Keene's Children's Literature Festival Part I

This evening as I was driving home, leaves blowing across the road as if snowbanks, I was thinking about the Keene Children's Literature Conference I will be going to in a weeks time. Sometimes I find my passion for children's literature is similar to that of a secret society. I love books. I love talking about them. I love looking at them. I could talk for hours about authors, illustrators, the industry you name it. Equally I like drawing illustrations, I like visually depicting tales and pondering over the best way to do so and I also like writing, spinning fictitious tales out of words floating above my head. However, to the majority of the world, this is not a passion. Matter of fact, this world might as well be a secret society for all their knowledge about it. This can be a lonely "club" sometimes as a result. Sometimes I even forget there are more members than just myself.

I had a set of friends that I met at a writing conference years ago, move into town. On our first night out reacquainting ourselves, I was literally bursting with happiness over having spent the whole evening talking about and sharing children's literature. We talked books, we talked our books, we talked ideas, we talked common people, new and exciting news, you name it. I was in heaven. Oh how I had missed this.

It has been awhile since I reconnected with those folks again, although I have been thinking about a consultation on a ms that is just frustrating me to no end. However, the point of all this is to say, I am looking forward to this conference in the same way I look forward to meeting with my friends. Because at the conference, auditoriums are filled, classrooms swarmed with hundreds of people just like me, who live and breath the world of children's literature and remind me that it is not always a secret society, and it is not something I should forget exists. It is there, it is present and I should continue sending out my postcards, continue writing, painting and continue striving to find my place in this world of children's literature.