Support for Bookstart - Elen Caldecott

Hello,
There is no post scheduled for today. However, the last few days has seen a 100% cut in funding to Booktrust's book gifting programmes, so I feel compelled to post.
There are articles in the press about it written by Michael Rosen and Catherine Johnson.
There is also a petition you can sign if you disagree.

Right, the news headlines are over, so I'm going back to my pile of Christmas books and a Thorntons box big enough to exert its own gravitational pull on the tides. Happy Christmas!

The Power of Words

I live in Gloucestershire, and recently the courts told my county council that they needed to rethink their library policy on equality grounds. The excellent Friends of Gloucestershire Libraries fought long and hard to get this result, which was won on the very thing that was closest to our hearts. Now, for a little longer the elderly users of the mobile library van service, and the many children in deprived areas of this diverse county will still be able to enjoy their local libraries. For how long we don't know, and recent developments aren't exactly heartening. http://foclibrary.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/unlawful-library-cuts-the-equality-and-human-rights-commission-step-in/ We don't want more precious money thrown away on court cases, but we do want the vulnerable protected.

In a city in the USA my granddaughter and her parents recently joined their local library. At the entrance were notices asking the customers if they'd like to vote for a few cents more to be allocated from the local council budget to the libraries in the area. Usage was steadily growing, and the extra money would enable the service to be improved.

I was quite taken by the idea of voters being able to make such choices. It's interesting to speculate what the outcome would have been if our local council had asked the electorate the same question. Funding comes from several sources at my grand daughter's library. State and county both contribute, and the library isn't too proud to ask for donations either. In fact, they explain on their website which of the libraries they run will accept what sorts of books, and in which languages. But it's not all good in the US. We in the UK aren't the only country with library funding problems. http://www.thenation.com/article/164881/upheaval-new-york-public-library

I don't know enough about the system in the US, but it seems to me that we in the UK need to look at more than one model of provision to give libraries the best chance. A US company ISS, which runs some privatised libraries in the States, has just announced that its stated intent of doing the same in England had been put on the back burner, because it seems we in England aren't ready for privately run libraries. Probably not, even if they would still be 'free'. But maybe we ought to consider more possibilities. I don't think volunteer run libraries are the answer either, but then maybe there simply isn't a suitable one size fits all.

The members of Friends of Gloucestershire Libraries have fought a wonderful rearguard action, to force the council to deliver on its statutory duty, and deserve high praise, but the library service has been underfunded for years. I am hoping that the committee to look into library provision, which was at last announced by the government, will consult and consider as widely as possible, but I'm not hopeful that it will come up with any exciting ways in which libraries can become the vibrant, well stocked places they ought to be, with wide appeal. The very real threat is that councils will tidy up their act, do just enough to be legal, and still find ways to close them.

Meanwhile, across the channel too, books are under threat. I recently signed a petition to the French government asking them not to raise the VAT on books from 5 to 7.50%.

The VAT levied on ebooks in Britain has me worried. How long will it be before some bright spark in government decides that if you can tax digital words without anyone objecting, why not printed ones? And as the French experience shows, once a tax is applied it becomes very tempting to raise it when times are hard. The written word is having a difficult time, and I don't think we can relax yet.

Yet it's not all bad. Libraries are being supported by a vociferous, well informed group of people, many of whom don't actually need to rely on the service, but still understand that for a nation to be fully inclusive, information must be freely and easily available to all, from the smallest child, through the homeless, and unemployed, to the elderly, and everyone else in between. And with youth clubs, pop in centres and other valued places at risk, where better than local libraries to take up some of the slack?

There have been some wonderfully imaginative celebrations of libraries, witness this in Scotland, and appreciated far beyond our shores. http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/11/29/142910393/the-library-phantom-returns?sc=emaf Sometimes it's hard to be optimistic, but people like the library phantom raise my spirits, and remind me that we can't give up now. One battle has been won, but the war is still being waged. And the weapons we have are words.

Big Fat Fibs and the Big Fat Fibbers Who Tell Them* - John Dougherty

It’s going to be an unashamedly political post today, folks; but before I begin here are a few pictures from my recent visit to Delhi for the Bookaroo festival:

Big thanks to Jo Williams and the Bookaroo team for inviting me and for organising such a great festival, and to the British School in Delhi for sponsoring my events!

But while I was having such a terrific time in India, hanging out with the 2 Steves and making some lovely new international author friends, events were moving on apace with the campaigns to save our libraries.

Campaigners on Judgement Day

As you may know, on 16th November Mr Justice McKenna ruled in the High Court that Gloucestershire and Somerset County Councils’ plans to drastically cut our library services were unlawful on equalities grounds. “Hurrah!” we all said, as the judge quashed the plans, and told the councils they had to go back to the beginning and start again.

