Reflecting on 'Reading the Planet' YLG Conference 2022

School librarian Laura Richards won a free place to the Reading the Planet YLG Conference 2022 in September and she tells us about making new connections, 'bookish joy' and meeting authors at this year's event - and why she also hopes to attend future events.

YLG Conference- Reading the planet: Libraries in a changing climate.
September 2022 (Sheffield)
By Laura Richards

I can't quite express the excitement I felt on discovering that I had won ReadingZone / YLG's competition to attend this year's Youth Libraries Group (YLG)) Conference. I had been desperate to attend but knew that work wouldn't fund it. It brought me extra joy to know that I would be returning to my university city of Sheffield for the event!

I'm a secondary school librarian three days a week and have been working one day a week at my daughter's primary school this term after spending a good part of the summer weeding, updating, modernising and diversifying their library. It' been a bit of passion project for me and I'm so proud of the amazing collection of books now on offer to the children at the school compared to what it was before. So I went to the conference with two libraries in mind and was eyeing up picture books, first chapter books, middle grade and YA! I certainly have a long book wishlist now.

I have attended two of these conferences in the past. The first was while I was studying for my Masters in Library and Information Management back in 2012, when a friend and I both received funding to go, and I had never been to anything like it before. It was a joint conference with the YLG, SLG and SLA and was pure book heaven. I remember meeting an actual real life Primary School Librarian and thinking wow, this job does exist somewhere! (The dream!). I also went to a YLG conference when heavily pregnant in 2015, which was a completely different experience as I didn't have quite the same energy for networking and socialising. I loved it both times so it was great to be back.

On arriving in Sheffield, I did take the opportunity to revisit my old haunts and wandered the city, waved at the tram passengers, resisted getting chips and gravy from Devonshire Chippy "for old time's sake", and generally felt nostalgic. It was a lovely start to the weekend.

Friday evening was all about catching up with old colleagues and meeting new people. I was very relieved to have two wonderful librarian friends at the conference who took me under their wing - Jenny Jones, an enthusiastic 'librarian extraordinaire' and a former Carnegie judge, and the equally lovely Jo Denning; we teamed up for the weekend to talk to publishers about any potential author visits being planned for Bristol, which was lots of fun and has already paid off in the form of a virtual event with Dr Alex George promoting his new mental health book, A Better Day, and a virtual event with the amazing Alex T. Smith to celebrate his stunning festive book, The Grumpus. Jo and I made loads of new connections and agreed that that was what it was all about (even if it did mean we were a little late occasionally as we got caught up chatting!).

Friday night dinner was lush and listening to Michael Morpurgo, a naturally gifted storyteller, recounting old memories about War Horse (in celebration of 40 years since it was published) was the most perfect end to the evening. There was a particularly magical moment after Michael's talk when Dapo Adeola, illustrator of Look Up! and curator of Joyful Joyful: Stories Celebrating Black Voices, shared that he had actually spent a week at Michael and his wife's Devon farm as a ten year old, through their Farms for City Children initiative which allows inner city kids to stay on a farm for a week and connect with nature. It was quite special to see the two share an unexpected memory.

Without a doubt, my favourite part of the whole weekend was having the chance to make those connections with publishers, librarians, authors and illustrators - everyone there is so full of passion and knowledge about children's books and you can't help but come away buzzing with enthusiasm. It's been a long time since I was at any kind of event where you get to have these conversations, and any other school librarian will know that it can be a lonely job at times. I've always said that the best CPLD I can do is attend meetings with other librarians to share ideas and find out what everyone else is doing. YLG conference offers that extra connection to publishers and I really enjoyed meeting so many friendly people who were more than happy to chat about books and let us dreamily flick through beautiful picture books for as long as we liked.

