A SCBWI Booktalk...

Photos by Beaulah Taguiwalo. License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/

A SCBWI Booktalk....

...... is a gathering of friends. Really. As informal as it can possibly be, with Beaulah Taguiwalo at its head, it simply is a meeting of adults who, in one way or the other, enjoy children's books. Creating them, reading them, sharing them with their children and with other adults.

February 13 was distinguished in many ways First, we had a speaker. Although we have had speakers before, Lara definitely had a unique point of view. She quietly espoused writing for the sake of writing and not simply for publication. English and Tagalog purists would have been horrified to hear her say that Taglish was okay. For her, jazzing up the laguage is fine, playing with words ok, a reflection of what goes on in the streets, in each person's reality.

For the first time we had 33 people arrive. We had a journalist, a couple of mothers, advocates for the cause of children's literature, publishers, writers, illustrators, jologs kids and verging-on-the-matronly women (that would be me). Each with a common love of books, each with his or her own agenda.

And yes, it must be stated - there were five men who joined us that evening! For a gathering which is more often than not a sorority, this was cause for celebration.

We literally took over Figaro in Greenbelt. While the voice of their coffee maker could not be stilled, the staff of the cafe cooperated with us by assigning 16 tables and 40 chairs for our use and by closing off one door. Coffee and tea were served with efficiency and given the limited space, we were all quite comfortable.

As always, we started with a sharing of children's books. 32 of the 33 had a book to share. Beaulah had Camilo Osias' Philippine reader (required reading for me when I was in the 1st grade, decades ago). One young man brought a French comic book (because he himself was French), another lady brought a book she herself had written, a mother brought her child's favorite good nght story. As we spoke about our books, we also spoke about ourselves. The choice of book revealed so much more about the individual than a conventional introduction would have. Thus we learned that in our group were two ladies who were in organizations that gave away books to needy children, that one young woman was tired or writing corporate reports and wanted to get more creative, that a mother, as she invented stories to put her children to sleep wanted to put those stories into published form. It was amazing how much was shared in the two minutes each one was allotted.

Then came Lara's talk.

Lara spoke from experience. This was not an academic lecture with "to write a book, start with this then follow it up with that." Lara chose to tell us about her experiences as a student, as a poet, as a lover of words. To illustrate her point and demonstrate her choices, she shared a series of poems from, for me anyway, little known poets. At one point, she read one of her poems out loud. Now that was fun.

I must admit, that while I tried, I truly tried to take notes, I was too caught up in the discussion to take anything resembling an organized annotation of the proceedings (plus for the first half of the talk, it was my job to register people). Instead, I noted my impressions, and have placed them here for the curious to read.

After the talk, we lingered for a bit. Kathy my friend and my recruit said, "My Queen, I shall return in March." Other lingered to have a few private words with Lara, a few had to run quickly away as with our enthusiasm, we had gone past 9 pm and other appointments had to be met. All in all a very satisfying evening.

So, for those of you out there, keep an eye out. We will start e-mailing soon about our March session.

NIKKI GARDE-TORRES
21 February 2006