To satisfy the literary appetites of Shanghai’s young readers, authors participating in the 2010 Shanghai International Literary Festival (SILF) are making stops not only at the Bund, but also at school campuses across the city.

Since 2002, SILF has been attracting writers like Amy Tan, Gore Vidal and Arundhati Roy, and this year, Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin author Louis de Bernières will be added to the list of literary heavyweights.

But adults shouldn’t steal all the fun. While this year’s SILF line-up includes special children’s sessions at the Glamour Bar, about 10 schools, including Dulwich College Shanghai, Shanghai Rego International School, Shanghai Community International School and Rainbow Bridge International School, are also bringing SILF authors to their campuses – making for an informal school literary festival of sorts.

Marion van Engelen, Dulwich College Shanghai’s director of libraries, who helped co-ordinate the school sponsorship program with SILF, says that since authors are in Shanghai for the festival anyway, it’s a good opportunity for the city’s young readers to get to know them better too.

“It makes the whole world of reading and writing come to life for students. They’re often full of questions. Budding writers feel inspired and readers become even more keen,” van Engelen says. “It’s an opportunity for them to learn about literature not from their teacher, but from a New York Times best-seller.”

Speaking at SILF and with Shanghai students will be a first for Australian based author Morris Gleitzman (pictured right), who’s currently putting the finishing touches on his next novel, Now. The book, which Gleitzman plans to speak about in Shanghai, is a sequel to Once and Then, which tell a story about a Jewish boy named Felix who lived through the holocaust.

“I’ve been living with these main characters in my imagination for several years now. Writing this third book felt like returning to old friends,” Gleitzman says. “Now differs from the first two. It’s set in the current day and Felix is 80, while in Once and Then he is 10 years old.”

But Gleitzman is also known for his offbeat and humorous style, and stories about relationships between children and adults. A former television comedy screenwriter and co-author of the Wicked! series with Paul Jennings, he has published 28 books since writing his first, The Other Facts of Life, in 1987.

Gleitzman says that when he conducts book talks with children, they mostly ask about the characters he’s created, as well as some personal questions.

“After reading a book, kids often feel they’ve made a friendship with the characters and they’re interested in learning more about the characters’ lives outside of the book,” Gleitzman says.

“They also like to get to know you, as an author, too. They ask about your everyday life, where you get your ideas from, if you write on a computer, whether your family gets annoyed with you, what pets you have, what foods you like, have you met famous people, and so on.”

Hong Kong based author Nury Vittachi, the author of The Feng Shui Detective series and a dozen children’s books, plans to talk to Shanghai students about how classic literature is bound in today’s entertainment media.

Pokemon, among other names he likes to drop, is one of his favourite examples. 

Vittachi points out how Pokemon, one of the most successful Asian cartoon characters in the world, is actually not a new concept. “Pokemon is about a boy collecting one example of every type of Pokemon species,” Vittachi says. “I tell this story, and then tell kids about a story from 2,500 years ago where another man also has to collect every kind of animal. And then, they realise the Pokemon story is taken from Noah’s Ark.”

It’s Vittachi’s way of making young readers enthusiastic about the power of narrative. He tries to show them that books and classic stories often underpin the entertainment they’re excited about, including films, cartoons and video games.

In his own writing, Vittachi also likes the idea that his latest Jeri Telstar series encourages children to feel enthusiastic about learning. After all, the books’ protagonist Jeri is a nerdy young Asian superhero who renounces violence and defeats villains using only his homework – including chemistry formulas and in Vittachi’s forthcoming Jeri Telstar volume, mathematic equations.

But is there another motive for creating Jeri Telstar? Perhaps a way to trick kids into doing their homework?

“I wouldn’t use the words trick,” Vittachi says, “but it uncovers a secret for kids: that knowledge is fun and learning stuff is really interesting and useful. Inside your homework and books, you have a lot of cool stuff.”