So, what’s the problem? Well, here in Gloucestershire the council’s statements about the High Court judgement have been somewhat austeritical with the truth.

On the day of the judgement, council leader Mark Hawthorne told Channel 4 news that the judge had ruled that the council had not breached its duties under the 1964 Libraries Act - an assertion he repeated on BBC local radio the next day. He has also been widely quoted as saying that “the most important thing here is that the judge said that there is nothing wrong with our plans to transfer some libraries over to communities”.

Nice for the council if it were true. In fact, as explained here, this is based on a misreading. All the judge was saying was (a) it’s for the Secretary of State, not him, to decide whether the council’s plans comply with the act, and (b) since community libraries fall outside statutory provision, they’re not relevant to the act. You can have 100 libraries handed over to communities, or none: the question is, do the council’s own libraries meet the requirements?

Okay; but we can see how that mistake might be made, yeah? I mean, it’s not as if Gloucestershire County Council has its own expensive lawyers to advise them on what the judge meant… Oh, it does? Well… well, maybe they were busy, or at lunch, or at A&E after banging their heads against a wall following the judgement, or something. It’s still a bit harsh, even as a matter of hyperbole, to use the word ‘fibs’ - isn’t it?

No, I don’t think so. You see, in the same interviews, Councillor Hawthorne also claimed that the council had lost only because it had been tripped up on a very small technical point. I’ll repeat that, in his own words: “What we’ve been tripped up on here is a very small technical point.” You can see it around 2 minutes 10 seconds into the Channel 4 video.

Let’s compare that with the judge’s words, as quoted in The Guardian:  the breach of equalities duties was "substantive, not merely a technical or procedural defect".

Hmm… Judge McKenna: “substantive, not merely a technical or procedural defect.”
Cllr Hawthorne: “a very small technical point”.

Who’s telling the truth here, reader?

Here’s a clue: the judge also described the council’s plans as both unlawful and “bad government”, said it was “important to the rule of law” that they be quashed, struck out those plans, refused the council permission to appeal, and awarded full costs against the council.

Councillor Hawthorne may not have been deliberately lying; but he certainly wasn’t telling the truth. And there’s no evidence that he’s retracted his assertions - in fact, all the public statements I've seen from the council suggest to me that they see the High Court judgement as a minor inconvenience, a “small technical point” to be worked around.

So the question I’ve been asking is: is this man really fit to be in charge of our public services?

I have no problem with someone making a mistake. I can forgive someone who makes a huge mistake and then sets about putting it right. But our public servants should respect the rule of law. And the evidence suggests to me that Councillor Hawthorne does not.

*We don’t have a legal team here on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure, but if we did I’m sure they’d want me to make clear that today’s title is (a) hyperbole for comic effect, and (b) a whimsical and extremely tenuous reference to Al Franken’s book about something completely different. For the record, I’d like to state that I have no evidence that anyone associated with Gloucestershire County Council is either big or fat. Oh, and I acknowledge that it’s quite possible that they actually believe all of their statements, even those which are demonstrably untrue.


As per our disclaimer, all opinions expressed in this post are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of any other member of the team, including the site owner.

John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com.
He's also now on twitter as @JohnDougherty8, and consequently will probably never do any work ever again.

His latest books include:

Finn MacCool and the Giant's Causeway - a retelling for the Oxford Reading Tree
Bansi O'Hara and the Edges of Hallowe'en
Zeus Sorts It Out - "A sizzling comedy... a blast for 7+" , and one of The Times' Children's Books of 2011, as chosen by Amanda Craig

Libraries: nostalgia may soon not be what it used to be: Gillian Philip

Better and more dedicated bloggers have blogged about the crisis facing our libraries, including Lucy Coats, Keren David and Candy Gourlay. Please read their posts from yesterday, because I can't put it better than they can.

I can, though, tell you what my local library meant to me as a child, because I'll never forget standing at my bedroom window one night, with my parents and my brother, watching the glow light up the sky as it burned to the ground. I remember being heartbroken, because it was the place I loved to be: the place that brought me Paddington Bear and the Famous Five and so many other worlds of wild excitement.

All I could think of that night, and the next day as we went to look at the ruins, was all those worlds, all those words, all those books going up in smoke. At eight I could think of no greater tragedy. I fantasised that the local press would interview me, as the library's most fanatical client. I even practised what I'd say.

