Guest Post: London MCM Expo Comic Con

A couple of weeks ago Caroline Fielding, one of the fab school librarians that I follow on Twitter (aka @cazapr1), tweeted that she was going to be taking a group of her students to the London MCM Comic Con at Excel. I thought this was a brilliant idea, and was slightly envious that I hadn't thought of it myself. I asked Caroline if she would like to write a few words about it for The Book Zone, and she very kindly sent me the following last night. It is certainly something I would like to sort out for some of the students at my school for next year.

On Friday 26^th October I and a colleague took 10 pupils from years 9-11 to the London MCM Expo Comic Con at the Excel Centre.  The colleague is a cover supervisor who has a passion for graphic novels and runs a graphics club at school, he sent me a link to the Comic Con site saying “the kids want to go to this, how can we organise that?” and so I set the wheels in motion.  I did the grown-up bits – getting permission, writing letters, booking the tickets – and my colleague got the kids really enthusiastic about it.  Because it was extra-curricular we all paid for our own tickets and transport but I ordered them for everyone. 

It is a large venue with a lot happening so we decided to keep the pupils in line of sight, next time we go I think we need more staff!  Most of the time we stayed together, a couple of them were beyond excited to meet one of their YouTube favourites behind one stall while others haggled over badges and other merchandise, but there were points where, totally stereotypically, the boys were in one of the many arcades playing games while I wandered around the stalls with the girls.  I was persuaded to sign up for a manga magazine for the library and bought a t-shirt for my husband but other than that, to be perfectly honest, I just loved watching some of my best pupils have a lot of fun, and really enjoyed being part of their great day.  There was a lot of pointing and staring at people in costume and getting photos of everything but the school camera is rubbish so the pictures I have to hand aren't great, will have to get them all to e-mail me the photos they took.

We'd told the pupils they had to be in school uniform and, despite one of them stretching the idea a bit far by wrecking his old blazer and coming as a zombie school boy, they all looked pretty smart...in fact they kept being asked if they were cosplay school children!  One of them said to that “no we're on a school trip with our Librarian”, pointed at me and said “she's the best Librarian in the world”.  Need I say more? :-)