Here’s the chalkboard, followed by some of the user-additions below:
Here's @lisaletters adding her voice to our #whatisnormal chalkboard at @yalc_uk! #YALC pic.twitter.com/y0eWNOOeGa
— David Fickling Books (@DFB_storyhouse) July 17, 2015
I spotted these tweets from over a year ago now that as far as I can tell was a self-service chalkboard that was the initiative of David Fickling Books in Oxford, UK, in anticipation of the novel The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson. The novel has incredibly rave reviews, and seems especially pressing given recent debates around bathrooms, identity, and voice for American teens:
David Piper has always been an outsider. His parents think he’s gay. The school bully thinks he’s a freak. Only his two best friends know the real truth: David wants to be a girl.
On the first day at his new school Leo Denton has one goal: to be invisible. Attracting the attention of the most beautiful girl in his class is definitely not part of that plan. When Leo stands up for David in a fight, an unlikely friendship forms. But things are about to get messy. Because at Eden Park School secrets have a funny habit of not staying secret for long , and soon everyone knows that Leo used to be a girl.
As David prepares to come out to his family and transition into life as a girl and Leo wrestles with figuring out how to deal with people who try to define him through his history, they find in each other the friendship and support they need to navigate life as transgender teens as well as the courage to decide for themselves what normal really means.
According to YALC-ers, this is #whatisnormal… #YALC @yalc_uk @lisa_letters pic.twitter.com/QNoVEiiIIV
— David Fickling Books (@DFB_storyhouse) July 17, 2015
#whatisnormal head over to the @DFB_storyhouse to have your say! We are massive fans of @lisa_letters book! #YALC pic.twitter.com/1aurCKZfcf
— Children's Book Chat (@childrenschat) July 19, 2015
Thankyou to all the YALC-ers who educated us in #whatisnormal at @yalc_uk this weekend! @lisa_letters pic.twitter.com/ezEJDsRqPF
— David Fickling Books (@DFB_storyhouse) July 20, 2015
I love seeing the self-service additions on chalkboards over time; the Q&A was capped off with this statement by author Lisa Williamson at #edbookfest this time a year ago:
"When you look up 'normal' in the dictionary it sounds so boring…" – @lisa_letters at #edbookfest #whatisnormal
— David Fickling Books (@DFB_storyhouse) August 31, 2015
Yup!