I'd discovered Snoggle in that library, an odd little egg-shaped alien created by JB Priestley. He was as alone and far from home as ET, and even more heart-tugging. Obsessed, I'd taken the book with me into the garden, then left it lying there to be rained on. I had only recently returned it, terrified and guilty, to the librarian (who was very kind and forgiving, and who didn't have me arrested as I assumed she would). That night I remember wishing I'd kept it. More than thirty years later I had to track down a copy for my own kids, but I'm still afraid to read it, afraid to shatter the memory of one of the best-loved books of my childhood.

They rebuilt Wishaw Library: that's it in the photo above. It will have changed with the times, adapted, modernised. It must offer so much more now than it used to. I'd love to visit some time (hint hint). My nostalgic memories of the old library won't be any stronger than the memories the new one is creating right now for its thousands of visitors.

But looking for images of the beautiful old library, or even of the fire that destroyed it, I can't find any. Not one. It's as if that library never existed. Maybe I dreamed it.

Horrible, horrible thought. Let's not let it happen to all the others.

The arts - who needs them? Sue Purkiss

Somerset, where I live, is a very beautiful county. (See picture of Glastonbury Tor for example of beauteousness.) It's also very rural. Its only city, Wells, is a pocket Venus, with a population of 10 500. The county town, Taunton, is just that - a town. It is one of the few counties which doesn't have a university. (Bath and Bristol are nearby, but they're not in Somerset.)

So it doesn't have the usual springboards for the arts; it doesn't have very much money. Despite this, there are several small theatres, in Frome, Taunton, Street and Yeovil. There's a group called Takeart, which takes drama round to schools and villages. There are stacks of amazing artists and craftspeople, drawn by the magical landscape of the levels, the hills, woods and streams of Exmoor, the Somerset coast, the Quantocks. And there are writers, of course.

Up until now, the County Council has helped to support the arts. The amount of money involved wasn't huge: £159 000, or 0.0004% of the total budget. (There has never been enough for luxuries such as a literature development officer.) But two days ago, the Conserative led council voted not just to cut the budget by 26% over four years, as had been anticipated: with a fine sweep of the pen, they have decided to cut the arts development budget completely. The only arts projects which will have any support are those which will be able to show a direct economic benefit for the community. Imaginative as they are, organisations such as the theatres and Takeart will find it difficult to plug the holes in their budgets - difficult to persuade other hard-pushed organisations such as the Arts Council to take up the slack.

This seems to be part of a general drift towards a society where the arts are valued only for their direct contribution to the economy. So - universities are to be encouraged by means of funding to favour science over the arts. Students are to pick up the tab for their studies because, after all, they will get a better job because of their degree. There seems to be a notion that artists and thinkers are a luxury, not a necessity in these difficult economic times. Well, I don't believe this is so. Let me quote this, from www.takeart.org:

In Somerset we believe in the transformational power of the arts, their capacity to fire the imagination, their ability to give meaning to our lives and our relationships with each other, a language to enable us to celebrate our common bonds – they empower and enable the 'Big Society'. We also believe all groups in society should be able to access the arts, such as those living in isolated, rural communities or children and young people living in difficult financial circumstances.

Wednesday was a sad day for Somerset. Maybe it's worth considering: why do we remember Ancient Greece? Worthy and important as they no doubt were, is it because of the tax gatherers? Probably not...

The Write Fight: N M Browne

I am feeling rather impotent. I can’t save my kids from massive uni debt, or help libraries buy or stock books, I can’t do anything to prevent PLR slipping away without a body to administer it. I know there are far worse evils in the world but education, literacy and an acknowledgment of the importance of culture are three bastions of civilisation and they are all under threat.
This is not a call to arms. There are things that make me angrier and I’m confident that I will have plenty of opportunity to get angrier as cuts get more radical. This is more a call to write. I mean there’s not much point in going on strike is there? Who would notice?
No. I am fighting back in a singularly ineffectual but morally satisfying way. So you think by destroying libraries, reducing discretionary income and bringing in a double dip recession thereby destroying the retail book trade you can break me, hey?
I am made of stronger stuff. I will finish this book, dammit, and it will be great and even if no one reads it but my kids ( because I’ve bribed them) and the librarian's daughter (who liked my last one,) I shall not be beaten. We practitioners who deliver culture at the frontline ( sadly a quote from the culture minister) are not so easily discouraged, we will continue to ply our trade with little hope of earning a living wage, we shall defend the value of the written word ( however it is delivered by book, download, or psychic transfer) and we will prevail!
So there. See. Not so impotent after all, huh!

Tinker, tailor, soldier..nurse? by Keren David

One of the many services for young people that has fallen victim to the government’s spending cuts is the careers service. Head teachers have warned that millions of pupils will lack proper advice, as the Connexions service has been axed, before a replacement put in its place.


