Book links QLD Big Lit Quiz End of Year Event Report
Book links QLD Big Lit Quiz End of Year Event Report by Dimity Powell November 2016
Apart from some scintillating company and a mouth-watering repass of cold meats, salads, pastries, and Pavlova, the recent Book Links End of Year event proved much more challenging than your average pre-Christmas shindig.
Over 35 lovers of Kids Lit from all corners of the industry including authors, illustrators, teacher librarians and technicians and custodians of such organisations as SCBWI, CBCA QLD and the May Gibbs Trust converged at Padua College in Brisbane’s northeast for a fantastic afternoon of quizzing embarrassment. Well for some of us perhaps, for others it was a chance to brandish their literary prowess whilst raising much needed funds for IBBY, the international organisation committed to bringing books and children together.
Quiz master and president of Book Links QLD, provided some curly questions covering an assortment of literary themes including: animals, food and drink, war, first lines and Aussie orientated work to eight teams of four players each. It was interesting to note that no matter what our involvement in this industry and our accessibility to kids’ reading matter, poor retention rates resulted in some questionable scores. I blame age and excess of information (my brain is just far too small to fit in every tantalising trivial fact and literary quote) and I take my cap off to the dozens of upper primary and secondary school kids who play these quizzes for real each year.
Despite stiff competition, my team, The Series of Authors, came in a respectable fourth place!
Lucky door prizes, book donations, and raffles ensured everyone left with enough reading matter to boost their bookish knowledge in readiness for the next Big Kid’s Lit Quiz. I know I have some ground to read up.
All agreed, this was a wonderful amalgamation of many sectors of our industry and a fun way to draw people together not to mention expand their appreciation of great books for kids.
Well done Book Links for facilitating this event and Mia Macrossan for ably emceeing proceedings.
Dimity Powell
Children’s author & Book reviewer
