Amulet

Bill is the grip of Graphic Novel Fever at the moment. After a friend shared the first volume of a Manga adaptation of Darren Shan's 'Cirque du Freak' with him in the back of the bus on a school trip a week or two ago he came back with eyes blazing. "It's SO SICK. Please can we get it? Please can we? Please can we?? Can we, can we, CAN we????" I've not seen him with that book hunger in a while.
Cue a trip to Gosh, Orbital and Forbidden Planet at the weekend to stock up with half term treats. I'd never taken Bill to Forbidden Planet before. He actually got a bit quivery when we went inside. He was like...well I guess he was like a kid in a comic shop. We spent a LONG time browsing Adventure Time figurines...

The required volumes of Manga 'Cirque Du Freak' proved disappointingly tricksome to track down however even within these warehouses of delight. It didn't stop us spending money. Another volume of Adventure Time comic, the acclaimed graphic novelisation of Coraline, Silverfin- all have been gobbled down on the sofa and on the tube this week as we've been out and about seeking half term Fun.

I picked up the first volume of Kazu Kibuishi's 'Amulet' series almost in passing. It looked too tempting to pass by. It's already proved an expensive impulse buy- as we immediately had to go back for the next two volumes and I am now being pestered continuously for the two last. Ah well. It's a bit lovely-an investment that'll be returned to I'm sure.

There is a whole vocabulary and set of references that I'm sure I should be employing to write about it- but although I'm not completely illiterate in the form, I am basically a newbie to the world of graphic novels. This is an outsider's perspective: 'Amulet' is an action packed romp through a fantasy world of glowing stones, evil elves, martial art expert foxes, talking trees, walking houses and lost cities in the sky. It's a bit Hobbity, a bit Star Warsy and a bit Studio Ghibli-y. There's a lot of fighting, some occasionally portentous speeches, and some funny robots too. There's also (be warned) some rather sad/scary bits. It has LITERALLY been unputdownable for Bill (alright I didn't put it down either... ) It also has the requisite kickass heroine. Huzzah.

Elf based fantasy isn't necessarily my bag but all I can say about 'Amulet' is that I can't imagine a more enticing book to put in front of that often mentioned mythical creature- the 'reluctant reader'- whether male OR female. The speech bubble text is clear, linear and easy to read and the action is non-stop. There's some awful pretty spreads in there too. Bill was finishing off the third volume in the tube yesterday and there was a boy sitting opposite him who was almost salivating at the sight of it, craning and jiggling to get a better look. He ended up asking his Dad for a piece of paper and a pen. As he got off the tube I saw he'd written a big underlined heading BOOKS and then halfway down the page the single word- 'Amulet'. Pester power based on the cover alone (and maybe Bill's obvious greedy pleasure).

The 'Amulet' series by Kazu Kibuishi, pub. Scholastic isbn 978-0-439-84681-3 This is a US import only (I think) so you may need to visit a specialist comic shop or (sigh) use Amazon to get hold of it.

Our Little Free Library

About 4 weeks ago, Twitter chum and all round rather-amazing-force-for-good-with-children's-books-things person, Carmen Haselup drew my attention to something called the Little Free Library organisation.

Set up in America but now spreading all over the world, these are mini self-contained book sheds put outside people's houses or in community spaces to provide an opportunity for sharing and swapping books with friends, neighbours and passers by.

Carmen herself knows a bit about community libraries, being the founder of the AMAZING Rainbow library- a labour of love that has put a whole lot of picture books into the hands of a whole lot of local previously unbooky nursery kids over the last year. She blogs about the powerful effect it has had here. Go look.

I went off to look at www.littlefreelibrary.org and thought two things.

1. That's cool.

and

2. I want one.

Being a Veruca Salt kinda girl I didn't stop there. I forwarded the link to my handy with tools father-in-law, a retired man with two and a half sheds of his own and a fondness for a Project.

Two weeks later he had built this-

almost entirely out of salvaged bits and pieces too. Just £10 for a bit of interior insulation and the cost of a fence post to put it on.

Our little library opened on Sunday. It's got a mixture of picture books, older kids fiction and grown up fiction and non-fiction- as broad a general mix as we could get from a random clear out of our shelves. And four days later, about 8 books or so have been 'borrowed' from all different categories and 3 new ones have appeared too. We've had lots of lovely comments from people passing and the local paper have even been to take a photo.

I love it. I keep going out to stroke it and rearrange the spines. Turns out I have a rampant inner librarian that was itching to be released...
 What I love most about it is that it's easy- manageable- something almost anyone can do (depending on your location and outside space obviously). People have been sending me photos of amazing little library spaces customised out of old phone boxes or popping up in pubs- and many are gorgeous but rather bigger enterprises than ours. Yes- it may get vandalised , yes- someone may take all the books but I'll take it calmly if that happens- it's just wood and old  paperbacks after all.

And what seems much more likely is what is already starting to happen- that we'll make some new friends, spread a little booky love and I'll always be able to find something new to read in the bath.

fellow librarians at work

Born to Read

Hello!

