Celebration of Books

We started the day early - 7am in Cooke Park setting up the Book Swap Tree, had a lovely breakfast and coffee in town then headed home for a bit. We returned to check out the Children's Treasure hunt, and the 27 local authors signing their books in the main street. Also talked to Susan B who was demonstrating her artists' books and prints. Home again for  a quick lunch then headed back into the Library to see the craft (book marks and door hangers) and to run our Bookmaking for children workshop.  An hour and a half later and Barry and I returned home - to sit quietly and reflect on a busy, beautiful day full of books.

We didn't get the chance to go to the poetry readings last nights; but did hear the young writers from the High School read their work.  Our workshop today clashed with two other events as well (the big book group and the performance about strong women in Australian literature) - but I hope they went really well.

Tomorrow morning we attend a panel discussion about "Do writers really care about their audience?" Should be fabulous.

We had 12 children in the workshops and it was full on fun and busy!  We made an accordion book with pockets and used the marbled paper I made during the Open Studios for covers.  The children made up their own stories; many on luggage tags, and decorated and wrote their books.  The results were stunning and joyful!

The Book Swap Tree was a success - people came and browsed the books and took one home, and swapped one.  They left a book mark in their book, explaining why they liked it. It was great to see new books appearing throughout the day.  It will be there again tomorrow and I hope more books get swapped! It was a lovely honesty thing - none of us were there to supervise during the day; we just watched people poking about or went and had a look ourselves at different times. They are book covers hanging in the trees just to grab attention - the books were in the boxes on the chairs around the tree.  In plastic bags in case it rained.

A couple of children's authors (Judy, Prue and Jill) devised a wonderful Treasure Hunt at the Library. The children were in two teams and had to go hunting for clues - once unearthed, the clue would send them to a book and a page and they had to find the word and build the final answer using these clues. The winners won something; but every child also took home a book or two which was wonderful and generous of our authors.  Our neighbour Gillian generously illustrated the two maps the teams used to find the treasure and they were stunning.

I was particularly fond of the Toilets of doom...

In amongst it all there were fairy stories for little kids and scary stories for bigger kids.

Lots of people have visited the Library to see the artists book display - and people are talking about how fascinating they find it all - great exposure and great for so many more people to come to know and love artists' books.

My sense of it so far is that it has been a great success - lots of people have had an interaction with books or writers and the sheer pleasure of reading has been shared widely.  I think the generosity of the community was also on display and it felt warm and wonderful.