Last week I was fortunate to attend the 2-day  Reading Matters conference in Melbourne.  I learnt a lot.

This is a most wonderful annual event hosted by the State Library of Victoria, and brings keen librarians, teachers and teacherlibrarians in contact with authors (lots of them!) and the topics they write about. Names like Markus Zuzak, Cassandra Clare,  Melina Marchetta, Rebecca Stead, Jane, Burke, Kirsty Eage, Denis Wright, Lili Wilkinson, Lucy Christopher, Richard Newsome and more were a standout!

The book drama and the hosted discussion panel format was just sensational! as was the opportunity to just mingle with some of the world’s best writers and to have copies of their books signed.  So many authors in just one place and so many ideas really spun my head around.

@SLVLearn  from the  State Library of Victoria school program unit provided a wonderful collection of key points throughout the conference, and the discussion was interesting in the backchannel at #RM11.   I am not sure why this conference is not better promoted amongst the teacher librian networks in Australia. This is one of the great annual opportunities to hear the ‘inside’ story about the story and the passion of writing – from an adult perspective.

While you are thinking literature, check back to Inside a Dog from the State Library of Victoria. Their outstanding website has had a makeover – it’s better than ever! Not only can you engage your students with writing book reviews, but your class can also have a wonderful Book Club, regardless of where your school is actually located!

One of the passions I used to have was to collect signed copies of books of my favourite authors. But since I have adopted my Kindle for reading fiction, I have come to realise that I do not want to buy lots of paper versions of books anymore – but I would still have loved to collect some signatures.

I tweeted this thought:

cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by heyjudegallery

And a kind twitter follower pointed to the following possiblities.  Now that WOULD be a great addition to future literature conferences 🙂  I wonder which one I might see this at in the future?

Related articles

• Book on the bright side (theage.com.au)
• Once upon a time loving books was easy – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (abc.net.au)