has just moved to a new house with her father. Mary has been – and still is in her 1982 diaries – incarcerated in a children’s home called Thornhill. By chance, Ella’s new bedroom window overlooks Thornhill, now boarded up and derelict.

In both girls there is an absence of a physical voice – actual on the part of Mary who is a selective mute, and virtual on the part of Ella, who simply has no one to talk to. This is linked to a lack of agency, as neither girl has control over her life.

There is a third girl in the story, too, another abandoned child in the children’s home, who is simply referred to as ‘She’. Described as a cruel teasing, tormenting, bully who makes life unbearable for her victim Mary, she assumes the role of villain. But because She never speaks for herself, she also lacks a voice. We discover her solely through Mary’s diary, so we are learning about her through the classic unreliable narrator. Are the diary descriptions true? Or could Mary be the actual villain?

Countdown to NCRCL/IBBY UK 2018 – 12 Days to Go!

25th Annual NCRCL MA/IBBY UK Conference

‘Crafts and Hobbies in Children’s Books’

Saturday 10th November 2018, 9:30 a.m. – 5:15 p.m.

Tickets are available here.

This short blog series will span the next twelve days, counting down to the 25th Annual Conference. It will be showcasing some of the papers anticipated for this year’s NCRCL/IBBY UK conference. Each day we will be turning the spotlight on to a different parallel session, giving an idea of what’s to come! You can expect lots of exciting content from well-known illustrators and craft practitioners, academics, and key figures in the children’s literature world!

Su Blackwell, The Stork Wife

Countdown to NCRCL/IBBY UK 2018 – 13 Days to Go!

25th Annual NCRCL MA/IBBY UK Conference

‘Crafts and Hobbies in Children’s Books’

Saturday 10th November 2018, 9:30 a.m. – 5:15 p.m.

Tickets are available here.

This short blog series will span the next thirteen days, counting down to the 25th Annual Conference. It will be showcasing some of the papers anticipated for this year’s NCRCL/IBBY UK conference. Each day we will be turning the spotlight on to a different parallel session, giving an idea of what’s to come! You can expect lots of exciting content from well-known illustrators and craft practitioners, academics, and key figures in the children’s literature world!

Su Blackwell, The Snow Goose

Countdown to NCRCL/IBBY UK 2018 – 14 Days to Go!

25th Annual NCRCL MA/IBBY UK Conference

‘Crafts and Hobbies in Children’s Books’

Saturday 10th November 2018, 9:30 a.m. – 5:15 p.m.

Tickets are available here.

This short blog series will span the next fourteen days, counting down to the 25th Annual Conference. It will be showcasing some of the papers anticipated for this year’s NCRCL/IBBY UK conference. Each day we will be turning the spotlight on to a different parallel session, giving an idea of what’s to come! You can expect lots of exciting content from well-known illustrators and craft practitioners, academics, and key figures in the children’s literature world!

Su Blackwell, To Kill a Mockingbird

Countdown to NCRCL/IBBY UK 2018 – 15 Days to Go!

25th Annual NCRCL MA/IBBY UK Conference

‘Crafts and Hobbies in Children’s Books’

Saturday 10th November 2018, 9:30 a.m. – 5:15 p.m.

Tickets are available here.

This short blog series will span the next fifteen days, counting down to the 25th Annual Conference. It will be showcasing some of the papers anticipated for this year’s NCRCL/IBBY UK conference. Each day we will be turning the spotlight on to a different parallel session, giving an idea of what’s to come! You can expect lots of exciting content from well-known illustrators and craft practitioners, academics, and key figures in the children’s literature world!

Countdown to NCRCL/IBBY UK 2018 – 16 Days to Go!

25th Annual NCRCL MA/IBBY UK Conference

‘Crafts and Hobbies in Children’s Books’

Saturday 10th November 2018, 9:30 a.m. – 5:15 p.m.

Tickets are available here.

Su Blackwell, ‘The Book Collector‘ 

This short blog series will span the next sixteen days, counting down to the 25th Annual Conference. It will be showcasing some of the papers anticipated for this year’s NCRCL/IBBY UK conference. Each day we will be turning the spotlight on to a different parallel session, giving an idea of what’s to come! You can expect lots of exciting content from well-known illustrators and craft practitioners, academics, and key figures in the children’s literature world!

When Anthony Horowitz visited Roehampton…

Anthony Horowitz is an eminent author, known for a vast catalogue of works including The Diamond Brothers series, the Alex Rider series and The Power of Five Series. Notably, he also continues to write the James Bond novels, as chosen by the Ian Fleming estate. 

Anthony Horowitz signing his book.

 

Erin Weirrick gives her account of interviewing Anthony Horowitz:

Students and staff alike filed in as I waited at the front of the room with Emily Corbett, my co-interviewer, and author Anthony Horowitz. When I first volunteered to help interview Anthony I felt quite nervous. I had a list of questions to ask, and I was trying to make sure I would remember them all and say them well. I was representing the student population of the university, and being an international student, my home university. I wanted to represent myself and my communities well. Therefore, I was nervous. But even as the large lecture hall filled, I knew when I met Anthony that I had nothing to be nervous about. The energy buzzing in the room let me know that my fellow students were nervous and excited, too. They were seeing a figure that played a prominent role in the development of their imaginations and free-time right before them, with their own eyes. 

Bookings Open for 2018 IBBY/NCRCL Conference!

25th Annual NCRCL MA/IBBY UK Conference

‘Crafts and Hobbies in Children’s Books’

Saturday 10th November 2018, 9:30 a.m. – 5:15 p.m.

Elm Grove Conference Centre, University of Roehampton
Roehampton Lane, London, SW15 5PH

Scouting for Boys (Cover via 5th Camberwell Scouts) and The Brownie Guide Handbook (Cover via the V&A)

This year’s conference explores the significance of crafts and hobbies as theme, practice, motif, educational tool and generational bridge. We will be thinking about the historical shifts in the role and significance of these activities in childhood experience as depicted in a wide range of texts. We will examine the role of crafting and hobbies in children’s fiction and in picture books; think about the role of books in craft and hobby activities (including the handbooks of the Brownies, Scouts and Woodcraft Folk and the annuals of children’s TV shows such as Blue Peter); and consider the craft dimensions of books as material objects, looking at the use of collage and textile as illustrative components, at paper-cutting and pop-up books, and at books that are themselves craft or hobby objects (model-making books, sticker books). Discussion will cover the gendering of crafts and hobbies, the definition of a hobby (as distinct from a game or a toy), the vexed boundaries between arts and crafts, and craft as domestic or artisanal. Materials from the archives of the constituent colleges of the University of Roehampton will be on show, including weaving samples and patterns used in early Froebelian education and embroidery samplers from the Whitelands archive. The conference will include keynote presentations by well-known illustrators and craft practitioners, academics, and key figures in the children’s literature world.

Book your place here!