HP & CHildren's Literature Conference

[Heather Edmonds]

No: HPFGUIDX 4161

Today I had the good fortune to attend the Institute of Education's (part of
Uni of London) Children's Literature Conference. It was fantastic and I've
had  a brilliant day. The only problem was most of the speakers were so good
I forgot to take notes.

Now to the point the first speaker mentioned Harry Potter just a few times.
She credited JKR  with having dramatically raised the profile of childrens
books and attributed the rise in reviews of Children's Lit in the
broadsheets to HP. She also added that the change GoF caused in children's
reading patterns was nothing short of amazing. Competing with each other to
see who had read it in the shortest time.

She didn't name her source but apparently the amount of time children spent
reading in the two weeks after publication of GoF increased tenfold.
Apparently this is an international figure. I imagine it was collated from
UK and US data ( although she didn't say) as the Aussie and NZ release dates
were later. Although I suppose there has been enough time for them to have
included their data too. IIRC non English translations are only just making
their way onto the market.

I know we know most of this already but its nice to have it confirmed by the
educational establishment.

BTW if you can wangle it the conference was so good I'd recommend it to
anyone. Sadly if you aren't an IoE student it is 60 but they do throw in a
decent lunch. Or some I'm told being merely a PGCE student I got sandwiches
I made earlier, but then on the plus side I didn't pay to go.

NB: If anyone is really interested I'll mail them a copy of my notes when I
get them typed up. Don't hold your breath as it might take me a while.

Heather.