My daughter’s school, for example, used to have a careers adviser based in the library. Her office is now empty. It’s far from clear where pupils will go in order to get guidance on qualifications, courses, apprenticeships and jobs.

I did a school visit last year to a school in Manchester. Housed in a brand new award-winning building, the school Learning Resource Centre has banks of computers - and that’s all. Four shelves of books in a classroom could be borrowed, the school’s leaders clearly thought that its pupils didn’t have much need of them.

Quite often on school visits pupils wait until after my talk to ask for advice about becoming a writer. This school was no exception. But after I’d given some writing tips, one girl still lingered. ‘Please Miss,’ she said. ‘I want to be a nurse or a midwife. Can you tell me what I need to do?’

I’ve thought about her since, and wondered if I was able to help her at all, with my garbled advice about biology GCSE and googling the Royal College of  Nursing. It seemed almost old-fashioned to meet a girl who wanted to be a nurse, not a celebrity.
I remembered some books that I loved when I was growing up. The Sue Barton series, written by Helen Dore Boyleston between 1936 and 1952 follows Sue through her career as a nurse - from student, in hospitals, urban New York, rural New Hampshire. She grows up through the course of the book, marries (naturally) a doctor, has children. But the focus of the books is always her professional life (ignore that drippy cover, Sue was much more likely to be sewing up a nasty wound or splinting a broken leg than canoodling in a corridor). Even though I was the most squeamish girl ever – I loved them.
(My sister,  just as squeamish, loved them even more than I did. I do not feel it is entirely coincidental that she married a doctor)
I can’t imagine a series like Sue Barton being published nowadays. You can find out about careers in entertainment or fashion, sport and drama in today’s fiction. But how about nursing, journalism, science or the army? Where’s the fiction which talks about what it’s like going to university – and whether it’s worth it?  You can watch Casualty, of course, but that's different from stories which concentrate on career development.
I was talking to a girl the other day who was a school drop out. Her dyslexia was undiagnosed, she could hardly read, she fell in with a bad crowd and spent her time truanting and drinking. Hair-dressing saved her, she told me (she was doing my highlights at the time). Her aunt got her a part-time job at Toni and Guy, she liked earning money, she broke with the waster friends. The part-time job led to an apprenticeship and now she's got a good job that she enjoys.
But then she read a book -  'One of those misery lit books.'' For the first time in her life she felt a real connection with what she was reading. She's gone back to evening classes, is taking GCSEs She has a new ambition, to be a social worker. She inspired by the stories she's been reading to try and make a real difference to abused children
Young people have taken a disproportionate hit in our new age of austerity. Many don't seem to feel they have a satisfying future to look forward to. Nothing can take the place of a personal, informed careers service, but is there anything children's authors can do to inform and inspire?  Can we help young people  see that they don't need to win X Factor to be a success? Where’s the Sue Barton of today?

My Library and Me - Savita Kalhan

Libraries are under threat and there has been a huge outcry against cuts and closures that span the whole of the United Kingdom. And rightly so. Libraries are precious and should be placed under a protection order.
You will all have read or written many articles and blogs about the intrinsic importance of libraries and what they mean and what they provide for the individual, for children, for adults, for the disadvantaged, for society in general.
This is what they meant to me when I was a child.
I came to live in England with my parents when I was 11 months old. My father was an educated man – he spoke and wrote Hindi, Urdu and English, but was forced to leave school much earlier than he would have liked in order to help his parents. My mother never went to school. She was put to work when very young and although all her younger sisters went to school, she missed her chance and by twelve it was too late for her. She speaks only Punjabi, but can understand some Hindi, mainly learnt from films. She was brought up in a village, so as a child her experiences were limited, her knowledge of the world severely restricted.
My parents worked very hard. Our family grew, and we were raised in a very traditional environment. We had to work hard at school and at home. And we weren’t allowed to go out at all. Except to one place – the library.
Both my parents were in complete agreement about this. My father because he wanted us to do well, excel in school and in our studies, make something of ourselves. Even though he was in many respects a traditional Punjabi man, he never considered himself saddled with five daughters. He expected as much from us as if we were boys. And my mother because of her reverence for books. She couldn’t read them herself, but for her they were the source of wisdom, knowledge and understanding, and therefore the means to escape from poverty and derision. She held them in awe and respect. We were never allowed to put books on the floor, or anywhere they might get damaged.
We couldn’t afford to buy any books. So we joined our local library.

Wycombe Library - the grand opening in 1932!

