Caryn Schafer is an American children's book illustrator who now lives locally - and she has a new book of her own out, about Christmas, which is available in several shops around Hay.
She was talking about some of the picture books that she'd grown up with in the States - mostly, the popular authors there are unknown here, and vice versa, so it was interesting to see her selection. Her choices were also informed by her Christian faith - there was a lot about the characters in the books discovering their talents, or their creativity, and she said a lot of good things about how to encourage our own creativity - by the end of the talk I was itching to get my art supplies out again. She was emphasising how creativity should be for our own enjoyment - even if it's only a dot on a page, like one of the stories she read to us. One of the books, Math Curse, was about finding creativity in maths!
One of the books that she did share in common with British children was Voyage of the Dawn Treader, part of the Narnia series by CS Lewis - she loved the idea that Aslan could be found in this world as well as Narnia (as Jesus, of course).
She also recommended a couple of adult books: Your Inner Critic is a Big Jerk, and Big Magic: creative living beyond fear. Basically, the message is - if you're too self critical, you'll never do anything you enjoy.
The next Enchanted Hour is on Friday 10th January, and the subject is obscure local archaeology. It's called A Tomb With A View, and I'm going to be the speaker. And because there were some problems with modern technology at the start of Caryn's talk, I'm going to try to make my talk technology-proof!
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