Hanna Alkaf was completely different from the other speakers I have seen so far. Not only was she not talking about one story she was talking fully about her story. My favourite part of it was the resonance with her and the audience when she talked about books that were important to her and those who had read it felt included. A possible angle would be how she was talking about how most kids that had grown up in English colonies had probably read most of those books like Enid Blyton’s. I would be curious to find out how they were received in different countries in terms of popularity. Another idea that I like is she said something regarding Enid Blyton along the lines of “if you reread some of those books now you realise she put some quite problematic things in there,” and as someone who grew up reading those books I would maybe want to have a look into that and see how they are problematic and if there was any way I could link those things to her and see if I think those impacted her when growing up.
Overall it was interesting but I am not convinced if I would actually want to write a full article about any of the ideas I have come up with so far.
No worries, you have time to develop your own/other ideas.
Yes, she made me think about the ‘classic’ kids lit I grew up on…as a parent reading with my kids, I’ve even found Roald Dahl’s stories a little jarring every now and then (still love them though).