Wycombe Library when I joined it

The brand new Wycombe Library in the Eden Centre and the fantastic Children's Library

As much as school, our library provided us with knowledge, but also a wealth of entertainment and pleasure – I think we always maxxed out our library cards with the number of books allowed to be taken out in one go. It was also to become our sanctuary and refuge through some very difficult and troubled times.
I do not think I would be the person I am today without them.
I would in all probability be trapped within the confines of a small-town Asian community in England, having succumbed to a traditional arranged marriage. It almost happened, but I fought it and escaped that fate by the skin of my teeth, but escape I did because although we were never allowed out while we were growing up, my horizons had been broadened exponentially by everything I had read and learnt and discovered – and it gave me a voice.
For many people, adults and children alike, the library still means as much, and so much more.

More library information:
Campaign for the Book http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43030635058

Alan Gibbons website http://www.alangibbons.net/

ABBA blog guest post ‘What my Library Means to Me’ by Shamila Akhtar, Friday February 22nd:
http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2011/02/something-children-love-and-need.html
Fight for Libraries Campaign from The Bookseller http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fight-For-Libraries-campaign-from-The-Bookseller/134767896588119
Voices for the Library http://www.facebook.com/voicesforthelibrary
On Twitter – write your tweet and add this - #savelibraries. Or use it to search tweets about saving libraries.

Bucks Libraries haven’t escaped the dreaded cuts either. Some libraries may have to close unless run by volunteers, and they also face a 10% cut in opening hours. It’s a treacherously slippery slope. More information on the Friends of High Wycombe Libraries here http://www.fohwl.plus.com/

I will undoubtedly have missed some important links in my haste to get this post up on time! If any kind person wishes to add any I have missed, please do so in the comments.

Something children love and need

Today’s blog post is not by a writer. It is by someone much more important: a reader.

The reader is a lady named Shamila Akhtar, who has started a petition to keep her local library - Pleck Library in Walsall - open. I quote from the Pleck residents’ group website: ‘Pleck is recognised as the most deprived area in the borough of Walsall.’ Walsall itself is in the West Midlands, my home region and one of the areas hardest hit by spending cuts. If a library is needed anywhere, surely it is needed here.

I am proud to introduce Shamila as a guest blogger:

- Leila Rasheed

WHAT MY LIBRARY MEANS TO ME
by Shamila Akhtar

Everyone's talking about why their library should stay open. It's such a turmoil of emotion, every single library is special to the people who use it. In Walsall, 6 of 16 libraries will close. It's awful - I feel like the small libraries are competing against each other to survive. Like we’re in a slaughter house and all jostling to stay at the back and not get picked. What a sad situation!! Every single library should be left alone.

What is it about that these buildings and the resources within that's turning people like me into campaigners? I'm a person who is not the politician, the local councillor or even the vicar who posed for our Press Event photo. I am a little shy, timid in approaching the writing elite to ask for their support. How will I come across? What will I say?

Perhaps I can share some of the magic moments the library creates, delivers, facilitates.

I have seen a father sitting there on a tiny chair reading to his boy, speaking not so well English but he was there and he was trying. His son gets his undivided attention, they get special time together.

I have turned the final page of a book we borrowed from there, to have a crocodile pop up. The boys want me to make him snap at their fingers, we protect the book so baby does not damage the pop up.

Summer holiday activities: the library is totally packed and the children's entertainer has brought a play parachute. The children are thrilled and their hair goes crazy with the static. The animal man places a cockroach on a little boy’s nose and the snake does the usual mishap. The Librarian brings out biscuits and juice. Now that is a magic moment for the kids.

It is the librarian’s birthday; my 3 year old makes her a card. As she turns the card over there is some of his dinner glued to it, and we all have a giggle. He tries to trick her, saying it's a glittery glue and she gives him some cake and a hug.

An elderly man walks into the library, he shakes hands with a friend, picks up a news paper and settles down on the next armchair to read. He could have read a paper at home but he came here, he and his friend read their own papers together. Will the council look close enough to see what I see?

In my childhood my father would often take me to this same library. Though he could not read well himself he knew this was a place from which his children could learn. We all have those things that throw us back to a moment in the past: a smell, a food. We all should have a book that does that too. For me that book is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. The moment I see the cover I can feel exactly how I felt as a child, enchanted.

It will be criminal to end the opportunity for moments like this to take place.

It really is a wonderful place. This is one perspective, how many more are there? We want to save this library for our children, our elderly, the PC students, Chess Club, the Baby Group, the Homework Club and so many more users.

I am campaigning for my little boys and all the children; for all the times they sat in their carer’s lap, forall the times they felt close because a book needed them to be close, for all the times a book made them laugh, for all the times a reader could not wait to find out what happens next, for all the times a lonely person spoke their first words of the day to a librarian, for all the friends made there and for so much more - for the library and everything it gives.

