Over the summer we were fortunate enough to attend some events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival held at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. There are always good reasons to visit Edinburgh, it’s a city I have a lot of affection for, but during the summer (typically August) it is home to the Edinburgh International Festival, of which the Book Festival is a part.
I have, sadly, never been to the Festival – I adore the theatre, more on that in future posts – but the Book Festival was a delightful, fun-without-being-overwhelming corner and very family-friendly. https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/
Despite years of longing, I had never been to a book festival before. My husband was speaking so I took the children to hear Daddy, and then booked tickets to some of the children’s authors. My daughter and I enjoyed ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle with Polly Faber’, with readings from her book Recycling Day, lots of interaction and my daughter [persuaded/permitted/forced] me to wear one of a number of very fetching hats fashioned entirely from recycled materials. My son went with my husband to hear and then meet Maisie Chan, and I hope we’ll soon be reviewing her book Nate Yu’s Blast from the Past.
I was foolishly unprepared for the crowds thronging to meet Harriet Muncaster. Her Isadora Moon (half-vampire, half-fairy) and Mirabelle (Isadora’s cousin, half-witch, half fairy) books have been popular in our house, but are much less well known in the USA than in the UK. The hall was packed with an excited audience, many of them costumed in pink, black, tutus, wands, wings, bats etc, and their accompanying adults. Harriet Muncaster had them all captivated, from the draw-along sessions (big thanks to the Festival staff for getting clipboards and pencils out to so many of us!), creating pictures of Pink Rabbit and little dragons, to the miniature room we could peer into as we queued for autographs. And queue we did. Not expecting such a turnout, we’d ended up near the back, and diligently waited for over two hours before we got to meet Harriet Muncaster and get our books signed. Fortunately, my daughter made a friend in the queue, and I shared out an emergency box of chocolate fingers that I had had the wit to put in my backpack. The signed books are now some of my daughter’s most cherished possessions – along with the signed copies from the next day, when we heard Abi Elphinstone talking about conjuring up magical stories.
Abi Elphinstone’s Ember Spark and the Thunder of Dragons is now one of my daughter’s favourites, so that will definitely be reviewed soon. Suffice to say here that Abi Elphinstone was a fabulous speaker for the kids, getting them to come up with story ideas for themselves and encouraging them to read, imagine and write. I couldn’t dream of a better event to take my then 7 year old to.
I will be on the lookout for more festivals with children’s authors, especially if they’re as well-organised and friendly as Edinburgh. Food trucks, places to sit and relax, a big pop-up book shop stocking all the authors appearing and many more. And of course a community of book lovers, both large and small. Thank you, Edinburgh! Thank you, Festival! Thank you, authors!
P.S. What I’m reading at the moment. My reading-for-pleasure is very eclectic. After reading almost exclusively fiction as an adult, I’m enjoying some non-fiction too now. I’m currently reading one my sister lent me, The Wolf Age: the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons and the Battle for the North Sea Empire by Tore Skeie, translated from the Norwegian by Alison McCullough (Pushkin Press, 2021). Skeie notes that all people live ‘at the centre of their own world view’ and I’m enjoying the perspective stretching from Canada to Kiev to Constantinople with Scandinavia at its centre. Other gems I’ve recently had from my sister are Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History by William T. Taylor (Univ of California Press, 2024) and especially Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon (Knopf, 2023) which I have bought/lent/recommended to many of the women I know. (Come to think of it, I might have given those two to my sister as presents and then borrowed them back when she’d read them!)
Books for Our Children 