Tag: #bookchat

Tours & Series | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 3

Although The Children’s Bookshow hits the road in the Autumn, tickets to many shows have already sold out and the remainder are selling fast. All performances include a free book for every child.

Marina Warner, the historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer, forms a persuasive case for fairy tales being a crucial repository of human understanding and culture in her very short introduction published by OUP. After all, they have the same core ingredients as most adult fiction: archetypal characters, conflict, desire, injustice, high octane drama, overcoming challenges, hope and heroism, beauty and blissful immersion in alternative worlds which reignite creativity and inspire new ideas. Their surreal magical quality and captivating illustrations make for a visual feast and offer a form of escapism from the real world around us. Continue reading Tours & Series | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 3

Tours & Series | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 2

For over twenty years, The Children’s Bookshow has tirelessly worked to promote, up and down the country, not only a love of reading, but also emerging and established children’s authors who are not TV celebrities chatting on a sofa.

In 2022, Michael Rosen, who was children’s laureate from 2007 to 2009, flagged up the problem that the promotion of the children’s book industry is generally celebrity-focused, “We are the Cinderellas of the book business, with very little media attention, so it’s small wonder that some children’s writers feel miffed by the fact that seemingly the only attention given to a children’s book is because the writer is already a star.”

The good news is that children’s books are getting more attention than ever before in the media, and today, The Children’s Bookshow is recognised as being an incredible asset to the book trade and an acknowledged talent-spotter. So we are delighted to share with you our second line up of authors and illustrators and their books on tour this year.

Continue reading Tours & Series | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 2

Media Release | Empire Windrush: Reflections on 75 Years & More of the Black British Experience (ed.) Onyekachi Wambu | Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 22 June, 2023

In this authoritative anthology, Empire Windrush: Reflections on 75 Years & More of the Black British Experience, journalist and writer, Onyekachi Wambu, collates some of the most significant writing to mark seventy-five years since the arrival of Empire Windrush at a critical juncture in modern British history, in June 1948. 

The ship’s name is apt for undertaking the dual tasks of this broad-based and authoritative anthology: first, reflecting on the experience of seventy five years of ‘Windrush’ post-Brexit and the Second Elizabethan Age. Second, meditating on over a millennia of earlier ship arrivals and departures, carrying other human cargo, alongside the troubled intricate business of Empire. Continue reading Media Release | Empire Windrush: Reflections on 75 Years & More of the Black British Experience (ed.) Onyekachi Wambu | Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 22 June, 2023

Spotlight | Highlights, Beyond Words Festival, 2023 | Institut Français du Royaume Uni

This year’s Beyond Words Festival featured a great line-up from across the Channel. Throughout the week, the  Institut Français du Royaume Uni in South Kensington, London, was bustling with people eager to see their favourite French authors in conversation with their British counterparts discussing not only their latest books, but many things words and ideas from France, past and present.

The first event I attended was A Gallic Evening with Muriel Barbery, Antoine Laurain and Jean-Baptiste Andrea, chaired by Viv Groskop. Gallic Books publish “the very best of what the French are actually reading.”  Over the past decade, they have brought over one hundred authors to the British reading public.

Continue reading Spotlight | Highlights, Beyond Words Festival, 2023 | Institut Français du Royaume Uni

News | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 1

The Children’s Bookshow is back! The writers and illustrators of children’s literature touring the regions of England this year will be offering a fantastic variety of entertaining performances in which artists share stories, poems and live drawing, and talk to children about how they create. Siân Williams, founder of the tour back in 2000, was admirably astute in the way she took author events out of bookshops into much bigger venues, offering a great afternoon out to schoolchildren. The events are not organized from the point of view of the publisher and bookseller whose focus is just on selling books, so the atmosphere is like a gig or stand-up comedy performance and everyone has lots of fun!

#BookBlast is delighted to share with you the first line up of authors and illustrators and their books on show this year. More to follow . . . National treasure, Michael Rosen, will be performing again too.

See Michael Rosen in person: Peterborough – Wednesday 4 October BOOK TICKET(S)

Continue reading News | Top 5 Reads from The Children’s Bookshow 2023 | line-up 1

%d bloggers like this:
Verified by MonsterInsights