Latitude Festival

Suffolk Libraries helping children have fun at the Latitude Festival 18-20 July 2008

This summer was the third time that Suffolk Libraries has run children's activities tents at the Latitude Festival, Henham. Over the three days, 1,847 children and adults visited our tents.

The theme of the tents this year was Treasure Island.

In the baby and toddler tent children played with a range of toys plus jumped and jiggled to our Baby bounce and Tot Rock sessions.

In our other tent there were books available for all ages of children, to read them there or take them to their own tent. All weekend there was plenty going on: weaving a parrot, making a treasure map, drawing in our pirate's log book and making some scales for our giant fish.

Children collected a stamp a day for visiting the tent and got a certificate at the end of the weekend.

Library staff consulted with users to find out what they thought of the activities in the library tents at the festival and what their and their children's favourite books were.

The favourite children's book was "The Gruffalo" by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler, closely followed by "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle and J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series. The favourite adult title was "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.

We also spoke to some of the performers to ask them what they thought about books:

Phil Jupitus said "Books rock" and his favourite book is Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens.

Tim Minchin said that every one should "Read more books" - his favourite book is Human Punk by John King

Bill Bailey told us his favourite book is Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and Ross Noble said "I like books: they're like pamphlets only bigger!"

Two women

Julie Hesmondhalgh (Hayley in Coronation Street) was a regular visitor to the tents and told us that she did work experience at her local library when she was a teenager.

For more details visit the Latitude Festival website.

Activities and events across Suffolk