Litopia After Dark this week has not one but two very special guests.  We welcome back novelist, journalist, actress and broadcaster, Amanda Lees, author of the Kumari Goddess of Gotham teen novels. Also we are delighted to welcome Alan Gibbons, author of numerous award winning children’s titles including the Blue Peter Award winning, Shadow of the Minotaur and the Carnegie Shotlisted, The Edge.  Alan has launched a campaign against library closures in the UK, recruiting to his cause so far, Philip Pullman, David Almond, Michael Rosen and Beverley Naidoo, among others.  We discuss Alan’s Campaign for the Book in depth as well as playing Pitch the Nasty Agent and advising our listener, S.P. what she should do about her shady past.

This weeks panelists joining Amanda and Alan are Donna Ballman and Dave Bartram.  And the Ustream chatroom (8pm GMT) was very quiet this week, we were so engrossed with the discussion.  Come and join us next week to liven up the chat.

Links mentioned in the show…

Jonah Lehrer in the Boston Globe…

ON A SUNDAY morning in 1974, Arthur Fry sat in the front pews of a Presbyterian church in north St. Paul, Minn. An engineer at 3M, Fry was also a singer in the church choir. He had gotten into the habit of inserting little scraps of paper into his choir book, so that he could quickly find the right hymns during the service. The problem, however, was that the papers would often fall out, causing Fry to lose his place.

But then, while listening to the Sunday sermon, Fry started to daydream. Instead of focusing on the pastor’s words, he began to mull over his bookmark problem. “It was during the sermon,” Fry remembers, “that I first thought, ‘What I really need is a little bookmark that will stick to the paper but will not tear the paper when I remove it.’ ” That errant thought – the byproduct of a wandering mind – would later become the yellow Post-it note, one of the most successful office products of all time.

Although there are many anecdotal stories of breakthroughs resulting from daydreams – Einstein, for instance, was notorious for his wandering mind – daydreaming itself is usually cast in a negative light. Children in school are encouraged to stop daydreaming and “focus,” and wandering minds are often cited as a leading cause of traffic accidents. In a culture obsessed with efficiency, daydreaming is derided as a lazy habit or a lack of discipline, the kind of thinking we rely on when we don’t really want to think. It’s a sign of procrastination, not productivity, something to be put away with your flip-flops and hammock as summer draws to a close.

From Alan Gibbons’ Blog…

Children’s writer Alan Gibbons is launching an authors’ campaign against library cuts and closures, with 300 writers and professionals pledging their support. Central to the campaign is a planned regional network of children’s authors, teachers and librarians to raise the public profile of local cutbacks and closures.

“There is a grinding, unremitting marginalisation of the book and deep ongoing cuts in library services,” said Gibbons. Some 60 public libraries were closed last year and the number of professional library staff has fallen by 13% between 1995 and 2005, he said. “Lots of people are arguing against this but our response needs to be broader and more active.”

Gibbons introduced a charter, Campaign for the Book, at a CWIG (Children’s Writers’ & Illustrators’ Group of the Society of Authors) conference held last weekend, and it has received 300 signatures so far, including David Almond, Philip Pullman, Michael Rosen and Beverley Naidoo.

Signatories to the charter pledge to campaign for the central place in society of reading for pleasure, the defence of public libraries and librarians from attempts to cut spending, and a recognition of school libraries as key engines of learning. Gibbons plans to bring together organisations already campaigning against cuts and closures, including CILIP and the School Library Association, and to co-ordinate their activities with authors.

He will also work to get celebrities involved in the campaign and will lobby at government level.

“We want to sit down with the government, talk this through and present alternatives,” said Gibbons. “Librarians don’t have the punch of oil [tanker] drivers but there is an embarrassment factor,” he said. “We can shame local councils by arguing publicly for our future and our children’s future.”

Gibbons plans to create a central database of proposed cuts in library services over the next year. A network of authors and professionals in every region will respond to these proposals by mobilising public meetings to protest against cuts and lobby local government.

The author launched the campaign after becoming active in Doncaster’s Save Our Libraries campaign. “I kept receiving emails about cuts in services and libraries elsewhere,” he said. He was told about one school librarian given two weeks’ notice that her school library was to close, and another who saw her salary cut by £7,000. “There are so many cases but so far there has been no overall co-ordination between all the people who care about reading for pleasure,” said Gibbons.

Gibbons’ Libraries Charter

We, the signatories of this charter commit ourselves to campaigning for the following:

1. The central place of reading for pleasure in society

2. A proper balance of book provision and information technology in public and
school libraries

3. The defence of public libraries and librarians from attempts to cut spending in a
“soft” area

4. An extension of the role of the school librarian and a recognition of the school
library as a key engine of learning

5. The recruitment of more school librarians. It is a national scandal that less than a third of secondary schools has a trained librarian

6. The defence of the professional status of the public and school librarian. Opposition to downgrading. In some places this has reduced librarians’ salaries by up to half

7. The promotion of reading whole books in school, rather than excerpts

8. A higher profile for reading for pleasure in schools, including shadowing book awards, inviting authors and illustrators to visit, and developing school creative writing magazines

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