Hay On Wye Festival Part Two

In the afternoon I had booked us to see Alex T Smith who was promoting his Claude books. The blurb in the festival booklet said it's time to get excited, delighted and waggy tailed as Claude and Sir Bobblysock make their Hay debut. Berets actively encouraged!

As with any talks like this you never know what to expect but you just have to go with it and hope for the best. This was a well thought out presentation because he told the audience a little about himself and his three small dogs which he drew quickly as examples before getting the children to draw their own pictures of Claude, the main character in some of his books. This was a great way to instantly engage the children who seemed totally engrossed in their efforts. Then he chose a few children to go on stage to show their own drawings and receive some stickers and postcards.

Whilst he was good at engaging the audience, I felt the story was a bit strange. I know it is aimed at children but even so, it did appear a bit amateurish. The illustrations as well seemed a little too simplistic for me and didn't really show a professional illustrative style.

It is purely down to personal choice and it may be that there are so many childrens illustrators that you become accustomed to more full colour detailed pictures. Plus I didn't really get an attachment to the main character. Not because it was a dog but partly because the dialogue wasn't of a good enough standard and his sidekick, being a bobbly sock didn't really help. Again it is just my opinion but overall, I did enjoy the talk and we did end up with his original signed drawing of Claude, after a bit of cheeky persuasion and a couple of signed books afterwards to keep.

We only had a short break before we had to be back at the Starlight Stage again for the last booked talk of the day. Andrew Weale had written several books and his latest one was Nora, The Girl Who Ate Too Much. It sounded like it might be fun for Sophie and a bit of silliness thrown in for good measure.

Now I know that as a childrens author you have to be able to appeal to children and talk at their level but within five minutes, I was already getting irritated with his over the top comical style. I can appreciate that it was his first time at Hay but he was just trying too hard to be funny and it didn't quite work. The beginning was a story about how he lost his hair and how it escaped down the road and went off on amazing adventures which amused the children. Then he got a couple of children to go on stage to make a disgusting sandwich to see who could win. This wasn't quite thought out enough and would work better with a smaller audience who could see what was going on.

The story itself is quite funny and has some great illustrations by Ben Cort who was also there on the day promoting the book Aliens In Underpants which is also a great childrens book. Overall the talk was entertaining but we were glad when it was over in one way as it was a bit intense, we thought.

It is going to be somewhere that we would definitely visit again and we are already talking about next year and trying this time to spend a few days there instead of just one. If the weather had been better it is a great place to kick back and relax. There is plenty going on but it may cost quite a bit considering the price of some of the events. Then you also have to add on the cost of any book purchases which could easily cost you hundreds of pounds if you bought one after every talk. Another solution next time would be to split our time with Sophie so we get to see some shows that we want to see instead. It was only when we studied the diary of talks how many other talks we would have wanted to see. There was Peter Lord who is responsible for some of the fantastic creations by Aardman. He was joined throughout the week by other members of the team to help promote the new Pirates animation film.

One event I would have loved to witness was a talk by Jung Chang. She wrote a book called Wild Swans which is still one of my favourite books of all time. Her account of growing up in China under an oppressive regime is breathtakingly engrossing.

There were numerous other events that we would have liked to see but like I said, we will be looking out for next years events and booking a lot earlier this time.