News from the Univ. of Hawaii, reprint with thanks

Conference celebrates children’s literature

June 15, 2012 |

Where Pictures Speak and Stories Paint is the theme for the Sixteenth Biennial Conference on Literature and Hawaiʻi’s Children

Where Pictures Speak and Stories Paint is the theme for the Sixteenth Biennial Conference on Literature and Hawaiʻi’s Children, June 21–23 at Chaminade University. The event is co-sponsored by the University of Hawaiʻ at Mānoa English department, Children’s Literature Hawaiʻi and Chaminade University. This free conference is a three-day celebration for parents, teachers, librarians, writers and illustrators and others interested in children’s literature.

The conference consists of three topics of presentations and discussions.

• Interpreting Literature emphasizes different ways of reading children’s literature.
• Using Literature provides activities to use with children at home, at school or at the library.
• Creating Literature helps you produce and publish your own work.

Special guests

Pam Muñoz Ryan
Pam Muñoz Ryan has written more than 30 books for children, including juvenile and young adult fiction, picture books, non-fiction and biography. Her novels include Esperanza Rising, based on the story of Ryan’s own grandmother’s immigration from Mexico to California in the 1930s and, most recently, The Dreamer, a fictionalized retelling of the childhood of noted Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

James Rumford
From his studio in Mānoa Valley, James Rumford writes and illustrates stories inspired by his direct experience of life in Afghanistan, Chad, Rwanda and Saudi Arabia. Rumford’s 19 picture books transport readers to worlds as wide-ranging as fifteenth-century China, ancient Greece and modern-day Baghdad. His Pacific navigation story Island Below the Star was named one of the best children’s books of 1998 by a New York Times critic.

Go to the Children’s Literature Hawaiʻi website for more information.