#NCBD2015, in photos

Pardon the week-long lull, it’s been a busy week! The National Children’s Book Day festivities just wrapped up — #NCBD2015 was a blast!

I’m still in recovery mode (haha and yeah, I’m planning more shenanigans next week), so here’s how I celebrated NCBD, in photos.

Tuesday was the Philippine Children’s Book Summit, and I woke up bright and early (haha, I am rarely awake so early, but Centris is faaar) to joing Dr. Kat Gutierrez and Xi Zuq for our panel on “Why Adults Should Read Children’s Books”:

It was a fun topic for us panelists, and we had a good turnout — there were no more seats inside our function room, and it seemed the audience had a good time.

Stayed the rest of the afternoon to catch some talks I was interested in.

In “Dangerous Poetry for Young Readers,” award-winning poet Mariko Nagai, author of “Dust of Eden” explored the genre of novel in verse, honoring the past through literature, and dealing with sensitive issues in children’s literature.

“New Ways of Bringing Books for Readers” was a session that showcased two successful initiatives that work: Museo Pambata’s Mobile Library, and the Library Renewal Program. I’m definitely suggesting these programs for our book club to volunteer at in the coming months.

I also enjoyed children’s book illustrator Wen Dee Tan’s book on wordless picture books, which are a special interest of mine. While the examples she gives are books I am well-acquainted with, I like the ideas she proposed about visual literacy, and how she explored the potential of a purely visual format. There was also an interesting discussion on the practical uses of visual literacy, which I agree is more relevant now, when kids are bombarded with so many visuals.

Last Saturday, I was over at the NCBD Fair at the Rizal Library with my book club, Flips Flipping Pages, where we set up a booth and also conducted a storytelling session and book discussion.

I spent the previous night with fellow Flippers Gege and Shani in preparation for the fair — we had to prepare materials for our booth, Shani and Gege were throwing ideas on the part of the book discussion which introduces our book club, and I was determined to create a costume for the fair. We didn’t get much sleep (maybe two hours?), but we were fairly successful on all fronts.

I came as Kuting Magiting, one of my favorite Filipino kidlit characters:

 We barely made it in time for ingress (phew!).

Thanks to the Flippers who did the preliminary setup, all that was left to do was put up the backdrop:

Lay out our merch:

And we were pretty much good to go:

We had a book-cover design activity at our booth, which ensured we had a steady stream of visitors:

I was the designated booth minder so I didn’t get to go to the “Naku, Nakuu, Nakuuu” discussion, but from what they told me, the kids from Escopa had a blast. And it looks like it, based on the photos!

Shani talked about FFP:

Joko took care of the storytelling, and moderated the discussion.
Author Nanoy Rafael and illustrator Sergio Bumatay also joined the discussion:

And huhu, I wish I was in this photo:
Meanwhile, upstairs at the fair, we had a visit from Heneral Basa:

PBBY chair Tarie kept us company on her shift at the raffle box:

Franny of Tahanan wandered over:

And I did a (teensy) bit of wandering on my own:

(fangirl much?)

(who can resist this photobooth?)

Later that afternoon, we awarded the winners of our book cover design contest — we had so many entries it was difficult to choose a winner!

It’s great how two bookish things I am passionate about — book clubs and kidlit — converged in one event. It was an awesome, awesome day!

On to #NCBD2016! :)