I went away for a bit; other stuff was demanding my attention- some of it to do with arranging words and some of it to do with cake and Christmas and family.

Anyway I'm mainly back today to SWANK.

Because I was lording it around the House of Lords on Tuesday.

I'd like to say this was because I was taking my rightful place on the red benches due to my longstanding hereditary claims to the titles of Pollyland. But that would be a lie.

I was actually there to work; invited as a Volunteer Reading Helper for literacy charity Beanstalk to promote their brilliance and their new partnership with Save the Children. I've been volunteering in a local school for three years now, reading (and playing and chatting) with three children twice a week. I like to think they get almost as much out of our half hour sessions as I do.

Beanstalk has been in existence for over 40 years and there are reading helpers throughout London and in select other pockets of the country. Save the Children is obviously a much bigger, more well known organisation and thanks to their involvement, the hope is the Beanstalk model of helping children discover the pleasures of books; the desire to read, can be expanded substantially.

On Tuesday, the Born to Read initiative was launched in the company of other volunteers, bloggers, parents, MPs, some pretty starry authors and illustrators and some delightful local school children who had to have their photos taken holding books a LOT.

Michael Gove spoke whilst I bit my tongue and studied the swirls on the posh carpet intently. Lauren Child spoke whilst I gazed at her like a dreamy loon. Charity people spoke and said what we all know; reading MATTERS. It matters more than anything else in creating social mobility and life opportunity.

Have a look at Born to Read here. They need 7000 new helpers. You need 3 hours a week to spare. Money is also good.

This is all very important. But here were MY highlights:

-In the loos next to the River Room where we all gathered was a large claw footed bath. I may now have missed my only opportunity to have a sneaky lunchtime bath in the House of Lords.

-There was disappointingly little ermine. But I did enter the building through Black Rod's Garden. The perks of being Black Rod eh? Your very own black rod AND your very own garden. And all you have to do is bang a stick once a year for the Queen.

-Our remit being to mingle and network. I went to a network a couple standing on their own in a corner. "Hello, are you reading helpers too?" says I, "In a manner of speaking, I write books- so that helps- my wife Helen draws them too." This was the point I realised I was in the hallowed company of John Burningham and Helen Oxenbury and went a little dribbly. They were very tolerant of the dribble and we had a nice chat where I learned that the Lord Mayor's coach really had broken down this year (cf. 'Humbert') and Helen Oxenbury confided that 'John NEVER reads you know- never reads at all.' I enjoyed that given the occasion.

But I expect he can read (giggle)- and that is rather the point. Not everyone is so lucky as to have a choice. Let's work to try and change that shall we?

Sibling rivalry diversions

The sense of ownership you have over a beloved book as a child is a powerful and distinct force. You love it, you live it, it becomes part of you. This as discussed in Francis Spufford's 'The Child that Books Built' or in Samantha Ellis's forthcoming 'How to be a Heroine' (which I am really looking forward to) is their power and importance. Nothing I've read as an adult has filled my waking thoughts half so powerfully as Mary Plain's cream buns.

I had a lovely time a few weeks ago attending The British Library's companion talk to their 'Picture This' exhibition, listening to Ian Beck, Laura Dockrill, Philip Ardagh and Lauren Child discuss the children's books that shaped them with Julia Eccleshare. The titles they discussed were wide-ranging; some familiar, some more obscure but their experiences had much in common. There was talk of visceral  imprinting, of world views refocused and of self-discovery. And of getting lost in and liberated by the purely silly. Hooray! I, and the rest of the audience would have been happy to have continued the conversation late into the night.

There was one aspect of all this which occurred to me that didn't come up, and that is how family position and sibling dynamics feed into the books one 'owns'. I am the youngest of four; the youngest by 6 years in fact so very much the baby (or afterthought/accident depending on spin). There was already a fairly healthy children's bookshelf of treasure to pilfer by the time I was growing up and this worked in two ways: It led me to discover some titles that I might not have absorbed so thoroughly independently; my biggest brother's complete 'Asterix' collection, my big sister's 'Twins' books (and later her early Jilly Coopers), 'Our Island's Story' and the book of Greek Myths covered in the sheet of Baskin Robbins ice cream wrapping paper (the wrapping paper may have absorbed me more than the myths).

But the other way it worked was to reject those books already perceived as 'belonging' to someone else; specifically and predictably my closest in age sibling. We all want to be different. I didn't want to wear his cast-down stripy trousers and velour t shirts and have my hair cut in a pudding bowl by Alan the barber so everyone called me 'Sonny' either. I didn't have a choice about those. I did about books.

I should make it clear at this point, because he reads this blog and other than occasionally correcting my grammar/spelling has been kind about it, no blame attaches to the sibling in question. He didn't hoard his books; he was a good 'sharer' n that (merciless on a Monopoly board but that's a different blog). I even remember him reading (I think) 'The Horse and his Boy' aloud to me when I was ill in bed once. But he was also a big and passionate reader and I definitely felt some books were already 'owned' by him and thus had nothing left to be absorbed by me.

