Free Storylines fun for the family

This is Robin Houlker's busiest week of the year.

Once upon a time, 20,000 people thronged to the Aotea Centre for a story-telling party. "Actually," says Robin Houlker of the Storylines festival, "we're expecting well over 50,000 nationally. Right now I'm probably the busiest woman in New Zealand."

Since its beginnings 12 years ago as an Auckland-only event, Storylines has grown nonstop. It's now a moveable feast, with writing workshops for children and adults, writers and performers visiting schools and early childcare centres throughout the country, and family days in Auckland, Wellington, and New Plymouth. The sheer scale of the event is mind-boggling, and the reason it doesn't fall apart under its own weight, says Houlker, is that so many people up and down New Zealand donate their time to make it work.

"I'm paid part-time as festival director, and that's our only paid position. We are reliant on hundreds of wonderful volunteers around the country, and the support of trusts, publishers and companies to get it going and keep it going."

That grass roots support is also what lets Storylines achieve its central mission: connecting books with children's lives. "It's not just what writers and illustrators can do, it's also about what the community can do to make a book real for children. For example, Rowandale Primary school's Kapa Haka group are coming in to the Aotea Centre to perform as part of the Joy Cowley Award book launch. That's about 50 children and caregivers, so we are bussing them in from Manurewa, and to make that work I went to Newmarket Rotary and asked for money for the bus, and they very generously agreed."

The Aotea Centre will be a busy place. A lot of the books being featured this year are about animals, so there will be a farmyard. A special non-fiction area will have an outdoorsy feel, with lots of plants, and a puppet-maker, with puppets of keas and other New Zealand birds and animals.

"The little yellow digger will be there," says Houlker, "and we'll have a clubhouse — I think we knew Kate De Goldi and Jacqui Colley's Clubs was going to be big this year, because months ago we came up with the idea of having a clubhouse where kids can come and make things. Kate De Goldi will be there, so she can talk to kids and encourage them and talk about her book in an informal way ..."

There will be an area devoted to Hans Christian Anderson, with celebrities on hand to read some of the famous fairy tales.

"I think it's really good for kids to hear their heroes, perhaps people they are not expecting to see, reading and performing. We did that with our Harry Potter read-aloud a few years ago, and it was a big success."

The Hans Christian Anderson area will also be the site for a new children's performance work from one of New Zealand's few professional story-tellers, Tanya Batt.

"Most people in New Zealand associate story-telling with story-reading," says Batt, "but in the bigger picture that's quite a recent development ... I do write, but even when I am performing stories from my own books, I never work from the book. For me it gets in the way of sharing the experience with the audience."

Batt sees story-telling as essentially a collaborative enterprise. "I call it the magic three-legged stool. There's the storyteller, the story, and the people who are receiving it. Unless those three legs are supporting each other nobody has a place to sit. Without that, you can't enter the state of wonder which is so central to the experience of stories. That is why I always concentrate on forming a relationship at the start of a session, especially with younger children."

Having so much going on in one place does have its potential downside. Janet Hunt, whose A Bird in the Hand was the overall winner of last year's New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards, comments: "Last year I set out to talk to kids and read little bits of stories. But it was quite noisy — there were a lot of things going on, and the kids are quite distracted and quite hyped. I probably won't do that again this year."

The challenge, Hunt thinks, is to find a way of connecting with children in such a full-on environment. "Last year was my first time, and I wasn't quite ready for the level of activity. This time I am going to set up some natural history activities — take blow-ups of pages from my new book, From Weta to Kauri, and give the kids some leaves, maybe some native insects, and see if they can identify them. I think they'll be more engaged doing something than just talking to me."

"Reading is a quiet event," says Margaret Mahy, who has appeared at several Storylines over the years, "but this is a celebration of reading, and celebrations do tend to be noisy ..."

She imagines children going home after the event and settling down with a book, perhaps a book of which they had only that day become aware. "Storylines is run by people who are very enthusiastic about reading, and it has got a tremendous amount of energy."

Robin Houlker agrees that lack of quiet places in the Aotea Centre has been a problem in the past. "It does get noisy. We've got lots of people doing readings, of course, some of them using microphones, which takes the level up a notch. However this year, the centre has been redeveloped, and there are now a number of different venues available within it. As well as the five open levels, we'll have five rooms of varying sizes where readings can take place, and of course every level in the open spaces will be jam-packed with all sorts of activities."

* Storylines, Aotea Centre, Auckland, Sunday, June 12, 10am-3pm, free family day.