The programme of events put together by the YLG was also brilliant! What a line-up of bookish joy. Saturday morning's breakfast sessions were hard to choose between but I was so glad that I went along to hear debut authors Fiona Longmuir and Emily Kenny talk about their fascinating characters and plots; it made the book wishlist that bit longer! Next up was a really interesting and passionate panel talk about environmental activism in picture books with Lydia Monk, Carly Hart, Naomi & James Jones, Dapo Adeola and Nathan Bryon. This was one of the events that I enjoyed the most and the theme of the conference ('Reading the Planet') was really at the heart of it. I was lucky enough to take home a copy of Lydia Monk's new picture book, Adoette, inspired by the recent campaign to stop hundreds of trees being cut down on the streets of Sheffield. Lydia said that she wrote the book for herself and didn't for a minute think that it would get published. It's a story filled with sadness and hope, which will prompt great discussions.

There are so many parts of the conference that were inspirational, including hearing our new Children's Laureate, Joseph Coelho read his poetry; the 'Young adults save the world' panel talk; 'The reading debate: empowering young people through stories' panel talk with one of the most vocal supporters of children's books, S.F. Said; Anthony McGowan reading from Dogs of the Deadlands; Derek Landy filling the room with laughter via a pre-recorded video to celebrate 15 years of Skulduggery Pleasant; and the authors involved in the 'Middle grade environmental activists' panel talk. But I think that Nicola Davies' Robert Westall Memorial Lecture exhilarated me the most with moving and hard-hitting words about global warming and how children's authors shouldn't be scared to make their readers feel angry and want to invoke change. Her words clearly impacted everyone listening as she called upon us to consider "How good an ancestor can I be?" Nicola didn't shy away from the facts of what needs to be done about climate change and she very convincingly told us that we shouldn't hide the truth from our children either: "My job as a non fiction author is not to sanitise the world for the sake of the squeamish; my job as a children's author is to help readers to understand the world and to open conversations about even the most difficult subjects." If you're interested, I really recommend you read Nicola's speech here.

I was keen to fit in as much as was humanly possible over the three days and wished I could attend all the optional extras. One of my chosen breakout sessions was book craft with Elizabeth Ryder. We made gorgeous 'book burst' decorations out of old book pages to take away with us. The organisers certainly filled every moment of the weekend; even the refreshment breaks were events! Speaking of which, there were some almost-too-good-to-eat cakes to celebrate Fireborn by Aisling Fowler (I did eat one though and it was delicious!) I also had the pleasure of chatting to Aisling about her book and she was just the nicest person. I'm hopeful for a school visit from Aisling one day too!

Since the conference I have looked again at joining CILIP in order to be part of the YLG. I don't think it's the right time for me to do this as I'm part time with very young children and can't justify the membership cost but it's certainly in my plans to join my local YLG committee in the future. I was inspired by the YLG members I met and it was particularly great to talk to librarians from all walks of youth libraries, not just schools.
The weekend was everything I had hoped it would be and I'm so grateful to ReadingZone and YLG for the ticket, to my workplace for agreeing to pay for my train ticket, and to the lovely people at YLG who put on such a fabulous event.

It wouldn't have been so enjoyable if it weren't for all the friendly, enthusiastic and book-loving delegates who attended alongside me and I'm extremely appreciative of the wonderful publishers who came armed with hundreds of books and goodies to share with us all. I cunningly took an empty backpack alongside my small suitcase to fit in all my goodies and was slightly overwhelmed by how many stunning books I managed to pick up for free from the generous publishing folk. Let's just say that my suitcase was very heavy on the way home!

There were some brilliant virtual events in the lead up to the conference, too, and I'm sad that I didn't really have time to make the most of that access but it's a good alternative if you can't attend in person. I also won some great publisher giveaways from that so I had some exciting book post after!

I would definitely recommend the YLG conference to anyone working in the children's book world, especially librarians who like a good freebie or two (I've got enough bookmarks for every kid in school if they want one)! I'd urge schools to budget for this if they can as the experience for a librarian - working solo most days - is invaluable. I came away with friends, ideas, knowledge, enthusiasm and books that I didn't have before!

Find out more about the Youth Libraries Group (YLG)