What's a classic?

A lovely day was that ISSCL conference, so it was, so it was. A great line up of speakers from far and near, a brand new building, some fancy cookies and a heap of food for thoughts.
Here are a few tidbits:

• is a classic a book that keeps being retold, rewritten and generally adapted in many shapes and guises?
• is it a book to which different people bring different things and from which they take away different things?
• do we still read Shakespeare today because his themes are still relevant or is it his language that makes him 'immortal' (so far)?
• why did Mole uncork his beer?
• why don't we wear powdered wigs anymore?
• why does British (and Irish) children's literature view the countryside so positively and depict cities as hell or dangerous forest that one had better keep away from?
• why does American kidlit do exactly the opposite?
• what's in the Pollard collection in Trinity?
• what's the percentage of teachers in training who have read Where the Wild Things Are?
• who ate all the cookies?

[Thanks for the pic, Alice!]

Coming up | The ISSCL conference

The Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature will be holding its annual conference Saturday 26 February in Trinity College on the theme of Children’s Literature, Classics and the City. Professor Peter Hunt (if you’ve ever studied kidlit in an academic context, you’ll know who he is) will be giving the keynote address, titled 'Re-Editing the Children's Classics: Engaging Modern Children and Modern Adults'. As I have a vested interest in the matter of rewriting classics for children, I’ll be all ears.

Spoilt (rotten) for choice

The Irish Society for the Study of Children's Literature (that is, ISSCL) has announced the (most impressive) line-up for its next conference, to take place on the 5th-6th of March. The keynote speaker is Victor Watson (of Seven Stories fame among many, many other things) and the papers will be addressing "performance, drama, music, film and adaptation, visual culture, graphic novels and digital storytelling". There is so much material that the conference had to be organised in panels and you have to choose which ones you want to attend. I am torn already...