Childrens Literature New England


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In addition to occasional free public lectures, the primary work of CLNE has been conducted through annual summer institutes.

Over the years, many luminaries in the world of children's books have spoken at CLNE institutes. A sampling includes Sven Birkets, Quentin Blake, Eleanor Cameron, Tom Feelings, Virginia Hamilton, Ursula K. Le Guin, Madeleine L'Engle, Penelope Lively, Margaret Mahy, Jan Mark, Patricia MacLachlan, Margaret K. McElderry, David McCord, Walter Dean Myers, Scott O'Dell, Philippa Pearce, Robert McCloskey, Maurice Sendak, William Jay Smith, Yoko Kawashima Watkins, Jane Yolen.

1987: ROBINSON CRUSOE AND HIS HEIRS: SURVIVAL AND CONQUEST IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

1988: THE HEROIC IDEAL IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS: LEGACY AND PROMISE: MIT, Cambridge, MA

1989: TRAVELERS IN TIME: PAST, PRESENT, & TO COME: Newnham College, Cambridge, England

1990: HOMECOMING: St. Michael's College, Burlington, VT

1991: ROGUES AND REBELS: SYMBOLS OF RESISTANCE: Williams College, Williamstown, MA

1992: WORLDS APART: Keble College, Oxford, England

1993: SWORDS AND PLOUGHSHARES: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

1994: IMAGE AND WORD: PATTERNS OF CREATIVITY: Mt. Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA

1995: WRITING THE WORLD: MYTH AS METAPHOR: Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

1996: ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS: THE SHAPE OF STORY: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

1997: LOOKING FOR THE VILLAGE: THE CHILD AND COMMUNITY: St. Michael's College, Burlington, VT

1998: LET THE WILD RUMPUS START: PLAY IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS, Newnham College, Cambridge, England

1999: PATHFINDERS: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

2000: THE GREEN PREHUMAN EARTH: Silver Bay Conference Center, Lake George, NY

2001: CONSIDERING BOUNDARIES: Victoria College, Toronto, Canada

2002: AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

2003: WHAT A GAMBLE FRIENDSHIP IS!: Newnham College, Cambridge, England

2004: THE WORLD IS ALL GROWN STRANGE: Williams College, Williamstown, MA

2005: THE FAIRY TALE BELONGS TO THE POOR: The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Cambridge, MA

2006: THE HEROIC IDEAL REVISITED: St. Michael's College, Colchester, VT
Click here to see photographs of the 2006 Summer Institute. Art by Sofia Zarabouka, from O Megalexandros. Used with permission.

THE HEROIC IDEAL REVISITED
JULY 30 - AUGUST 5, 2006, COLCHESTER, VERMONT

Children's Literature New England's twentieth and culminating annual summer institute was held at Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont (outside of Burlington). Participants considered Paul Hazard's question "How would heroism be kept alive in our aging earth if not by each fresh, young generation that begins anew the epic of the human race."

Participants heard from an unusually robust roster of speakers gathered to celebrate the anniversary. Speakers and presenters included Rita Auerbach, M. T. Anderson, Natalie Babbitt, Mary Brigid Barrett, Therese Bigelow, Ashley Bryan, Susan Cooper, Emma Dryden, Sarah Ellis, Nikki Giovanni, Virginia Golodetz, Barbara Harrison, Kathleen T. Horning, Kathleen Isaacs, Steven Kellogg, E. L. Konigsberg, Ginny Moore Kruse, Jane Langton, Betty Levin, Joanna Rudge Long, David Macaulay, Patricia MacLachlan, Gregory Maguire, Margaret Mahy, Katherine Paterson, Jill Paton Walsh, Meg Rosoff, Leda Schubert, Barbara Scotto, Suzanne Fisher Staples, Robin Smith, Deborah Taylor, John Rowe Townsend, Martha Walke, Yoko Kawashima Watkins, Tony Watkins, Virginia Euwer Wolff, and Tim Wynne-Jones.

SECRETS TOLD AND UNTOLD

A CLNE Colloquy
May 6-9, 2010
The Essex, Vermont’s Culinary Resort and Spa, Essex Junction, Vermont

In SECRETS TOLD AND UNTOLD, CLNE’s second biennial colloquy, readers will come together to whisper, confer, propose, argue, or deny what secrets may lie at the heart of the mysterious acts of reading and writing books for the young. A reader encountering a book confronts secrets and mysteries both of the story and of the self, and calls upon many systems of response: of the heart, mind, conscience, memory, and imagination.

At SECRETS, perhaps keys, security codes, or pin numbers will be shared. Firewalls and cordons sanitaire may be breached. Time for rest, conversation, reflection, and walking will extend the investigations begun in talks and in optional discussion groups. In any case, spring with all its budding secrets will be upon us. Steal away and join us!

Speakers

Ashley Bryan loves Poetry… lives Poetry as the common denominator of life and of all the arts!	Nikki Grimes, Coretta Scott King Award winner for Bronx Masquerade, is the author of 50+ books for children and young adults including CSK Honor books, Meet Danitra Brown, The Road to Paris, and NY Times bestseller Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope.	Kathleen T. Horning is Director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of From Cover to Cover: Evaluating and Reviewing Children’s Books (HarperCollins 2010).	Joanna Rudge Long, a regular contributor to the Horn Book Magazine, is a former editor and principal reviewer of young people’s books for Kirkus Reviews. She was a frequent core lecturer at Children’s Literature New England, has served on many award committees, and is a member of her local library board in Pomfret, Vermont.
Elizabeth Partridge is the award-winning author of non-fiction books for teens. Her latest book, Marching for Freedom (Viking) focuses on the courageous children who marched alongside King in the 1965 march to Montgomery for the vote.	Peter Sis is an internationally acclaimed illustrator, author, and filmmaker. He turned to publishing in 1984 and quickly became one of the leading artists in the field. With more than twenty books to his credit and almost as many honors, Peter has been named seven times among winners of The New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Books of the Year. He lives in New York City with his wife and children.	Virginia Euwer Wolff has completed the Make Lemonade trilogy’s final third, This Full House, whose predecessor, True Believer, won the National Book Award. She served as a juror for the 2009 NSK Neustadt Award, which her candidate, Vera B. Williams, won.	Tim Wynne-Jones is the author of thirty-one books for children of all ages. He is a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner and honoree and the winner of two Governor General Awards in Canada. He teaches in the MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Program

