Children's literature

I spent a long time thinking about what this blog would be about - most of it thinking about poems of hope and consolation, and some of it thinking about poems about spring, but in the end it turned out that what I was writing about was cats.

It was mostly sunny throughout the seventh edition of the China Shanghai International Children's Book Fair (CCBF), which concluded its three-day run on November 17. The mood of the exhibitors and visitors was equally sunny and positive. And the same could be said for event co-organizer BolognaFiere, which was back for its second outing with a more ambitious (and successful) agenda.

Netflix, Spotify, iPads, YouTube and Instagram are just a few things that didn't exist when the Children's Laureate was set up 20 years ago.

In 1999, the main obstacle in getting children interested in reading was their own attention spans.  Read more

Lauren Child thinks children's book publishing still gets a bad deal. It's one of the reasons the best-selling author-illustrator and current Children's Laureate - her tenure ends this year - is so happy to be a judge for this year Oscar's Book Prize. "There's still a lot of snootiness about children's books. Just look at the teeny-weeny percentage that get reviewed compared to adults.  Read more

The loving and attentive reader of children's books knows that the best of them are not one-dimensional oversimplifications of life but stories that tackle with elegant simplicity such complexities as uncertainty, loneliness, loss, and the cycle of life. And anyone who sits with this awareness for a moment becomes suddenly skeptical of the very notion of a "children's" book.  Read more