Seven Stories visit

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday down in Newcastle at the Seven Stories archive in Gateshead and also visited the museum in Newcastle prior to leaving on Wednesday evening. Whilst at the archives I managed to look through several folders of works, notebooks and illustrations from the authors Geoffrey Trease, Leon Garfield and Judith Kerr. The experience was unique as I had never had to read books placed on cushions to help protect the spines, or look through Judith Kerr's original artwork for three of her books whilst wearing gloves. The purpose of this visit was as much if not more about my future use of the place as the research for this project alone. I wanted to see how they operated to make myself more aware of considerations I must give prior to future visits. As I have a more general research topic rather than homing in on a specific author or illustrator some of the works I had asked to see had been more like taking a chance in the hope of finding something useful. I understand now to get the best use of the facilities more specified research would be advised.

However my trip was useful, I had expected to find many things in the Leon Garfield and Judith Kerr works but the Geoffrey Trease folders proved to be the most fruitful. He discusses many topics which seem taboo at the time and more interestingly are still topics being discussed today. The notes I have taken are shown below for each author. One surprise for me was looking at Judith Kerr's illustrations, firstly how vivid they are but also how many mistakes are on them. Some are covered in tipex some have drawings stuck over the top of areas as she was obviously not happy with them. The notes taken will likely be referred back to as I progress with research an find other points of view.

I also visited the seven stories centre to get a better overall picture of what they are about. The centre is great place for children. It's a kind of playful museum with areas for children to read, to dress up as the characters and play games. Seven Stories is as it says over seven floors and a great advert for Newcastle with exhibits of real quality.