By Shamila: A mum trying to save something her children love and NEED

http://www.pleckresidentsgroup.co.uk/#

Attack of the Flying Authors - John Dougherty

I must have been mad. Gloriously, bonkersly, wonderfully mad. Whatever possessed me to suggest I mark Save Our Libraries Day by becoming a Flying Author?

Not literally flying, I hasten to add, despite the misleadingly Bigglesish publicity picture. No, the idea was that I dash around the county, doing quick 20-minute sessions at each of the libraries that are endangered by the, let's be frank, utterly irresponsible and ridiculously short-termist cuts proposed by Gloucestershire County Council.

Unfortunately, it's a big county. And there are a lot of endangered libraries. Under the present plans, 29 of the county's 38 libraries are likely to suffer huge reductions in service, with up to 17 of those likely to close altogether. Not to mention the mobile libraries, which soon no one will be able to mention except in the past tense. Yes, they're getting rid of the entire mobile library service.

Anyway, it soon became apparent that I wasn't going to be able to do more than 9 in a day. And that was without stopping for lunch.

Thank goodness, then, for Cindy Jefferies, who quickly donned her own metaphorical goggles and flight jacket to become Flying Author number two. The marvellous, hardworking and very lovely people at Friends of Gloucestershire Libraries began to get very excited - and it didn't end there. As the days rolled by, more authors, poets, illustrators and storytellers joined the squadron. Not all of them were technically Flying Authors - some stayed at a single library for a day; some could only give an hour or two of their time - but all of them helped to make it a huge success. They were, in no particular order:

• Marcus Moore
• the heroic Katie Fforde, who did several events despite having spent the previous night sleeping rough for charity in a public park!!!
• Hannah Shaw
• Sue Limb
• Jamila Gavin
• Alice Jolly
• Shoo Rayner
• Chloe of the Midnight Storytellers
• Jane Bailey
• Chris Manby
• Philippa Roberts
• Graham Mitchell
• Vicky Bennett
• Peter Wyton
• Roger Drury
• John Bassett of Spaniel In The Works Theatre Company

[and if I've missed anyone off this list, please email and tell me and I'll add you! Sorry if that's the case, but there were just SO MANY OF US!]
By the time Saturday 5th Feb came, we had something planned in EVERY SINGLE LIBRARY IN THE BOROUGH!

Well - except for the two that are closed on Saturdays. And the one in the prison.

But those aside, we had a right rollicking day of events to look forward to. You can see a fuller, but possibly still not quite complete, list of events (plus weblinks) here.

And what a day it was! Right from the first event - which began with a crowd outside the library, waiting for the doors to open at 9.30 - it was all systems go. Some libraries were buzzing, full of eager library users keen to make their voices heard; at others, I spoke to small but enthusiastic groups of children and parents. Librarians offered me tea and biscuits and even custard doughnuts, one twelve-year-old read me a laugh-out-loud-funny limerick she'd written herself (thanks, Jasmine!) while an eight-year-old told me how much she'd loved one of my books (thank you, Tamsin!). People listened, people laughed, people clapped and sang along, people gasped in horror when I told them that Gloucestershire County Council had banned the media from filming, photographing and recording the day's events in the libraries...

No, I could hardly believe that bit myself. Thankfully, the lovely reporter from NPR was happy to interview me in the car between libraries. But it does feel an awful lot like censorship. I emailed the council leader yesterday to ask the reason for the media ban. He replied that it was "to protect staff in particular" (that'll be the staff who've been threatened with cuts to their redundancy pay if they speak out over the closures, then) and "to avoid any unnecessary disruption to the library services" (which, obviously, won't be disrupted in the slightest by being dismembered in the way the council is proposing).

I got home in the early evening, exhilarated but exhausted, immensely grateful to my trusty flight crew and to everyone who'd made the day run so smoothly. But part of me couldn't help wondering - had it been worth it? Had my lightning tour of Gloucestershire really attracted any attention for the campaign to keep our libraries open?

And then I opened up my computer to find an email of encouragement from someone who'd read about it on the BBC website. She's a school librarian. In Rolling Meadows, Illinois.

Yes, it was worth it. I was just one little player in what Alan Gibbons called "a carnival of resistance"; but it was a carnival that made a heck of a noise.

It's not the end, though - not by a long way. Let's see what happens next.

