A professor in the School of English, Dr Amanda Piesse, has been awarded the Children’s Books Ireland’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Books.
The award, whose previous winners include children’s literature writers Siobhán Parkinson and Robert Dunbar, is presented annually to some of the biggest names in children’s books.
Speaking to The University Times about the award, Piesse said that Children’s Book Ireland “has this amazing and really really well-deserved international reputation, so to be given a prize for teaching in among all of that, I was completely flabbergasted.”
She added: “I’m really honoured to be recognised by a group that I think is so important for children’s literature”.
Publications and Communications Manager at Children’s Books Ireland, Jenny Murray, told The University Times that Piesse was chosen for the award because “she is not front and centre, but works quietly in the background achieving results”.
Nominations for the award are received by Children’s Books Ireland up until March. The winner is then chosen by a board of Children’s Books Ireland members. Piesse was nominated for the award by Parkinson. Gráinne Clear, a former student of Piesse, announced the award last night the Children’s Books Ireland conference in the Lighthouse Cinema.
“What I really like about it is that it is not necessarily a literature award”, Piesse said, “The thing that is brilliant about Children’s Books Ireland is that it is everybody who has anything to do with children’s books”.
She commented how Children’s Books Ireland conferences include people from all across the sector, from academics, book sellers, publishers, the library association, students and school teachers: “[People] are really envious of the way Children’s Books Ireland pulls those people together and came over to the conference to see how it is done.”
Piesse spoke further on how her personal mantra is “a person is a person no matter how small” from Dr. Seuss: “I think children are the most important things in the world…I think it is really important that we listen to children, and I think it is really important that children feels themselves to be listened to and treated as people from as soon as they are able to make decisions.”
She added: “To be acknowledged as somebody who has done to help that by that group of people is a tremendous honour.”
Piesse received an original illustration by current Laureate Na nÓg, PJ Lynch. The Children’s Laureate, or Laureate na nÓg, is an initiative that recognises the role and importance of literature for children in Ireland.
Piesse has a background in Renaissance literature and began teaching in Trinity in 1994. The following September, Piesse put forward a new module for children’s literature. 22 years later, there are now two teachers of children’s literature in Trinity’s School of English. Both are former PhD students of Piesse.
Piesse described how her research is half-Shakespearean and half children’s literature. Her current research involves looking at children’s voices in Shakespearean England: “We can really know what children sounded like back then by looking at the voices of children in plays, and the voices of children in things like catechisms when the child has to speak back.”
