Not Just Zombies

The 2010 South Island Children’s and Young Adult Librarians’ Conference Oamaru, 3 & 4 March

The two days were packed with speakers, networking, penguin watching and packed lunch boxes to eat outside under the trees – the mood was as magic as always when librarians get together.

Highlights included:

The keynote speaker Wayne Mills, University of Auckland Literacy lecturer, explained why libraries matter. He spoke about how libraries enable literacy development by being accessible to young people physically, emotionally, intellectually and economically; by being well stocked and well funded. Wayne’s research supports the argument that accessible libraries lead to a higher level of literacy and intellectual health in the community, and that libraries matter a lot!

After beginning his career as graphic designer and illustrator for TVNZ children's programmes, Philip Webb from Wellington is a now a fulltime freelance illustrator of children’s picture books. He shared how he interprets words into pictures using his preferred medium of watercolours and ink.

Alissa Tosswill, Active Movement Advisor for Sport Auckland, described how she enhances literacy development in babies to two year olds through movement programmes in Libraries. She explained that movement is the first language. She then demonstrated how she uses scarves, balls, bubbles and feathers with infants to develop their pre-literacy motor skills of eye movements for reading print; and fine thumb-finger grasping, for pencil holding. She encourages librarians and parents to use a range of fun and safe activities and movements to assist with important baby and child development.

Kyle Mewburn, a children’s book author from Central Otago, delighted the audience by making spinach icecream with his blender as a metaphor for how to make a story that works for kids, or not! His ingredients? Cream for the basic ingredient of original ideas: fruit for wonder; red food colouring for the ‘voice’ of the story; lollies for the crunchy sweet best wordy bits; and spinach for the moral – the good-for-you bit. After whizzing it in the blender he decided that you can’t disguise the yuk and the icecream tastes better without the spinach! So he replaced that with ... honesty. He went on to talk about his love of words and how trimming your story, just the right amount, can definitely give it more bite.

And librarians were all ears and whoops of laughter as a group of eight students from Waitaki Boys’ High School, with Librarian Hilary Bishop, revealed what turns them onto reading. They were refreshingly honest, explaining that the cover of the book needs to be appealing, that they often choose books by what their friends recommend, and that other things in their life, like sport, can be more compelling than visiting the library. They definitely disconcerted a number of librarians when they revealed that they were unaware that they can access the catalogue on the internet, nor had they heard of ‘Any Questions’.