I know I wrote about the Carnegie/Greenaway Awards yesterday, but I’d left my notebook behind and really wanted to throw a few inspirational quotes your way. Before I do that, a few stats which may interest you (if not, skip past to the next paragraph and please suppress your yawns). There were approximately 90,000 children involved in the CILIP Shadowing Scheme, from all different backgrounds and schools. Over 13,000 reviews have been posted on the website in the past few months. So who says that children have become disengaged from reading? This scheme is a testament to all that is good about the world of literature. As Philip Bradley (the CILIP President) said, books and reading groups ‘have the ability and power to engage…and fosters a sense of community,’ Well said!
As I said yesterday, libraries were high on the agenda and rightly so. Jim Kay spoke so touchingly about the impact that libraries have had on his life, ‘I owe everything in my life to libraries…[libraries are] essential to creative arts.’ He went on to say that the loss of libraries is more than the loss of the ‘quantifiable’, but ‘most disturbingly of all…a child’s potential.’ Patrick Ness (aah, lovely Mr Ness) echoed these words in his acceptance speech. Most poignantly though, the lovely Mr Ness recognised all that is good and true about teenagers, that they are amazing and deserve praise. ‘For all the incredible young readers out there…thank-you very much.’
Rachel (I’m so sorry I can’t remember her surname), the Chair of judges spoke passionately about libraries and the work which our qualified librarians do. They ‘show us other possibilities…that is the power of stories.’ ‘We set knowledge and stories free and in doing so we give hope.’ Powerful and inspirational stuff. There is nothing that I can or need to add, so I will leave it there.
Chicken and Frog Bookshop 