Mother Tongue Other Tongue Winners Celebration

Winning Ceremony of the 2012 Mother Tongue Other Tongue Competition, Saturday 30th June, 3pm, Geoffrey Manton Building, Lecture Theatre 2.

While our MTOT workshops were being delivered across a number of schools around Greater Manchester, children from Years 7-13 had begun to jot down the roots of their prize winning poems, either in their Mother Tongue or their Other Tongue. With over 550 entries, our judges read, translated, chuckled and scraped chins off the floor as their minds were blown away from the incredible content written from these fearless young poets. 

In order to celebrate this talent and creativity, we want to invite you all; students, parents, family, friends, neighbours, acquaintances, anyone and everyone, to come join us for music, dance and poetry to help celebrate the wonderful work that the pupils have created, a lot of which will be on display.

However, stay calm. To keep you from gnawing those nails in suspense to see who won, we have listed them for you here, below. 

Mother Tongue Winners:

1st Prize (Years 7-9) Elisaveta Zaharia, Levenshulme High School

1st Prize (Years 10-13) Jan Frederick Poblete, St Bede's School, Bradford

2nd Prize (Years 7-9) Sakinah Ndiaye, Bolton Muslim Girls' School

2nd Prize (Years 10-13) Catherine Zheng, Withington Girls' School

Other Tongue Winners: 

1st Prize (Years 7-9) JJ Tonge, Cheadle Hulme High School

1st Prize (Years 10-13) Isobel Buckingham, Altrincham Grammar School for Girls

2nd Prize (Years 7-9) Emily Davenport, Holy Family RC and CE College, Heywood

2nd Prize (Years 10-13) Weronika Sobol, St Gabriel's R.C. High School, Bury

There was a large number of entries which we just couldn't overlook, and have given them a special commendation for capturing the spirit of the competition. 

• Tasneem Aiar, William Hulme's Grammar School
• Sawsan Ghawnazi, Manchester Academy
• Anina Nica, Levenshulme High School
• Bradley Simpson, Cronton Sixth Form College
• Amy Chiu, Altrincham Grammar School for Girls
• Sam Such & Rhys Smalley, Irlam & Cadished College
• Antonia Peilober-Richardson, Loreto Grammar School

The winning entries will be published on posters, which will be sent out to schools shortly. 

Congratulations to the winners and to all the children who entered.

Illustrating & Creating

Emma Reynolds Illustrates, Saturday 30th June, Geoffrey Manton Building

Grab a friend, family member, Festival volunteer or a fellow book fanatic for a fun afternoon of character creation! Come and play 'Picture Consequences' with two or more people (or just have a draw if you fancy!) and create a unique selection of original characters. 

Each person starts by drawing the head, then folds the drawing over and passes it along to the next person to draw the body, and again for the legs, and lastly the feet. The best part is unfolding it at the end and looking at the hilarious results and combinations that have been made. It's a great way to loosen you up, have some fun, and inspire you with your own characters, creativity and stories.

Emma is a freelance illustrator from Manchester, with a passion for narrative story telling, creating characters and producing original and whimsical illustrations. She will be on hand throughout the Family Fun Day running the workshop, and will also be live tweeting and blogging about the event from dawn till dusk. Emma is also going to be writing blog posts on various other events throughout the festival, including the Waterstone's Deansgate Children's Party, so keep an eye out for her posts here on the official MCBF Blog.

You can follow Emma on her personal blog at Emma Illustruation, on twitter @emmaillustrate and on Facebook. If you want more, you can visit her website too, here.

Update From The Directors

With less than two weeks to go until the 2012 Manchester Children's Book Festival begins, there's still time to take part.  

See here for details of all events.  Check the website for returns, or call Quay Tickets on 0843 208 0500 if you were previously unable to book on for your favourite author event.  There have been some returned tickets, particularly for events running during the school day.  These were previously marked as SOLD OUT on the website but, try again, you might be lucky this time.  

