Want to know what happened at the Brighton Children's Book Festival?

Well, this'll be my first crack at giving a report. But we took lots of photos and video which should be posted on the website at some point, so I'll be sure to post when that happens.

Where do I start? There was so much going on, and it was my dream programme. We got to hear from Kitty Taylor and David Mackintosh about how things work behind the scenes in the Charlie and Lola TV show. They showed some short clips, lots of images, and finished off with a full episode from CBeebies. Did you know that they digitally add a drop shadow effect to make the show capture some of the feeling from the books?

Nicky Singer talked about some of her book adaptations, including Feather Boy for TV, done by Peter Tabern (pronounced Tah-bern, as we all later learned) who spoke later in the day. Nicky told about meeting Peter with some trepidation, but finding he really 'got' her book and feeling it was safe in his hands. It struck me that this was high praise indeed. Her latest book, which she has only just finished writing, is being adapted by Glyndbourne as an opera (it's a version of King Arthur set in contemporary gangland) - so that will be something to look out for.

Then we broke for parallel workshops, which all seemed to be fairly full of enthusiastic people, young and old. Marcia Williams offered one on creating comics, which she is well-suited for as she has done many a comic book adaptation from a classic text. (She also did the MA at Roehampton University which is what brought me over to England, and where I now work. There was a nice little Roehampton contingent there, as it happened.) Lisa Boggis Boyce (another Roehampton-ite) offered a making pop-ups workshop, and I got to see some of the fantastic creations when I popped in for a peep.

Cassy is waking, so I'll have to come back later with more. And I'm having problem uploading images, so I'm afraid this looks rather sparse...