Poems and Pictures

My next Bath Kids Lit Festival event took place on Saturday afternoon, and featured Children's Laureate Chris Riddell, and Michael Rosen (who have recently collaborated on a book of poems for very young children).

I admit that I mostly booked it because I like Chris Riddell's work, and I could not make it to his solo 'Goth Girl' event, and I did feel a little bit conspicuous because I was not accompanied by a child, but despite that it was fun.

Chris was live-drawing to the poems as Michael read them. The Poems are mostly very simple rhymes, playing with words and actions, and eminently suitable for small children and Michael was encouraging the audience to join in, (which they did - with great enthusiasm) but adding his own little touches.

The pictures were projected onto a big screen on the stage behind Mr Rosen, who could not, therefore, see exactly how Chris was representing his poems..!

Michael Rosen:26.09.2015

 For instance, a poem about (among other things) dancing fruit, resulted first in a picture of orris dancing mangoes, followed by  sneaky picture of a Morris Dancing Micheal Rosen...!

It was a lot of fun, and quite a few lucky people from the signing line went home with original Chris Riddell drawings!

(I went home with a signature in my copy of 'The Sleeper and the Spindle' and a signed copy of the latest 'Goth Girl' book, so I was happy!)

In Which there are Poems

This year's Bath Festival of Children's Literature started on Friday. Although there wasn't any one event this which which leapt out at me as being totally unmissable, but lots that struck me as interesting in one way or another, and I have tickets for 5 or 6 events.

The first was Michael Rosen (well, technically, the first was Ali Sparkes, but I booked that before I knew I had to work on Saturday morning, so I had to miss it, which was a shame)

Michael Rosen's event was in the Guildhall's banqueting hall, and was sold out, which means there were about 350 people there - at a guess, about half of them were small children, and everyone seemed to be enjoying Michael's stories about his school days (back in the Stone Age, when teachers didn't allow children to breathe during lessons, and there was a school dungeon where rats gnawed your toenails) and his poems, many of which involved audience participation.

The event was clearly aimed at young children, but despite neither being, nor having with me, a small child, I still found it lots of fun. An excellent start to (my) festival.