become your own superhero

become your own superhero - keri smith

 

I have just returned from the UKLA conference in Liverpool, to receive the award for my research on superheroes and children’s culture. The conference was a great experience. And I am not saying that because I won the award, which of course, is fantastic, but because I have been really amazed by the friendly, lively, open and generous atmosphere at this conference, which came as a real surprise. I never ever thought I would experience anything like that in the world of academia. As I said in my “acceptance speech”, trying to articulate what all that means to me, actually, I have never won an award in my whole life, except once, many decades ago, when I was about six years old, in first grade, and the awarding body was an organization, which could may be described a sister organization to UKLA, supporting reading and literacy in Austria, although much smaller in scale. I won a big pile of early reading books, which was great, and I became passionate, if not obsessive reader. I had read all the books in the school library and in the local church library, by the time I finished primary school. So you have to be careful, who you give awards to, you never know what this will do to them!

The image above was taken from illustrator Keri Smith, who writes a wonderfully inspiring blog, including creative ideas, which may be picked up in a classroom such as this project: exercise #75 found photos

Tags: children's culture, children's drawing, superheroes