John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com

Reading Allowed; Sue Purkiss

It's not absolutely definite yet, but it looks as though my local library, Cheddar, has been given a reprieve and will not now close. Eleven others in Somerset probably will, though; and so on Saturday our Love Our Library day was part celebration and part protest. There was coffee, there was cake, there were stickers and balloons, there was a colouring competition - but mostly there were lots of people, adults and children, there to raise a few cheers, to talk and to take out books: to make the point that libraries MATTER.

I was there with another local author, Michael Malaghan, writer of Greek Ransome, an action packed adventure story involving Greek legends, archaeology and nail-biting chases. We quite quickly saw that our audience was on the young side for most of our books, though I did read a bit of Emily's Surprising Voyage. Then we asked them to choose books for us to read. I was lucky enough to be handed Where The Wild Things Are.

It's a lovely book to read out loud. Every word counts, has the right weight in the right place. The buzz of chatter quickly faded as I began to read, and soon all the children were sitting perfectly still, eyes wide, lost in the world of Max, the monsters and the magical island.

I had a similar experience a couple of weeks ago, reading bits of Warrior King out to secondary school pupils. I'd been asked in to talk about Alfred the Great and the Anglo-Saxons, because they were studying them in history. Again, there was that hush, as we all entered a different world, a different time. That's one of the things reading does for you; it gives you a free pass to an infinite number of other minds and other worlds.

Long before there were printed books or Kindles, there were libraries. The great library at Alexandria, one of the marvels of the ancient world, was created 300 years BC, and was filled with papyrus scrolls. Hundreds of years later, it took a conquering army to destroy it. Now, it seems that all you need is a few politicians and the occasional meaningless soundbite.

In modern Alexandria, and in other cities in Egypt, the voice of the people is making itself heard. In a much, much smaller way, so it is here. It feels as if it just might be something of a turning point.

Keeping Politics out of the Library: Aristotle Would Not Be Amused - Ellen Renner

Yesterday, as I was filing my income tax, someone emailed to tell me about Sheffield City Council's decision this week to ban Ian McMillan. For those who don't know about this, Mr McMillan, a poet, broadcaster and comedian, was scheduled to run a children's creative writing workshop at Upperthorpe Library in Sheffield. The event was intended to highlight the value of libraries to their local community, in a time when, as we all know, both school and public libraries face massive cuts.

Apparently, the city council banned Mr McMillan because they feared that the event might be hijacked for the purpose of making 'political' comments. Hijacked by whom, or how, the article didn't make clear, but according to Sintoblog (sintoblogspot.com) the background to this is the fact that Sheffield council, although not currently proposing any library closures at present, is planning major cuts to the library budget which will have an inevitable knock-on to service provision.

There are two main points about this story that immediately caught my attention. First, the issue of censorship. What we seem to have here is a clear-cut case of a political body banning free speech because it might reflect negatively on their policies.

I don't know whether or not Mr McMillan was planning to be overtly political as he taught creative writing to the children (having done quite a few creative writing workshops with 8-12 year-olds, the mind boggles trying to figure out how exactly one might manage to slip a political agenda in there along with the zombies, vampires and alien invasions), but the issue here is surely whether or not a city council is entitled to ban the expression of opinions which might prove politically awkward.

Beyond the free speech implication, I was struck by the philosophical stance of Sheffield City Council not wanting libraries, of all things, to be used as a forum or focus for political comment. I find it surreal that politicians should not be aware of -- or should choose to ignore -- the fact that libraries are political in essence. Libraries, like hospitals and schools, are physical representations of the implied bargain between the citizen and the politician.

As many people (other than the members of Sheffield City Council) know, the word 'politics' is derived from the Greek word 'politika', famously used by Aristotle as the title of his work about ethics and political philosophy. Politics means 'affairs of the city'. It means the relationship between the citizen and the 'polis', or city, and their responsibilities to each other.

And this is the heart of the matter. I have a responsibility, like all citizens or residents, to pay my tax so that politicians can decide how to spend my money to keep the city, county or country running. That's what I did last night (a bit late, but 2011 is turning out to be my year for scary deadlines).

In return, politicians have a responsibility to the citizenry, which is to provide services, and to make politically accountable decisions about that provision. We elect politicians to make hard decisions. And if we disagree with the decisions they are making, we also have a responsibility to inform them of that fact. The debate about the provision of services in a time of financial constraint must be kept open and free-flowing, and Sheffield City Council needs to embrace its proper political role and reject the temptation of censorship.

If You Go Down to the Woods - Charlie Butler

I’m not especially generous to charity, but I have a few conscience-lubricating direct debits that go off every month to selected causes. Sometimes, mind, I look at my little list and wonder about my priorities. Next to the cancer charity, and the fund to bring clean water to African villages, the longest-standing of these payments – my monthly contribution to the Woodland Trust – may seem rather trivial. After all, keeping a few broadleaf trees alive isn't quite as morally urgent as stopping a child from contracting cholera, is it?

