Loughborough '83: Children's Literature in Wales

Loughborough '83, held at the College of Librarianship, Aberystwyth, Wales from August 15 to 20, 1983, lived up to the promise of its title: Croesco i Gymru, cartref y Mabinogion, welcome to Wales, the home of the Mabinogion. Over 150 participants, mainly from the U.S.A., U.K., Canada, and Holland, but some from Ghana, Australia, Japan, the West Indies, and Nigeria, heard interesting discussions of medieval and modern Welsh literature for children, and admired the Welsh and Anglo-Welsh books for sale in a mobile bookshop operated by the Welsh Book Council. The books ranged from Welsh translations of traditional (Mother Goose) and modern (Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are) to Welsh materials retold in English, such as Susan Cooper's latest, The Silver Cow (1983). The speakers included Professor Gwyn Thomas, University College of North Wales, author of a children's version of the Mabinogion in Welsh; an English version of this book, by Professor Thomas and Keven Crossley Holland, is published by Lutterworth Press. These stories have been alluded to in or made the background of many modern Welsh and English stories for children, but this is the first version for children. Other speakers including Robin Gwyndaf, Assistant Keeper, Welsh Folk Museum at Cardiff, Alan Garner, author of The Owl Service, and Susan Cooper, know for her many novels and more recently for the script of the play Foxfire, spoke of various aspects of Welsh children's literature. A special pleasure was hearing Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis, daughter of Dylan Thomas, read both her own work and Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales, for which the original Ardizzone drawings were on display at the seminar.

Though the seminar is over, much remains to draw those interested in Welsh children's literature to Aberystwyth. Any one of three principal permanent collections of medieval or modern materials relating to this subject is well worth the trip to this seaside town in mid Wales, set on the broad Cardigan Bay and backed by beautiful mountain scenery.

The Horton Collection, at the Library School above the town, includes children's books, printed ephemera such as panoramas, peepshow, juvenile theatres, table games, and other printed curiosities. Collected over forty years by the late Ronald Horton, it consists of approximately six hundred items, dating mainly from the mid-nineteenth century. Other items have been added from the library's holdings and by purchases by the Catherine and Lady Grace James Foundation. The intent is to build the Horton Collection to the end of the Victorian period.

Since the Collection concentrates on illustration, it has already proved useful to a filmstrip on children's games and graphic arts by Laurence Scarfe (Visual Publications 1975).

The Welsh National Library, housed in a handsome neo-classic building on a hill commanding a view of the town and Cardigan Bay, offers earlier materials such as hornbooks, battledores, an early Aesop, eighteenth century Welsh translations of Newbery's publications, nineteenth century religious tracts (Protestant groups, especially Methodism, were very powerful in that period), Sunday School prize books for perfect attendance, church magazines, and copies of the nineteenth century family magazines started by Edwards and Levi. As a national book depository, the Library contains over two million volumes, including manuscripts of the Hengwrt Chaucer, a ninth century Donatus, and twelfth and thirteenth century manuscripts of important Welsh romances. It is a place for deep and prolonged study; simple browsing won't do.

To know about current Welsh and Anglo-Welsh literature, you should visit the Welsh National Centre for Children's Literature. Established in 1959 (the International Year of the Child) and funded by grants from both the Welsh Arts Council and the Welsh Office, it fosters activities related to children's literature in Welsh and in other languages of interest to Welsh children. Under the aggressive and enthusiastic direction of its organizer, Menna Lloyd Williams, the Centre has filled the light, spacious rooms of its solid two-storey, white stucco building with a fine collection of children's books, audio-visual and reference materials. The Centre owns a number of manuscripts, including all of David...