The Storytelling Cave

So, yesterday was very exhausting but quite fun. The members of the Redathon team were supervising a storytelling tent, in addition to running a facepainting session. Despite being rather secluded from the rest of the building, and thus not being noticed by as many people as we would have liked, we read stories to quite a few children, in addition to turning some into dogs, pirates and butterflies. The favourite stories seemed to be Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes, and I think the members of our group enjoyed the reading as much as the children. Catherine, Harriet and Lucy were great at reading to the children, and Lucy went as far as to sing some lines from 'The Giraffe, Pelly and I'.

Our Storytelling cave underneath the Geoffrey Manton staircase

We all enjoyed Vicki's face painting skills, and all of us were looking distinctly different than we usually do.

Harriet the Tiger, Lucy the Butterfly, Vicki the Artist and Catherine the Second Butterfly

I came as a pirate.

It was good fun, but as I said, we were all very tired at the end of the day, so unfortunately were unable to attend Nexus Art Cafe's pyjama party. However, we should hear from them soon, will keep you all updated! Hope everyone who took part has enjoyed the readathon, and if you want to comment or let us know what you read, please email us on the official mail or post on the Facebook group.

Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you - Neil Gaiman

It's nearly the end of Day 1 for our Readathon, and there have been some great contributions from strangers and friends alike; I hope everyone has enjoyed reminiscing with their favourite childhood stories as much as I have so far. As was pointed out in the previous post, this event is all about celebrating and promoting the magic of reading so I thought I'd add my own reading reflections to the blog.

As I am a bit of a night owl, I will be reading some of my favourite stories tonight including Mog the Forgetful Cat by Judith Kerr and stories from Just William by Richmal Crompton - both classics. For me, they evoke some really lovely memories of my childhood and create a feeling of safety and comfort so it will be great to revisit them (especially Mog as she reminds me of one very fat family cat). As I've gotten older my enjoyment of children's stories has never quite gone away and if anything has increased as my reading horizons have broadened through education, friends and family.

While selecting stories to read for the Readathon I have realised that at least a third of the books I own are probably classed as children's or young adult fiction. Which just goes to show, you don't have to be under 10 to enjoy a good story. I'm really looking forward to helping host the Readathon Tent on Saturday where we will have reading, face painting and arts and crafts, so hopefully everyone who pops down to the Geoffrey Manton Building will get as much enjoyment out of the experience as I and the other Readathon Team members hope to do!

The Beginning

So, today is the day that the Readathon starts! I'm afraid we won't be able to have continuous reading, but at the moment it is looking pretty good - we've got Storybook Dads involved, Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester is hosting a late night pyjamas reading, there's schools involved from all over the UK, we got a library in Norway which are participating by allowing us to count their reading sessions, we've got bedtime stories for children, and private readings by adults who know how important reading aloud really is. I still remember being read to by my grandma, all these fantastic Norwegian fairy tales which probably sparked my interest in reading, and maybe my continued love for fairy tales and all that is fantastical.

Anyways, the Readathon officially kicks off when Michael Rosen starts the Manchester Children's Bookfestival by having a meet the author session at 10am here in Manchester, at the Geoffry Manton Building at Manchester Metropolitan University. It will be good fun for those lucky enough to attend, but why not read some of his stuff to yourself or your kids? Reading is an amazing thing, and hopefully these 4 days of reading will show how many people agree with this.

"Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child." - Anonymous

Welcome to the International Readathon blog! Here we will post feedback from participants in the Readathon, musings about books and reading, and basically just keep you all up to date on what is happening with the project.

First a little bit about the Readathon itself. It is arranged as an event in connection with the first ever Manchester Children's Book Festival, which is being organised by Carol Ann Duffy and Manchester Metropolitan University. We who volunteered to arrange the Readathon are MA Library and Information Management students at MMU, who became interested and engaged in this through a module called Literature and Its Readers, focusing on the effects and benefits of reading as an activity.

We are six students working on it at the moment, Catherine, Charlotte, Harriet, Vicki, Lucy and Ulrikke. During the Readathon we will be doing private readings to ourselves or friends, and we will also be running a story telling tent in a building at MMU which is being opened to parents and children on Saturday, with a host of activites for all.

But wherever you are in the world, please join in, do something fun, and let us know about it so we can talk about it to other people!