November host for What Lies Beneath Exhibition

Guess who is hosting the exhibition for November? Hamilton Central Library. They've erected the displays and they look rather grand. Check it out.

What Lies Beneath Exhibition host for October

Wellington Central Library is hosting the What Lies Beneath Exhibition during October. Check out their display during library hours or come along to the Panel Talk on Tuesday 18th October 6pm - 8pm and hear some of the authors talk. There will be book giveaways, posters and bookmarks to take for your classroom or library. We look forward to seeing you. Here's a taster of the exhibition on display:

What Lies Beneath Wellington Panel Talk

The What Lies Beneath Exhibition is currently in Wellington. Head along to Wellington Central Library to see it on display.

Authors Melinda Szymanik, Philippa Werry, Glyn Harper, Anna Mackenzie and Maria Gill, as well as illustrators Fifi Colston and Marco Ivancic are also giving a panel talk at Wellington Central Library on Tuesday 18th October from 6pm - 8pm. There will be book giveaways, light supper, posters and bookmarks to take home, as well as a very interesting panel discussion about children's war books. See poster below for more details. Hope you can come!

Christchurch Exhibition

The Christchurch Children's Bookshop hosted the What Lies Beneath Exhibition for September. Near the end of the month we held workshops for students 10-18 years old at Burnside High School. Eighty students attended, learning how to paint a red poppy, write poetry, structure their stories, refine their character's personality and look closely at their language. At the end authors Melinda Szymanik, Tania Roxborogh, Desna Wallace, Maria Gill and illustrator/author Fifi Colston shared their latest project with the students. A fun day had by all. 

Panel talk on Children's War Books

Introducing Jenny Cooper

Jenny Cooper graduated from Christchurch Polytechnic with a Diploma of Visual Communication. She lives in an acre of land in North Canterbury, which is occasionally battered by the nor’west wind. She has a lovely studio, however she is not allowed to leave this studio until she has completed all her work. This has never happened yet. They poke thermoses of tea and slabs of chocolate through a slot in the door to keep her going.

Jenny has won many awards over the last 15 years. She won the 1998 New Zealand Post Student Stamp Design award and the 1998 Telecom New Zealand White Pages Art Award. She has been short-listed twice in the LIANZA Russell Clark Illustration Awards, for The Pipi and the Mussels by Dot Meharry (Reed, 2001) and Down in the Forest by Yvonne Morrison (Scholastic, 2004). The Mad Tadpole Adventure (Scholastic, 2007), by Melanie Drewery and illustrated by Cooper, was nominated in the junior fiction category for the 2008 New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, and was listed as a 2008 Storylines Notable Junior Fiction Book.

Her other awards include: the Storylines Notable Books 2000 Picture Book list for The Wooden Fish, the Storylines Notable Books 2002 Junior Fiction list for The Great Pavlova Cover-up, the Storylines Notable Books 2003 Picture Book list for Duck Walk, the Storylines Notable Books 2008 Junior Fiction list for The Mad Tadpole Adventure, the Storylines Notable Books 2008 Picture Book list Special Mention for The Illustrated Myths & Legends of the Pacific, the Storylines Notable Books 2011 Picture Book list for Ria the Reckless Wrybill, and in 2015 won two Storylines Notable Book Awards- for A Treasury of New Zealand Poems for Children (edited by Paula Green) and for Jim's Letters (written by Glyn Harper). Jim's Letters won the New Zealand Book Awards for Children & Young Adults picture book award in 2015.

We asked Jenny to tell us something positive, something sad and something interesting she encountered while researching and illustrating Gladys Goes to War:

Something positive: The real person, Gladys, sounds like an amazing woman, I would like to have had a coffee with her, I think she would have been fun to know, and a lot of laughs.

Something sad: poor Gladys, to lose her dearly loved husband, plus both brothers, in the war. No wonder people were really mad when they had to fight another war in 1939, only 20 years after all the loss and tragedy of WW1. I would have been mad too. You would want to feel that WW1 had solved the problems, but it didn’t.

Something interesting: we had car dealerships here in Auckland as early as 1918, who knew? It was interesting finding out about very early automobiles, such as, when the first cars were used, there were no road rules, no road markings, no driving on left and right sides, people parked their cars anywhere, including in intersections, and there were terrible traffic jams. There were no sealed roads so things were really muddy. Lots of children were killed as in the 1900s, as there were no parks and children played on the streets, and were killed by speeding cars. To cope with the chaos, some cities made people drive their cars no more than 5 miles an hour, and in some places in England, you had to have a constable (police officer) walk in front of your car with a flag, to warn people.

Christchurch Workshop

Places are filling up fast for the Christchurch Book Tour Workshops. For every student who signs up for the workshops, their school has a chance to win a pack of signed books. We'll draw the winning school on Wednesday 28th September at 2.20pm.

Here's the timetable for the day:

9.30        Meet and greet, assigned group

9.45        Welcome

10.00     Workshop 1 (students rotate in five groups)

10.40     Workshop 2 (students rotate to next group)

11.20     Morning Tea     

11.35     Workshop 3 (rotate to next group)

12.15     Lunch and time to look at exhibition

1.00        Workshop 4 (rotate)

1.40        Workshop 5

2.20        Q & A time, Prize giving, book buying and signing

3.00        Finish