Next week is packed with book events!

Next week is packed with book-related celebrations. It's Children's Book Week from 1st - 7th October - follow the link for posters (see illustration, left, by Rebecca Cobb) and resources. This year's theme is "Heroes and Heroines".

In the same week falls National Poetry Day - Thursday 4th - for which the theme is "Stars". There are lots of Star poems on the official site and the Scottish Poetry Library has some fabulous posters to download. Even though I am no longer working in an Education Library I intend to put some of those up. No reason why agriculture students should not enjoy a good bit of poetry!

Next week is also Banned Books Week. This is a US event, but books can be challenged in this country too, sometimes for very unexpected reasons. The University of Strathclyde has an excellent reading list Banned: controversial books for teenagers and children which is worth investigating for more information. As Oscar Wilde said: "There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written, that is all." Do you agree?

Finally, an ongoing event to bring to your attention is the exhibition Take Five Illustrators at the Scottish National Gallery which features Alice Melvin, Cate James, Barroux, Sara Ogilvie and Bruce Ingman, all of whom work on books for children. It's been on all summer and finishes on 30th October, so there's still time to catch it. No excuses, then, not to do something book related next week - there's plenty to choose from!

More summer activities for young readers and writers

I blogged last month about various competitions going on for young writers over the summer, and here are some more book related activities that children might be interested in.

Head down to your local library for the Summer Reading Challenge - this year's theme is Circus Stars. It's free and children get a stage set and stickers to start them off. As they read their way through six books, they help the Circus Stars progress through Practice and Rehearsal to their ultimate goal – Showtime! There's lots of online fun as well as reading. The Challenge was launched in Scotland by Julia Donaldson, the new Children's Laureate.

2012 will be the 25th anniversary of the bestselling Winnie the Witch books, so The Guardian has teamed up with Winnie's publisher, Oxford University Press, and WH Smith, to offer four lucky winners the chance to have their artwork featured as the endpapers for the anniversary edition of Winnie the Witch. The closing date for the competiton (for children aged 5-10) is 22nd August 2011 and the book will be published in July next year.

Another Guardian competiton is their Children's Fiction Prize Book Club. Every week they are featuring one of the books in the running for the Guardian children's fiction prize. They kicked off on Friday with Mr Gum and the Secret Hideout by Andy Stanton. The Young Critics competition is for young readers to share their views on any of the longlisted books. Anyone under 16 can enter by writing a review of no more than 200 words of one of the books longlisted for the prize - the deadline for entries is Monday 26 September 2011.

Finally, Macmillan Children's books and ITV's Daybreak have launched a writing competition today. "What's The Story", invites children aged 7-12 to write a 500-word story, to be submitted by 25th July. Illustrator Lydia Monks (see our selection of her books here) has created a number of characters to be included in the story, with the winning book, complete with Monks' illustrations, to be published by Macmillan next year.

Carnegie / Greenaway awards and Pottermore

Thursday, 23rd June was a big day in the children's book world. It had long been set as the award date for the Carnegie and Greenaway medals, but a few days beforehand it began to look as if these would be upstaged when cryptic messages began to emanante from JK Rowling. What could they mean?

First, the Carnegie / Greenaway awards. These are presented annually by CILIP, the professional body for library and information workers. The Carnegie Medal is for the writer of an outstanding book for children and the Kate Greenaway Medal is for distinguished illustration in a book for children. This year's winners were Patrick Ness, for Monsters of men, and Grahame Baker-Smith for FArTHER (sic). Read more about them in CILIP's press release.

I've blogged about Patrick Ness several times before, including reviewing the Chaos walking books which I loved. I'm also happy to report that his acceptance speech included a fierce defence of libraries - read about it here in the Guardian. There is also an interview with him in today's Independent. You can borrow his books from us but, unfortunately, that's not yet true of Baker-Smith's book, which seems to have flown under my radar. However, I've ordered it now and, in the meantime, here is a slide-show of his work, again from the Guardian.

So what was Pottermore all about? "Pottermore is a free website that builds an exciting online experience around the reading of the Harry Potter books" - but you still have to go back on 31st July to find out more. Here's JK Rowling announcing it on YouTube and here again is the dependable Guardian. Clever marketing or unnecessary hype? You decide.

Finally, there was another piece of news yesterday which probably got a bit swamped by everything else that was going on. Penguin announced the winners of their cover design awards - the children's entries were illustrating James and the giant peach - you can see the winning and short-listed designs here.

What did I miss?

I was on holiday last week, when quite a lot seemed to happen in the world of children's literature. This is a catch up post to try to cover some of it. Perhaps the saddest news was the death of Diana Wynne Jones who was writing fantasy series long before Harry Potter was ever thought of. Here are the books of hers we stock - my absolute favourite is Fire and hemlock, though Howl's moving castle might be the most famous because it has been made into a film. An obituary has appeared in the Guardian.

