Northants Children’s Book Club Launch

Last week I had the privilege of photographing the ‘Kids Book Fest’ launch event for the Northamptonshire Children’s Book Group at the Coach House in the beautiful setting of Delapre Abbey.

Northamptonshire Children’s Book Group is a local branch of the Federation of Children’s Book Groups, a charity spanning 50 years which aims to bring children and books together. The group is made up of teachers, ex teachers, librarians, illustrators, parents and individuals who have a lot of experience in children books and reading. They want to share their passion of books with children and families across the county, and rightly so.

Kid’s Book Fest was a day long festival in the of children books including workshops, talks & discussions from a range of the county’s best authors. The Children’s Book Award Coordinator Sarah Stuffins entertained us with some wonderfully animated storytelling, the children were then given the opportunity to vote for their favourite in the Children’s Book Award. Next up was Dave Barrow, picture book author & illustrator, Dave showed off his expertise in creating characters during a fascinating workshop with the under 5’s. Chris Priestly, middle grade and young adult author delivered a very interesting talk on his early influences and treated us to a reading from his spooky but comical series Maudlin Heights. Towards the end of the day, bestselling teen authors Celia Rees & Lauren James took part in a panel discussion about their new books and the links between them and what inspires them to write.

A great day was had by all of all ages, including myself, I do love my job! The weather was perfect and also extremely challenging, the bright morning sun was shining in on us and warming us nicely but this did throw up a few issues of finding the correct exposure with both harsh bright light and dark shadows in a small setting. I like to be kept on my toes though! And of course I couldn’t leave a book event without purchasing a few books, my children now have an array of beautifully illustrated books which I have been reading to them every night, my eldest almost knows them by heart and I had to take home one of Celia’s books, Witch Child (signed no less), a novel set in 1659 where the diary of a young girl is found 300 years later stitched into an old quilt. History and textiles, what’s not to love about that? I’ll be sitting down to to immerse myself into it this evening.