After our two-day conference for teachers 'Survive and Subvert' on Thursday and Friday 29th June, and the official launch event, the programme of public events starts on Saturday 30th June with our free to enter Family Fun Day.  Places are still available for this.  See here for details and to download the full schedule.

For a Family Fun Day event flyer see here .  If you're based in a school please print these off and make sure your pupils have copies - it's free and open to everyone.  There are also some ticketed author events (see here for details).  Schools can make group bookings for this by emailing mcbfschools@mmu.ac.uk.  

If you want to mark the end of the school year with a bang, or a twirl round the dance floor - it's not too late to book your places at the Festival Gala Dinner. Join Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy and Coronation Street creator, Tony Warren at the luxury Midland Hotel for an evening of excellent food and dancing.  Proceeds from this event will be ringfenced for future book festival projects in local inner-city schools.  For details of this event see here

Even if you can't make any of our events this time, though, you don't need to wait until 2014 to be involved.  Our Reading and Writing Relay will run from Mon 2nd - Friday 6th July and, wherever you are, you can join in.  See here to find out just how easy it is to take part.

You can also read all about the Festival via our News and Events link to the Festival blog pages and get regular updates via Facebook and Twitter.  See www.mcbf.org.uk for links to all of these.    

We're looking forward to seeing many of you over the next few weeks, 

All best wishes

James Draper Director (Public Events)

Kaye Tew Director (Education)

Poetry For The People

4th, 7th & 8th July, Manchester


MCBF has three poetry events set to wrap up the final few days of the festival. Although you're probably already aware of them, here's for those of you who aren't. 

Wednesday, 4th July, 6:30 - 7:45pm - Royal Northern College of Music
Ian McMillan, presenter of BBC Radio 3's 'The Verb' and Luke Carver Goss, composer/performer, meet up again to present a lively and unusual night of poems, music and improv.
Click here for booking information

Saturday, 7th July, 5 - 6:30pm - Zion Arts Centre
Michael Rosen, a popular favourite of kids and childish adults, puts on a family poetry show at a local arts centre. He's non-stop, hilarious and will probably end up telling you about his centrally heated knickers. 
Click here for booking information

Sunday, 8th July, 3pm - Royal Exchange Theatre
Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and the ever-energetic musician John Sampson get together for a musical poetry show for our official closing event. Definitely a magical, musical wonderland waiting to be entered. On top of this fantastic ending to our festival, you will have a chance to meet John and his amazing Middle Eastern and age-forgotten instruments, as well as Carol Ann signing copies of her books. Come willing and come prepared. 
Click here for booking information

Fantastilicious Family Fun Day

Saturday 30th June, 10am - 4pm, MMU Manchester Campus'

In little over a fortnight MCBF will celebrate the opening of this year's festival with a friendly, free, family, fun day. The joyful caffufle happens around MMU's Geoffrey Manton Building, All Saint's Campus and the Holden Gallery from 10am until 4pm. Six hours should give you more than enough time to visit us, flex those creative muscles, listen to stories or run around enjoying yourself (adults too!). 

Let me take a deep breath and I'll tell you what we have on. 

There will be: interactive and creative workshops of arts and crafts for kids, teens and adults, puppetry, storytelling, illustrations, exhibitions, competitions, cuddly characters and zombie invasions. There's a space for all to practice the delicate art of paint-throwing, which should give each artist a chance to make their name in the world of abstract art. Our Man Met Munchers are concocting some exciting munchies that will also be given away throughout the day. 

However you choose to spend your time, remember this. If the zombies start closing in, you can hide behind one of the cuddlies (zombie kryptonite), or hide in our multi-lingual storytelling tent, open for you to find refuge and comfort with some happy tales. 

If none of the above appeals to you (a crazy thought, I know), do not fret. From 11am we have ticketed author events that include creator of Bob the Builder, Ra Ra the Noisy Lion and Frankenstein's Cat, Curtis Jobling, children's poet, Jackie Kay, author of the Emily Windsnap series, Liz Kessler and the wild and wacky world creator, Steve Cole. 

