The book love was spread

On Sunday 7 October, we hosted our Spreading the Book Love event at Ilkley Literature Festival's Wordsfest afternoon for young people aged 12-18.

We shared over 40 books in lots of different ways with a buildingful of teenagers: bookswapping, book battleship prizes, sticks of candy rock, posters, postcards, bookmarks, our Top 20 books  - and a fair bit of chat!

Apart from browsing through two tables of books, other highlights seemed to be the games of book battleships (thanks to Scholastic for the inspiration), sticks of The Twice-Lived Summer of Bluebell Jones rock (thanks again, Scholastic!), and receiving interest from people for starting up a teen bookclub. All of the books that were swapped are registered on Bookcrossing, so you can look here to see which books are travelling.

And the book that both Little M and I thought was browsed most? Katya's World by Jonathan L Howard (Strange Chemistry).

Here are some pictures from the event:

Our bookswap

Chatting and sharing

 

 

Celia Rees and Walter Swan who were part of the Wordsfest afternoon

 

Some school teachers and librarians who brought teens from afar and chatted with us about books, blogs and the Carnegie.

 

Hot drinks

An Ilkley Literature Festival assistant

A label in one of our books

 

 

Thank you to Otley Courthouse for accommodating us. And thank you to the following publishers who offered books as prizes and swaps: Hot Key Books, Random House Children's Publishers, Strange Chemistry and Hodder Childrens.