Greetings from
the Taranaki Children's Book Festival, New Plymouth, New Zealand
I gave the keynote address, Productive
Partnerships-Learning for Life, at the Taranaki Children’s Book
Festival which was held from Monday 31 August to Saturday 5 September
2009. This week-long festival combines professional development
activities for school and public librarians with author visits.
The Festival is based in the beautiful city of New Plymouth which is
the largest city in the Taranaki area. The aim of the Festival is
to inspire and encourage New Zealand children to read.
“Not only do we want to encourage kids to read and
foster the love of reading, we also want to kick-start their creativity
and inspire them to become writers themselves,” says Puke Ariki ( New
Plymouth) Manager Service Delivery, Dale Cousens.
I had the opportunity to meet a number of New
Zealand's best authors and illustrators such as Dawn McMillan, Gavin
Bishop, Kyle Mewburn, Linda McNab and Melanie Dreurey. “This
festival gives local children the opportunity to meet their
literary heroes and even bounce story ideas around
with them that they might themselves write in the future.”
The Taranaki Festival is very similar to
Whitsunday Voices except that with this festival the authors are ferried
to the schools of the Taranaki area. While in the New Plymouth
area I was also very fortunate to visit a number of school and public
libraries. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet other librarians
and to share and learn and grow. One of the highlights of my
attendance at this Festival was the opportunity to have some
professional conversations with some of New Zealand's best authors.
The
Taranaki area is very beautiful. Its economy is based on the
dairying industry and is home to the world's largest co-operative dairy
company, Fonterra. The landscape is dominated by the cone shaped
Mt Taranaki, a dormant volcano. At this time of the year the summit is
still snow covered and can be seen for kilometres. It was a
delight to be able to participate at this Festival and I thank the
organiser, Pamela Jones for the invitation and the opportunities which
that invitation presented.
Margaret Spillman, New Plymouth, New Zealand
(Productive Partnerships is a program which
encourages collaborative and co-operative relationships between
school and public libraries. It has been operational at Mackay West
for 8 yrs)