Michael Gove, Education Secretary in the UK parliament, caused a bit of a stir by suggesting that children should read 50 books per year. This is certainly controversial given that many councils, particularly in England, are contemplating closing some of their libraries and school libraries are also under threat. So where do children get the books if they can't afford to buy them? As part of the debate, the Independent has also jumped in with its list of what those 50 books should be - a surefire way to put any child off reading in my opinion. See what you think.

Updating a beloved clasic is another way to cause controversy, and there are two developments here. Frank Cottrell Boyce is producing a sequel to Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - read about it via the Guardian and the BBC - and Jacqueline Wilson is to update Five children and it by E Nesbit. Again, the Guardian has the details. The Nosy Crow blog puts the arguments for and against updates. If you want to read, or re-read, the originals we have both titles in stock.

The Eagle - the new film based on Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth is out now and was reviewed favourably in Sunday's Observer and the Guardian even has an editorial about it, In praise of Rosemary Sutcliff. Again, you can borrow the book from us.

Finally, Booktrust has announced the winners of it's Best New Illustrators award. They are:

Joe Berger
Claudia Boldt
Katie Cleminson
Chris Haughton
Alice Melvin
Sara Ogilvie
Levi Pinfold
Salvatore Rubbino
Viviane Schwarz
Kevin Waldron

You can watch an audio-slideshow of their work being discussed by Anthony Browne, one of the judges and the current Children's Laureate. We don't have work by all the above - I've added a link to the catalogue for books illustrated by the ones we do.

Additions to our list of children's literature internet sites

The House of Illustration - the world’s first centre dedicated to the art of illustration in all its forms. It is the brainchild of Quentin Blake, though not restricted to children’s book illustrations.

Storylineonline - Screen Actors Guild members read children’s books aloud (US).

Storybird - short, visual stories that you make with family and friends to share and (soon) print.
Modern language versions are also available.

For more sites, see the full list on our web pages.

New journal articles

The latest editions of Books for Keeps and Youth Library Review have arrived. They're both jam-packed with interesting articles - find them on the gallery upstairs. Here's an index:

DISABLED CHILDREN
PUTTING disabled children in the picture. (2010). Youth Library Review, 40, pp. 10-11.
Giving disabled children role models in literature.

ELECTRONIC BOOKS
Whitney, N. (2010). Winds of change and the emergence to the m-generation: moving from books, via the web, to apps. Youth Library Review, 40, pp. 6-9.

HOOPER, Mary
Eccleshare, J. (2010). Authorgrapgh no 182: Mary Hooper. Books for Keeps, 182, pp. 12-13.

ILLUSTRATION
Wyatt, B. (2010). Illustrators and public lending right. Youth Library Review, 40, pp. 18-19.

INTERNET RESOURCES
Mynott, D. (2010). Stories from the web. Youth Library Review, 40, pp.16-17.
A reader development site for children and young people: http://www.storiesfromtheweb.org/

MEYER, Stephanie
Tucker, N. (2010). Once bitten: the fang bang fiction of Stephanie Meyer. Books for Keeps, 182, pp. 4-5.

POETRY
Styles, M. (2010). Ten of the best poetry books for children. Books for Keeps, 182, pp. 6-7.

PICTURE BOOKS
Browne, A. (2010). Children’s Laureate Anthony Browne on appreciating picture books. Books for Keeps, 182, p. 8.
Evans, J. (2010). Picturebooks are for everyone: children’s thoughts about reading picturebooks. Youth Library Review, 40, pp. 1-5.

TEENAGE NOVELS
Barnes, C. (2010). The catcher in the rye. Books for Keeps, 182, p. 11.
How did J D Salinger’s pioneering creation influence later teen fiction?

WHITE, T H
Alderson, B. (2010). Classics in short no 81: The sword in the stone. Books for Keeps, 182, p. 32.

Writing & illustrating for children: National Galleries of Scotland.

This exhibition features the work of Catherine Rayner and James Mayhew and runs at the National Galleries of Scotland until 4th June. James Mayhew is famous for his Katie and Ella Bella books, and Catherine Rayner, creator of Augustus the Tiger and Harris the Hare, won the Greenaway Medal last year. Two new exciting trails for children and families have also been created to complement the exhibition and there's an art competition, which you can access from the exhibition site, which runs until 10th July. If you take children to the galleries, they might also be interested in the exhibition on Dance - or at leat part of it. When we were there yesterday, small children were queuing up to press the button on Jean Tinguely's Blind jealousy II a bead curtain which moves like a Hawaiian dancer's grass skirt when the motor is switched on.