Everybody who is anybody will be there so make sure you are too!

Read My Dust & Write My Progress

Monday 2nd July - Sunday 8th July, across the nation. 

How much more excitement can be rabbled by this year's Manchester Children's Book Festival? Easy, much more! This year, the MCBF team have put together a reading and writing relay, sponsored by kidsunlimited, allowing anyone and everyone to show their reading capacities and writing abilities in any size, shape or form.

On Monday 2nd July, a reading with Cathy Cassidy at Longsight Library will kick off the relay, dispersing our physical and virtual batons across the nation. While the physical relay will travel through schools, libraries and where ever else groups decide to gather, a virtual relay will be shown right here on the relay blog. Save it to your bookmarks and set reminders on your calenders, as this will be the place to be for the duration of that week.

We would like to invite you to be involved in this exciting race also. So if you find yourself interested, taking part is a piece of pie. You can send any texts, photos or videos to mcbf@posterous.com and see your content uploaded on our blog. Alternatively, you can click the 'start recording' button here in the right sidebar and let us hear, in a 3 min clip (or as many 3 min clips as you like), your contribution to the relay. If you let us know who you are and where you are, we'll add you to our reading and writing relay map. Don't forget, you can keep yourselves up-to-date with the virtual relay by following us on twitter @mcbf2012

Whether you’re a school arranging an in-class reading, a group of adults planning an overnight read, or a children’s writer working on a new story – get involved and share! If you want to give us the heads-up before the relay takes off, send us your details in an email and we'll keep our eyes and ears open for your coverage. 

The Wild Worlds of Steven Cole

From Astrosaurs to Z.Rex. Meet the author: story reading, Saturday 30th June, 3pm, Geoffrey Manton Building

One of the most popular and entertaining authors from the 2010 Manchester Children's Book Festival is back in 2012: Steve Cole is the slightly crazy, non-stop author of Astrosaurs, Cows In Action, Astrosaurs Academy, The Slime Squad, Z. Rex and many other books.

In a fun-filled, frantic session he will reveal the loopy origins of his many creations, give story-writing tips, show you how to dream up your own funny ideas - and make plenty of atrocious jokes. If you're not there, you're missing out. 

It’s everything you ever wanted to know about time-travelling cows, space-dinosaurs and monster superheroes but were afraid to ask!

Book online here or call the box office on 0843 208 0500

Other author talks you can read up on or listen to can be found here with Guy Bass or here with Curtis Jobling.

Animal Stew: A Delicious Collection of Short Stories for Children

MMU showcases talent with support of Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and children’s author Liz Kessler

Children and parents listen up. New anthology Animal Stew has been published as part of the Manchester Children’s Book Festival at Manchester Metropolitan University. The anthology of short stories about animals is the brainchild of Sherry Ashworth, author and senior lecturer in Creative Writing, and the collection features students’ writing and art work alongside that of recent graduates.

Poet Laureate Professor Carol Ann Duffy CBE OBE, Creative Director of the Manchester Writing School at MMU describes the anthology as “fascinating, entertaining stories from some very talented new writers.”

Liz Kessler, the renowned author of the Emily Windsnap series, adds: “As someone who has spent the last decade writing books for children, one of my favourite things is to spot emerging talent in the world of children’s books - and there is plenty of that in this collection.”

The book was co-edited by Iris Feindt of Pandril Press and Helen Sea of Books Are Loud, and was designed in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University art students.

Iris Feindt said: “It was great to see the stories evolve and grow. From homesick puppies, to book-eating worms, to philosophising goldfish, tap dancing turtles, messy pigs and much, much more, there is so much variety.”

Helen Sea added: “The students are of such high calibre that the editing and design process was really exciting.”

Sherry Ashworth says, “These students are the children’s writers of the future.”

The launch of Animal Stew will take place as part of the MCBF at Manchester Metropolitan University on Saturday 30^th June. Stroll over and see what the fuss is all about!