Through the Chair's Eyes

How time flies!

I’m nearly at the end of my year as Chair and it has sped by so quickly. This has been an amazing year for children’s books and so, inevitably, for children’s libraries.

There was the now infamous invitation to a host of authors, illustrators and publishers to No 10 in January, when Philip Pullman, Bernard Ashley, Chris Powling et al button-holed Charles Clarke and got him interested in the issue of proper writing for children. And as a result, further meetings were held, leading hopefully to a more sympathetic approach to children’s literature as a thing to be enjoyed, rather than endured as a worksheet to be analysed.

At the end of May, we send out the Consultation document about the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards to find out what the CILIP membership and others thought about various aspects of the Awards. The evaluation of this is now complete and can be found on the CILIP website at: www.cilip.org.uk/. The additional remarks make very interesting reading and we shall be asking you again to comment on certain issues – like a third Award and children’s contributions to the Awards. What was clearly evident was members’ pride in the Awards themselves. This is the only Award in this country made by impartial, experienced and committed professionals with absolutely no axe to grind and we should be very proud of the fact that we nominate for and judge these extraordinary Medals and the winners respect this and want to win these Awards above all others.

Then of course, who could forget the day the world went mad on the publication of ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ in June. It’s etched in my memory, as I and our staff were hard at work at 7am on that fateful Saturday taking in the books from the night delivery from Peters to make sure our borrowers in Hampshire received them at the same time as the young people who had bought their own copies did. The biggest selling book of all time – and it was a children’s book. This is our time and there will never be a better one for shouting about children’s books – their fantastic range and quality.

We had the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal Awards ceremony in July, which were won by Sharon Creech and Bob Graham respectively. This was definitely a first – I am the only Chair in the history of the Medals to preside over an Awards ceremony where neither Award winner lived in this country – with all the nerve-biting challenges that entails. Will they/won’t they be able to attend? But, of course, in the end, they came and a fantastic day was had by all. At this point I would like to thank all the CKG Judges again, who worked incredibly hard and were very professional in their approach to the judging – it’s always going to be a difficult decision when the books were as good as the ones we had on the shortlists this year. We got lots of media coverage, thanks to Becca Wyatt and her team. I’ll always remember this year as the one where I featured on the ‘Today’ programme not once, but twice. Sadly neither time with my hero, James Naughtie, but it was exciting nevertheless and for the Awards to achieve such coverage is no mean feat.

Our Conference in September on partnerships – ‘With my brain and your looks we could go places’ seemed to hit the spot for many delegates and hopefully we shall be featuring a number of the presentations both in this electronic YLR and on the YLG website (www.ylg.org.uk) My most nail-biting moment was when we had the Conference call between Robin McKinley, our featured author in the Spring edition of YLR, who unfortunately couldn’t attend in person, and her husband, Peter Dickinson, but it all went off wonderfully and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

We could have been eclipsed by the publication of Madonna’s first picture book for which Puffin were throwing a huge party on the Sunday of Conference, but as none of us appeared to have an invite (except Jonathan Douglas of course – he gets invited to everything, so it doesn’t count) our numbers didn’t diminish significantly.

And what next? Well, we’ve achieved much of our national Action Plan – a new Practical Guide – ‘Reading Remixed’ – library services to teenagers has been published and has been warmly received by many practitioners. Buy it at www.ylg.org.uk/publications. We’re working closely with The Reading Agency, Their Reading Futures and ASCEL to promote Reader Development and training issues and we’re listed as a partner in the Framework for the Future Action Plan on a number of issues concering reading and children’s libraries.

Most recently, there’s been the very welcome news that Bookstart will roll out across the country under the auspices of Surestart in 2004/5, so that all children will be able to receive Bookstart packs. So all in all, an excellent year for children’s libraries and reader development.

Your Chair next year will be Colin Brabazon, who is Head of Children’s Services in North Lincolnshire and I wish Colin the very best for 2004. I have loved every minute of being the Chair of the Youth Libraries Group in 2003. It has been a privilege to serve on a Committee of such dedicated professionals and to represent such a brilliant and committed bunch of people who make up the Youth Libraries Group. Let’s hope next year is even better!

Anne Marley
Chair
Youth Libraries Group