My Love Letter to Liverpool Libraries

Authors fight to save libraries

Authors Cathy Cassidy and Alan Gibbons have started a campaign to save Liverpool libraries. This is a campaign backed by many, many people including myself. This is just a small blog but I wanted to add my thoughts and my love letter to Liverpool libraries. I will email the link to Mayor Anderson as I beg him to change his mind.

First of all here is what Cathy has said: 'Eleven much-loved and well-used Liverpool libraries are about to be closed, and as the council are not listening to protests or petitions, a campaign to bombard Mayor Joe Anderson with love letters to the libraries has been launched. The letters will show how much the people of Liverpool - and beyond - care. Schools, colleges, teachers, families, businesses, individuals...we can all write letters to Mayor Anderson to ask him to change his mind.'

We have support for our campaign from over 500 authors, poets, actors, musicians, academics & creatives of all kinds including Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman and many other big names. Could YOU support us too by writing a 'Love Letter to Liverpool's Libraries'? Send your letter to Mayor Anderson at the Town Hall, High Street, Liverpool L2 3SW or email to: http://liverpool.gov.co.uk/contact-us/contact-the-mayor/

or 

http://cathycassidydreamcatcher/blogspot.co.uk/2014/10cathy-my-love-letter-to-liverpool.html '

Here is my letter:

Dear Mayor Anderson

Do you have children? Have you spent time reading to them? Last night I sat with my three year old grandson on my lap and read stories, one after the other. I lost count how many we got through. He lived every single one of them. He loves stories. He is lucky we are able to give him books but he also loves nothing better than a visit to the library as do his brothers and sister. 

In a recent article it was stated that 4 million children have no access to books in their homes. Can you imagine that? No chance to escape into different worlds. To explore and imagine. Those children may not own a book but they would have access to them if they can go to a library close by. If you close any libraries you are taking away those chances. You are taking away the opportunity for a child to let their imagination develop. 

I write young adult fiction. Young adult fiction allows teenagers to ask questions of the text and of the world they live in. It can help them to work out who they are and just as importantly who they are not. It is all about the vicarious experience as they think how they would react in any given situation. Once again by closing these libraries you are taking away opportunities for some teenagers to have access to books. To give them chances to read about others like them or maybe not like them but to help them understand how the world works. Why would you do that?

Liverpool has such a name for culture and for nurturing that culture. Being supportive of the underdog and believing that anyone can do anything. Libraries are the linchpin of all these beliefs. Why close them? Why take away these opportunities? These dreams? 

Please reconsider. 

We love libraries. 

We love Liverpool libraries. 

Regards

Dr Vanessa Harbour

Senior Lecturer - University of Winchester

Mentor - Golden Egg Academy

Writer - YAF

Seems only appropriate to use one of Liverpool's own as my musical message. We are all going to stand together

Stories are never ending

One of the happiest days of my life!

It is a year ago since this photo was taken. Again it has been an amazing year. I have two jobs now that I didn't expect to have then. I am involved in a fantastic project which I also knew nothing about then - there will be more information about this in the next few weeks. I had my first independent article published. I have had a chapter in a book on teaching creative writing published. Plus I have given papers and I worked on collaborative paper/chapter with a great friend and colleague from the other side of the world - Skype is a wonderful thing. I have a book proposal in and I have been asked to write a chapter for a book with a colleague. On the creative side my novel is being read  by an editor - what more could anyone want. All potentially mind blowing experiences, particularly if they all come about. At the time of my graduation I wasn't sure anything could beat that feeling but life is pretty good, if exhausting these days.

Yesterday I bought the little man in the picture his first shoes. He seems to be growing up so quickly.  His idea of bliss is to sit and take every one of his books off the bookshelf so they all surround him. He then spends hours 'reading' each and every one of them. (there are a lot and those are just the ones downstairs). Some are old traditional ones, others are brand new and innovative, all are respected and loved by him. One of his all time favourites at the moment is Old MacDonald Had a Farm. My daughter and I would love to know why because the actual illustrations are not the best I've seen. It intrigues us. Perhaps it is in part because he loves the actions we all do when we read it to him. The most important point is he loves books - what more could a grandmother ask for.

I believe I have said this before, but as children's writers we are lucky, there is a perceived ever growing market for us. At the moment people still love giving books to children. They love the tangible feel of a book. I am also aware as I watch my grandson work my phone and my daughter's tablet that the current generation will probably get as much out of ebooks as they do 'traditional' books. Is this really a problem as long as they are reading and we (children's writers) are writing these stories? Does it matter what media it comes in? Not really I suppose but I confess I do love a good book to hold in my hand - showing my age I imagine. I will just keep writing my stories and not worry about what format they will be produced in. Having said that I do sometimes look at my stories and think, would this make a film? Does anyone else do that?

I was reading a bit of Al Alvarez's The Writer's Voice and this one phrase struck home: '...prose is never quite finished.' (London: Bloomsbury, 2006 p.44) How true is that? For me it goes along with the idea, which I know I have mentioned before, of Blanchot who suggest that the writer leaves questions on the page for the reader to pick up.  Thinking of both these ideas seemed to highlight that a story is never ours alone, it belongs to everyone. Every reader will interpret it differently, influenced by their own cultural space and experience. In the same way, and we tried this in class the other day, if we gave every one the same sentence to start with or sat them in the same place and asked them to write about it, every story would be different. (And it was, some brilliant pieces came out of the exercise) That is what is glorious about creativity. We all have different stories to tell even if we start in the same place.

A TED talk worth listening too is by Chimamanda Adichie and the danger of the single story.

Cathy Cassidy put this up the other day and I feel it is quite appropriate. It is Elvis Costello's 'Everyday I write the book'