Thursday May 6
Noon – 5 P	Registration
5:30 P – 6:30 P	Wine and cheese
6:30 P	Dinner
8 P	SECRETS TOLD AND UNTOLD: Tim Wynne-Jones
Friday May 7
8 A	Breakfast
9 A – 10 A	Morning lecture: Joanna Rudge Long and Virginia Euwer Wolff
10 A – 12 P	Optional small group meetings I (Details to follow)
12 P	Lunch
1 P – 2 P	Afternoon lecture: Elizabeth Partridge
2 P – 5:30 P	Rest, private time, optional sessions
3:15 P – 4:45 P	Optional “open mike” session for the sharing of writing that speaks to the theme. Five minute maximum per reader. (Details to follow)
5:30 P	Wine and cheese
6:30 P	Dinner
8:00 P	Evening presentation: Ashley Bryan
Post–lecture:	Conversation and song
Saturday May 8
8 A	Breakfast
9 A – 10 A	Morning lecture: K. T. Horning
10 A – 12 P	Optional small group meetings II
12 P	Lunch
1 – 2 P	Afternoon lecture: Nikki Grimes
2 P – 6:30 P	Scavenger hunt and surprise guests (optional)
6:30 P	Dinner
8 P	Evening lecture: Peter Sis
Post–lecture:	Informal storytelling (sign up in advance; details to follow)
Sunday May 9
8 A	Breakfast
9:30 A	Colloquy: Entire assembly of participants and speakers
10:30 A	Checkout and bon voyage

A CLNE Colloquy
May 8-11, 2008
The Inn at Essex, Essex Junction, Vermont

In May, 2008, Children's Literature New England, Inc., held a new venture in a new setting.

At THE OPENING PAGE, a half-week colloquy, speakers and participants convened to consider opening pages from the points of view of reader and writer. How is the author’s invitation extended, and to what destination does the invitation imply? The opening page refers to the opening lines or pages of a book, but the phrase can also refer to the opening of a chapter or the introduction of a character, or even suggest the threshold crossed when the child or adult reader enters the text.

For four days in May, CLNE considered these questions in the light of the solitary and communal welcome that the opening pages of a book can offer. Time for rest, conversation, reflection, and walking extended the investigations begun in plenary lectures and in optional small discussion groups.

Speakers

M. T. Anderson is the winner of the National Book Award for The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation; Volume One: The Pox Party. Among his other titles is the National Book Award finalist, Feed.	Susan Cooper won the Newbery Medal for The Grey King, the fourth novel in the Dark is Rising sequence. Her most recent novel is Victory.	Sarah Ellis is a Vancouver writer and recovering librarian. Her novel Odd Man Out won the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award. She teaches writing for Vermont College and her latest book is Days of Toil and Tears: The Child Labour Diary of Flora Rutherford.	Janice Harrington received the 2005 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award on the publication of Going North, and she is the author of The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar Country.
Arthur A. Levine is the founding editor of Arthur A. Levine Books, now celebrating its tenth anniversary. His authors include Kevin Crossley-Holland, Roddy Doyle, J. K. Rowling, Jonah Winter, and Lisa Yee.	Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia and more recently, Bread and Roses, Too, is the 2006 winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.	Pam Muñoz Ryan, the 2007 Author Recipient of the National Education Association’s Human and Civil Rights Award, is the author of over thirty books for young people including Esperanza Rising, When Marian Sang, and her most recent novel, Paint the Wind.	Brian O. Selznick is the author and illustrator of many books for children including The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which was named one of the New York Times Best Illustrated Books of the Year and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Program

Thursday May 8
Noon – 5 P	Registration
5:30 P – 6:30 P	Wine and cheese
6:30 P	Dinner
8 P	THE OPENING PAGE: Katherine Paterson
Friday May 9
8 A	Breakfast
9 A – 10 A	Morning lecture: M. T. Anderson
10 A - 12 P	Optional small group meetings I (Details to follow)
12 P	Lunch
1 P – 2 P	Afternoon lecture: Arthur A. Levine
2 P – 5:30 P	Rest, private time, optional sessions
3:15 P – 4:45 P	Optional “open mike” session for the sharing of writing that speaks to the theme. Five minute maximum per reader. (Details to follow)
5:30 P	Wine and cheese
6:30 P	Dinner
8:00 P	Evening lecture: Pam Muñoz Ryan
Post–lecture:	Bring-and-share wine and song
Saturday May 10
8 A	Breakfast
9 A – 10 A	Morning lecture: Susan Cooper
10 A – 12 P	Optional small group meetings II
12 P	Lunch
1 – 2 P	Afternoon lecture: Janice Harrington
2 P – 6:30 P	Walks; self-organized trips to the Shelburne Museum; other options to follow.
6:30 P	Dinner
8 P	Evening lecture: Brian O. Selznick
Post–lecture:	Informal storytelling (sign up in advance; details to follow)
Sunday May 11
8 A	Breakfast
9 A	Concluding lecture: Sarah Ellis
10 A	Colloquy: Entire assembly of participants and speakers
11 A	Checkout

Click here to see photographs of the 2006 Summer Institute.


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