Laureate na nÓg

My inauguration speech as Irish Laureate na nÓg. I mostly spoke off the cuff so it is slightly different from the one I gave on the day. I also rearranged it slightly here.

*I dont have any videos or photos of this. If anyone has any please send them over - thanks!

The role of Laureate na nÓg means being an advocate for my fellow writers and illustrators.

But I think more importantly it means being an advocate for the children of Ireland. And children in general. We, as an industry, and we as a country, need to be doing everything we can to look after their interests. There is nothing more important.

As we look at what is happening around the world, especially in Gaza, I believe the Irish in particular given our history, have a responsibility to stand up. And those of us that speak for children have a responsibility to stand up. As Laureate na nÓg I intend to honour those responsibilities.

I believe that the right book at the right time has the power to change the course of a child’s life. The most impactful books are often not the most commercially successful. This role, as I see it, is to champion these books that are overlooked within the constraints of our industry.

What are these books? Something I have realised over the years is that the books we get to see in our bookshops in Ireland, and in the English speaking world in general, are only a very tiny, narrow slice of the childrens books being published around the world.

The centre of our industry is the Bologna Childrens Book Fair. There, you can get to see all the books being published all around the world. Many of my favourite books are not translated into English. They are from everywhere: Korea, France, Portugal, Iran, Japan, Italy, Spain, India and the Nordic countries but I have been seeing amazing gems coming from all over the world. Recently there been a surge of fantastic work from China, South America, Africa, South Asia. It is so inspiring to see all these different ways of making books and telling stories.

I have always wanted to share these books with the children of Ireland.

So that is what I would like to do in the term of my Laureateship. To create an international showcase that, like Bologna, is filled with these inspiring books and stories from around the world.

It has been so inspiring for me as a reader and writer and I think it would also inspire children not just to read these stories but to want to write and create themselves too.

But there more serious and important side to this too. As I have visited Bologna over the years I have come to learn more and more about the city.

During the second World War, Bologna was the centre of resistance in Fascist Italy.

The people there were targeted and terrorised by the police. After the war, the people set about trying to make sure the war would never happen again. In the villages around Reggio Emilia the people, mostly women, began building what they called ‘People’s Schools’. This was a community effort, the land was donated by farmers, the materials were salvaged from bombed out buildings, and the funding for the first one was raised from the selling of a tank and trucks left over from the war.

This parent cooperative movement in the region came to be known as the Reggio Emilia Approach. Their schooling method soon became world famous. The regions around Reggio Emilia and Bologna became a centre for children’s learning and books and education. It is from this tradition that Bologna Childrens Book fair emerged.

Loris Malaguzzi became the spokesperson of the movement. He wrote this poem, the one hundred languages of childhood, which I love and I think in a way sums up what I want this project to achieve. I shortened it a little here:

The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.

The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to listen and not to speak
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and Christmas.
They tell the child:
to discover the world already there

They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
are things that do not belong together.

And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.

Children dont have limits to their imagination.
It is we that narrow their creativity.

That is why I want to create this project. To showcase international books and inspire the creativity from all around the world.

I think that especially at this time, with all the wars and brutality that we have been seeing, books from other cultures that humanise and connect us to each other are so important.

Stories are more than stories. As my editor Deirdre at Walker often says “they show us how to be”. They show us hope.

When I was growing up in Dublin in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s I think there was quite an optimistic view of the future. The early internet held the promise of a more connected, more democratic world.

Today somehow the future doesn’t seem as hopeful. The positive vision of the future seems to have narrowed. I think this is what the people of Bologna were opposing when they created their schools.

I ended my last book, The History of Information, with a quote from one of my favourite authors, David Graeber: “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently” It is something that I strongly believe in. And it is something I see all the time in children and creativity and in the world of children’s books.

I want to bring that world of imagination and possibilities to Irish children. The idea that anything is possible. Because if we can see all the possibilities that are out there in the world, we will not accept the status quo.

Im very grateful for my amazing mum and dad who are here today.
Dad turned 80 two days ago. My sisters Jan and Lynn who work in education and design and who I might be roping in to these Laureate projects. My nieces May and Jojo and and nephew Cuan and all my family here. My editor Deirdre McDermott, who like me studied graphics at NCAD Dublin has been a mentor to me. My amazing agent Debbie Bibo. My wife Daishu who is also a childrens book author and illustrator and we work together on everything including this speech.

I couldn’t have any more respect for the people working in childrens books in Ireland: the teachers, librarians, book sellers, authors, illustrators, special needs teachers, the previous Laureates, the amazing folks at Childrens Books Ireland. They are some of the most inspiring people I know. And the most passionate and kind. To be given this platform to be a representative of this industry is a huge responsibility. I will do my best to do it justice