The Loogabarooga Festival

'Incredible Illustrations - Brilliant Books'

The Loogabarooga Festival is a new literary festival for families, to be held in Loughborough 22-26 October this year - ie the tail end of next week, our half term here in Leicestershire. It's thought to be the only literary festival that focuses on illustrated stories, and has come about because Loughborough is the birthplace of Ladybird Books, who celebrate their centenary this year. In fact, there's an exhibition in the Charnwood Museum which charts the history of Ladybird and shows some of the original artwork, as well as supporting talks by some of the people who worked at Ladybird when the factory was still based in town.

There are LOADS of activities planned during the festival days - some free, some needing payment - and all the details are on the website or facebook page. You can design your own book cover, go to a Mad Hatter's Tea Party, watch Nick Butterworth and the illustrator of Dennis the Menace at work, plus a hundred other things beside! Book benches have been commissioned and placed around town, reflecting some of the town's favourite Ladybird books (Remember Books About Town last year in London? Like those)...a treasure trail is planned in the shops...you can get festival food offers at certain restaurants...and the town has been decked out with yellow and purple flags. It promises to be an exciting week.

There's one thing I'm a bit sad about though. As a local author, I got in touch with the team to see if I could be involved; after all, I love books and Granny Rainbow's two books are illustrated. Although I was told my details were passed on, I've heard nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I even met one of the team in my local Waterstones branch when I asked them about getting involved; the lady avoided eye contact, took my details (again) and said 'the programme's sorted for this year. Maybe next?'

I wonder whether I should have pushed it more? Gone off and done my own thing? But everything seems to be going through the Loogabarooga team...

I'll try again next year, anyway... and in the meantime, I shall go and have a sit on the Cinderella bench in the market place, try and spot the book titles in shop windows, and take advantage of money off my meals - while spreading the word far and near that if you like Ladybird books and illustrated books, this might just be the festival you've been looking for!

Oh - and if you're wondering about how the name 'Loogabarooga' came about, it's because a lot of foreign folk have trouble pronouncing 'Loughborough'. It actually sounds like 'Lufbra' when you say it, but looks nothing like that on the page... You'll also see on the poster our famous Carillon war memorial (its green top can be seen for miles around) and the Sock Man, a distinctive town sculpture who pays tribute to the hosiery workers of years gone by...

Half term catch-up...

Sorry it's been a bit quiet on the Scribbles of late - it was half term last week (a week earlier than most folk, which is both good and bad) and we were away for part of it. Blogging wasn't a priority...

Anyhow, in case you were wondering what I've been doing since I last posted, here's my week in a nutshell:

1. Trip to Eberstadt in Germany to stay with friends. 
We'd been saying for ages that we'd go over, and finally the stars aligned and Lufthansa had their strike on a not too inconvenient date (!) and we did it. We visited a Transport Museum in Speyer, Frankfurt Zoo, spent a morning in Darmstadt at the artist's colony (founded there at the turn of the 20th century), had a BBQ (in mid-October!), visited a spa bath and spent time scrambling up and down rocks at the Felsenmeer.

Felsenmeer

Darmstadt's 'Five Finger' Wedding Tower and
the Russian Orthodox Chapel

Families Squidge and zB, BBQing!

2. Trips to the orthodontist.
Both my kids have got wonky teeth - from their dad, not me! As a result, they both need braces. T's were fitted over half term and J gets hers over the next week. Fortunately T has progressed beyong sucking a breadstick to death and eating chopped up spaghetti, but it's been an interesting few days...

3. Knitting.
Remember the Christmas balls book? It arrived - and I've already produced my first knitted bauble! More will be on the way...

Whilst in Germany, I found a fab chunky wool that I decided to knit into a cowl for myself. Only problem was that it was a bit too stiff and chunky when knitted up to drape properly. Instead, I spent a day knitting up and taking down and experimenting until I got this...

It looks daft, according to the rest of the Squidges, but I don't care! It's lovely and warm - this is doubled over, so I can just about pull it up over my head - and I put it to the test yesterday evening, at...

4. Loughborough's Children's Illustrated Literature Festival Announcement. 
That's a bit of a mouthful...but all during half term, there have been activities to promote reading in the town. (I did another storytelling session in the library on Friday afternoon to around 15 children, who then stayed to make Ladybird bookmarks and face masks. It was so nice to see some of the children I'd met over the summer again.) All the activities were building up to the announcement about the Literary Festival next October, held in part to celebrate the centenary of Ladybird Books which for many years was based in Loughborough.

The announcement was made at 7.30pm in Queen's Park, where we were promised we'd see the Carillon (our local war memorial and iconic landmark) in a whole new light.

You know this thing people do at the moment, where they project a moving image onto a building? (Like when Madness sang 'Our House' on the roof of Buckingham Palace and the palace became a row of terraced houses? ). Well they did THAT - to the Carillon.

It became a huge stack of books. A young girl appeared, climbed the stack and pulled out a book. It fell to the floor, opened, and from between its pages emerged the stories... The little girl climbed a beanstalk which grew the height of the Carillon until the giant appeared, at which point the beanstalk collapsed and the girl picked another book from the pile...

Photo by Kev Ryan of Charnwood Arts - this is the Hickory Dickory Dock bit...

Each new book taken from the pile showed a different story; the girl climbed through a wardrobe into Narnia. Flew on a broomstick with Harry Potter and then again with Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. She rode on Aslan's back, visited Wonderland like Alice, caught the tail of the Hickory Dickory Dock mouse and was carried up the grandfather clock - she even went to the North Pole with a Golden Compass...

All around me, I could hear children and adults calling out what the stories were, and I was really moved that standing in the dark were so many people who read and enjoyed stories. (Apparently there were about a thousand people watching, though how you could tell in the dark...)

At the end of the presentation, the little girl sat down with a feather quill and wrote. Her letters tumbled out of her book to form the 'Love Loughborough Tales' logo, which became a balloon and flew her away into a shower of fireworks from the green dome at the top of the Carillon.

It was amazing. I'm really looking forward to the Festival next year - and I hope that there'll be opportunities for local authors and folk who used to work at Ladybird to get more involved. At the moment, it feels very much a corporate affair and out of the realm of us little people, but we'll see.

If this was the starting point, I can't wait to see what we're going to get next year...

But right now, it's back to school and routine and writing and editing, so I'll catch you later!

Ladybird

Nope. Not the insect - the book company. Ladybird Books. 

The company was started in my home town and although Ladybird are still publishing books today, they're now owned by Penguin and everything's moved south, leaving a big hole in the town.

Next year, Loughborough's going to be celebrating the centenary of Ladybird Books and today, I went to a meeting to put forward ideas of how those celebrations might look. A Literary Festival has been suggested...

It's still very early days in the planning stages, but  there were some lovely ideas floating about. My publisher, Ian, was a typesetter with the company and there are many people who live in town who used to be connected to the words and pictures that made a Ladybird book so special - I'm hoping for some wonderful exhibitions of memories and artefacts, as well as reading events and lots about illustrating for children's literature.

The local press dropped in to cover the meeting and asked for a photo of everyone. We were all given a museum copy of a Ladybird book to hold (I was hoping for Cinderella, but got The Vikings instead) and we posed...

I'll keep you posted as details come in, as I'm sure there are loads of you who have fond memories of Ladybird.

My favourite...but I hated the blue dress!