1968-2018 - Fifty years of "unlocking the word-hoard"

I have just been reading  Short! a book of very Short stories,  Kevin Crossley-Holland's incisive retelling of ghost stories, urban myths and folk tales,  and was reminded of his other tales such as The Green Children, an East Anglian legend (which began as an opera libretto in 1966 and won an Arts Council award in 1968),  Wordhoard, and his thrilling translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf.  

Poet, academic, translator and author, he has won many prestigious literature awards, particularly his books for children, with the Carnegie Children's Book prize for Storm in 1984, which was also among the top ten past Carnegie Medal winners in 2007, and his Arthurian trilogy beginning with  The Seeing Stones in 2000.   

As long ago as January 1966,  his storytelling (in Winter's Tales for Children) was praised by Anne Wood for, "his rare gift for making the distant past seem at once so immediate to bear on the story of Caedmon".  

This review was in her new brainchild,  Books for Your Children magazine,  which introduced me to Crossley-Holland's books and many others.  This originally home-produced and cyclostyled magazine sparked enthusiastic parent-led Children's Book Groups,  which joined together with Anne as Chairman for the founding of the Federation of Children's Book Groups in London in October 1968.

For this pioneering movement in bringing together parents with teachers, librarians, publishers and authors to promote children's pleasure in books and reading, Anne won the Eleanor Farjeon Award in 1969.  Like Crossley-Holland,  Anne has continued to work bringing stories to children, through charities as well as through her well-known television programmes, and has won numerous awards.

"keeping children's imagination alive through the power of story"

Anne Wood speaking to FCBG members and supporters on 6th June, 2018

© www.fcbg.com  

This year the Federation of Children's Book Groups celebrates 50 years since Anne led that founding meeting in London, with its publication "Bringing Children and Books Together 1968-2018".  As one of the Children's Book Groups' regular supporters, the story-teller, the man of the "word-hoard", Kevin Crossley-Holland declares the Federation is "one of a kind".

Kevin Crossley-Holland and illustrator Jane Ray at the Norfolk Book Centre

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