Written by Caroline Roche (CILIP SLG, Chair)
I went to the YLG Conference for the first time ever in September 2025, enjoying the fact that as a newly retired school librarian I could enjoy the weekend without having been caught up with all the madness that the beginning of the year brings.
The theme of the Conference was Journeys into Reading, and I really enjoyed hearing various speakers expand on this theme. The Keynote Address was from Kate Mosse entitled Putting women back into history, one day at a time!’ This celebrated the publication of her new book ‘Feminist History for Every Day of the Year’. The book looks amazing, one page for every day with some real feminist heroes, including people like Taylor Swift that your students would have heard of. Mosse also told us of her struggles to set up the Orange Prize for Women, to counteract the solely (then) male authors on the Booker and other prizes. She exhorted us to use this book to show pupils how far ahead of their times some of the women were, and to tell them that ‘What you are saying might not be fashionable now, but may be in the future, so don’t be discouraged.’ Great advice!
There were some excellent seminars – sadly you can only attend two! – so I went to Journeys through Middle Grade with authors Patrice Lawrence, Jack Mackay, Sophie Kirtley and A.M. Dassu. All four authors were excellent in conversation, talking about upcoming books of theirs. Jack Mackay is a new author I hadn’t heard of who writes horror stories for Middle Grade students. His new book is called ‘Gloam’. This is excellent news, as we all know that our students long to read these books but there is often nothing suitable at their level. Patrice Lawrence has also written a new book for this level which she describes as ‘a mashup of the Rivers of London books (Aaronovitch) and the film Inception’– how could you resist that! It is called ‘The case of the dreaming dragon’ and is published in October.
After a great lunch networking with other librarians, it was time for the afternoon seminar. I chose Journeys into Writing with the GLL Literary Foundation. This organisation encourages and funds new writers, helping them with social media and how to work in schools, and the three authors who were speaking sounded as if they had really benefited from this advice. These authors were Sharada Keats, Marcela Ferreira and Jack Meggitt-Philips (who is also a middle grade horror story writer). He wrote ‘The Beast and the Bethany’ which he developed for his younger siblings who also loved horror stories. He inspired us by saying that the most important thing is to write books that speak to your inner child, and what you would like to have read yourself – great note for any aspiring writers out there.
After this there was an inspiring talk by Darren Chetty and Karen Sand-O’Connor, who wrote ‘Beyond the Secret Garden’ together. If you haven’t yet read this insightful book about racism and sexism, and what it means to children not to see themselves reflected in the books they read, then I would urge you to get a copy for your school library and staff CPD.
Next we celebrated novels in verse with Tia Fisher, Dean Atta and Manjeet Mann. All enthralled us with their discussion on the importance of verse, and how it gave them a different way of writing important truths. It was exciting to hear that Tia Fisher has a new book coming out soon called ‘Not going to plan’, and Manjeet Mann has a book coming out called ‘Raw’. Both books deal with difficult subjects and are sure to make an impact when they are published.
Finally, we had a celebration of the Carnegie Awards, with Margaret McDonald and Olivia Lomenech Gill.
It was a day packed with the enjoyment of reading, plenty of books to buy at the shop and to peruse on the Exhibition stalls, and best of all, networking with other library professionals, which is something that a digital conference cannot duplicate.
I would thoroughly recommend going to the Conference if you can, and don’t miss out on the amazing YLG newsletter produced by Ferelith Hordon. If you are a member of CILIP, you can sign up for this newsletter, alongside the SLG one, for free. The newsletters are crammed full of book news and publisher offers – well worth a read!
Thank you YLG for putting on such an amazing conference!