Several weeks ago Janet Evans, Literacy and Educational Consultant and Senior Lecturer in Education at Liverpool Hope University, visited the National Institute of Education in Singapore and gave a presentation entitled “Exploring Comics, Graphic Novels and Picture Books as Multimodal Texts with Particular Reference to Raymond Briggs and His Partnership with Controversy.”  Myra Garces-Bacsal of Gathering Books attended the lecture and emailed me soon after to say that she was so impressed with Janet’s presentation that she stayed up until 2am to blog about it!

Truth be told, I have little inkling about who Raymond Briggs was, but I love graphic novels and I adore picture books. I thought that it was another blogworthy post for Gathering Books. True enough, it was the highlight of my day.

Janet’s 60-minute talk this afternoon (and I really feel it was waayyyy too short, I could have spent an entire day just listening and talking to Janet who is a fantastic and animated speaker) – basically centered on the subtle differences between comics, graphic novels, picture books and illustrated books. She also discussed the themes in Briggs’ work as a graphic novelist and how comics and graphic novels can be effective conduits to philosophical discourses, existential issues, and profound ruminations about life, death, war, tragedy, you name it – his picture books have them.

Now I feel like a total lark not knowing about Raymond Briggs. His works are now considered classics, extremely rare (thus expensive), and yes, he has a cult following. When Briggs was just beginning (1970′s) to publish his works which may be seen as a cross between comic strip, picture books and graphic novels all rolled into one – this kind of writing was regarded with a raised eyebrow at the very least in British society. Raymond Briggs has been credited to be instrumental in elevating the profile of comics and graphic novels to an intellectual level. Janet claims that “there is now a burgeoning renaissance in their creation, production, and acceptance.”

Read Myra’s entire blog post here.

After a busy day of presentations on Day 2, Day 3 of the Bologna Book Fair was spent meeting people and absorbing the different books on offer.

First up was a lovely chat with poet Jorge Luján, whom we’d caught up with on the Tuesday evening… He shared his brand new book with us and I will share some photos with you when I work out how to get them off the camera (as opposed to a storage disc)… but in the meantime, enjoy this gorgeous poster for the exhibition of Isol’s illustrations from his recently published Pantuflas de perrito which is on-going until 25th April, if you happen to be in Bologna…

Other highlights included:

The presentation of the International Youth Library‘s newly announced 2010 White Ravens Catalogue:

I had a great discussion with Janet Evans from Liverpool Hope University, UK, who is currently spending some time with the Library in Munich

while…

next door at the IBBY stand, Corinne and Aline had a good chat with Sylvia Vardell, editor of IBBY magazine Bookbird and host of the wonderful Poetry for Children blog (Don’t miss out on her current game of Poetry Tag for National Poetry Month in the US).

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Meeting Danilla Marii, an Australian writer based in Rome, who had come to the Fair to seek out a publisher for her beautiful and vibrant book The Rainbow Tree – it was a real privilege to be able to see the original draft that includes some intricate collage work. We loved the story too.

Catching up with Antoinette Correa from B.L.D. – Bibliothèque Lecture Développement (Senegal)

and Pilli Hamidu Dumea of the Children’s Book Project for Tanzania.

Meeting author/illustrator/stroyteller John Kilaka, an erstwhile winner of the BolognaRagazzi New Horizons Award (for New Friends in 2005), and seeing his new book, The Amazing Tree.

…And of course, the books…

A display of Mitsumasa Anno’s books at Fukuinkan Shoten Publishers‘ stand, including his new Anno’s Journey across Asia – and if you look at the first photograph for this post you should be able to spot it among the White Ravens 2010 selection too…

A display devoted to Jimmy Liao’s books – what a feast of color and imagination they are. Wouldn’t it be great to have more of his books available in English!

And the much-loved Guji Guji by Chih-Yuan Chen in lots of different languages – interesting, also, to see the different illustrations chosen for the covers.

You can see these and more photos from Day 3 here…