Indeed not – but neither is morality as a zero-sum game, despite the tendentious arguments of policitians (“Wouldn't you rather we closed your local library than stopped homecare for the elderly? Do you hate old people that much?”). That is a false choice, because understanding and valuing what connects us to nature and to our own history is part of what makes us capable of caring about the other things too. Britain is, historically, an island of forests, and although frighteningly little remains of its ancient woodland, a visceral memory and sense of its importance persists amongst even the most urban of town dwellers. The wild wood, as Alan Garner once put it, is "always at the back of our consciousness. It’s in our dreams and nightmares and fairy tales and folk tales."

It's sometimes said that you can judge a country by the way it treats its prisoners. In children's books, woods and trees can act as a similar touchstone. In C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle, for example, we know things have got really bad when the trees are felled on the order of the False Aslan; while Saruman's willingness to cut down trees to feed his furnaces in The Lord of the Rings is a sure sign of his depravity. By contrast, a love of trees betokens health and moral soundness, whether they grow in Milne's Hundred-Acre Wood, a locus amoenus subject to seasons and weather but never to calendars, clocks or the other impedimenta of downtrodden adulthood; or in the hardier worlds created by Arthur Ransome and BB, whose children find both shelter and challenge under the shade of the greenwood, as Robin Hood did before them. Underlying all these, nestling in the leaf litter, lie our memories of the fairy-tale woods with their witches, wolves and wandering children. Their long roots wind in and out of our dreams, as ineluctably as those of Yggdrassil.

When my father died, I paid the Woodland Trust to protect an acre of woodland in perpetuity. Dad’s patch of earth is in a small wood near Winchester, not far (to bring in a gratuitous children’s literature reference) from the grave of Charlotte Yonge. One autumn day, a few months after his death, our family dedicated his acre by scattering his ashes there, in the furze of a small clearing. The ashes blew about a little (‘Don’t sneeze your grandfather!’ I warned my daughter), but I think the wood accepted our dusty libation. I plan to end up there myself, one day – unless of course it’s been turned into a car park by then. To prevent that happening, either to that acre or to many thousands of others, I urge you to consider signing one or both of these petitions, protesting against the current plans to sell off publicly-owned forest:

38 Degrees

The Woodland Trust

You say you want a resolution - John Dougherty

First Awfully Big Post of 2011! I was going to write about my new Kindle; but I think that'll have to wait, because the more I think on't, the more it seems to me that 2011 is going to be one of those years in which we have to stand up and shout a lot. And by 'we', I mean anyone who cares about books and believes that the ability and opportunity to read are crucial to social mobility and a cultured and civilised society. Oh, and who believes that social mobility and a cultured and civilised society are things we should be concerned about.

Now, I'm not one of those who thinks that the recent decision to completely cut government funding to Bookstart proves that Michael Gove is really a two-headed alien lizard from the planet Aaarg hellbent on domination of the human race*. No, I just think it means that we have a government that (a) is desperate to make cuts because of the genuine financial crisis in which we find ourselves, and (b) doesn't understand stuff. Important stuff, like the fact that there are children who start school not knowing what a book is and lacking the concept that text carries meaning, and that this is a Bad Thing.

Similarly, I don't think the local councillors who are proposing to cut library budgets by as much as 43% are evil geniuses plotting the overthrow of civilisation from their secret lairs under volcanoes. I just think they're a bit stupid, or at least genuinely ignorant of the good that libraries do and the purposes they serve.

Unfortunately, this sort of ignorance isn't confined to politicians. There's a letter in yesterday's Observer about Bookstart (fifth one down, just beneath the one from Shirley Hughes) whose pomposity is matched only by its cluelessness. I do hope the writer looks at the comments on the website. Similarly, there do seem to be a lot of people who honestly don't see the problem with tearing apart the library service on the grounds that we now have computers and X-Boxes and Tesco sells books anyway.

It's been great to see authors, librarians and teachers standing against the barbarian tide that threatens to overwhelm us, but we can't just leave it to those big enough to get their names in the paper. I know I'm in large part preaching to the converted here, but I hope that in 2011 we'll all resolve to get involved. If you haven't done so already, please sign up to Alan Gibbons's Campaign For The Book (contact form at the bottom of the page), and check out the Library Campaign website to find details of things you can do nationally and locally.

Happy new year!

I hope.

*I know that announcements have since been made that Bookstart will not disappear, but as far as I know no specifics have been announced, and no-one's said that government funding will be restored.

John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com