For a children's book blogger this amounts to a confessional: I have never read any C S Lewis Narnia beyond the first. I have never read any Arthur Ransome and didn't touch Tolkein before adulthood. Ursula Le Guin and Susan Cooper also remain to be properly discovered. They were all 'his'. It may well be they wouldn't have sung to me anyway but I never gave them a proper chance. Am I alone in this experience? I think about Bill and Eddie and wonder if the same rules will come into force. Eddie already rejects books on the basis that they belong to his brother. I'm pretty sure he'll be bypassing Harry Potter from second-hand overload/over-familiarity. I reckon he's on safe ground in wanting to keep his dense non-fiction transport reading matter to himself.

'The Complete Uncle' by J P Martin has just been re-published thanks to a tremendously successful Kickstarter by publisher Marcus Gipps. The husband has a hand in it and a drawing too. It's a very beautiful object. There are a few copies that can be bought I believe even if you didn't buy into the Kickstarter. But Uncle also belonged to my brother's shelves and when I dip into this volume now I can admire and laugh and boggle but I don't really love. It's not in my bones see? It didn't form me.

Not like Mary's meringues did.

As it's nearly the end of the year I'm going to hatch a piece of news that I've been sitting on like an increasingly uncomfortable egg for some months now. I acquired an agent this autumn. A rather good agent, whose existing list makes me feel a bit like that bit in 'Vertigo' where James Stewart comes over funny on a ladder. This is all very well (and definitely GOOD) but it does require me even more to write something worth publishing; exciting and terrifying in equal measure. Because children's writing, the worthwhile sort, silly or serious gets under the skin and stays there forever. No pressure then, gulp.

The Thirteen Days of Christmas

It was time for a refresh so I pared the blog 'design' down a little. Design is in inverted commas because really that's a rather inflated word for what happens when I play around in a slightly panicky way with the blogger default settings and backdrops. I dunno. Font choices are HARD.

This is mostly a post about 'The Thirteen Days of Christmas' by Jenny Overton but it's also a small paeon of praise to the precious, precious treasure that is an independent local bookshop. A bookshop which knows you by name and knows your taste and knows what to put into your hands and say 'here, read this, you'll like it.' I might not have found 'The Thirteen Days of Christmas' without mine doing just that and that would have been very sad indeed. Because I DO like it. Bookshops are not just for Christmas but they are especially nice at this time of year. Go and spend money in one yourself. It'll make you and them both happy.

So. 'The Thirteen Days of Christmas' (illustrated, small drumroll, by a certain Shirley Hughes) was originally published in 1972 but has just been reissued. It's essentially a creation story for that ever-favourite-if-a-bit-interminable-when-sung-by-your-otherwise-obviously-delightful-children-in-a-loop-at-full-volume carol 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'. Set in the eighteenth century, it's the story of overly-romantic Annaple Kitson being well and truly petard-hoisted by her younger siblings: Desperate to see her married off so they can escape her inedible cooking they provide helpful inspiration to her apparently staid suitor Francis. But Francis, it soon transpires, has plenty of inspiration of his own and a seemingly bottomless purse. Will there be a wedding on the thirteenth day? Well what do you think?

The great conceit/joke of the book is that Francis not only provides the named gift for the day, he also provides the chorus duplicates daily. Thus on the fifth day, Annaple not only receives 5 gold rings, she also gets another 4 calling birds, 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves and pear-tree roosting partridge. And so on. Requiring the construction of ever more elaborate livestock containment and the consumption of massive quantities of eggs and milk; in the end used for bathing and shaving as well as drinking. Funny.

The other pleasure is the education it provides in some long forgotten Christmas traditions. The twelve days of Christmas each presented with their own name and associated rituals: St Thomas of Canterbury's Day (day 5) for instance where all keys are brought to church for blessing and sparrows are fed or Eve's Day (day 11) bringing treats for all the women of the house. I'm re-establishing that one forthwith. The book is peppered with contemporary carols and verses that must have once have been folk knowledge. It's got to be the Most Christmas book I've ever read.

'The procession turned into Ship Street. The choir-boys ran ahead, banging on the doors of all the houses where there were young children and shouting, "Ransom your brats, ransom your brats, a penny a piece for your babies." The pennies showered from the windows. Will dipped his hand into his sack and threw handfuls of nuts and little bags of sugar plums to each ransomed child, and the choirboys stuck sprigs of holly through each door knocker to mark the fact that the price had been paid.'

There's lots of this sort of stuff and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It might rather reduce the charm for the child reader though. They'll need a taste for the sophisticated and historic or an ability to skim the slower pleasures. This is a book for reading aloud I reckon; a family fireside appreciation with something for everybody. A chapter a day when the actual twelve days arrive? That's what I'm planning. Lovely. Thanks 'The Children's Bookshop'.

'The Thirteen Days of Christmas' by Jenny Overton, illustrated by Shirley Hughes, pub. OUP, isbn 978-0-19-273543-0

What Bill's reading

Bill's turning 9 next week. Halfway to a grown up. Considerably less than that until he thinks he's a grown up. Gulp, sniff and coo-how-did-that-happen? in equal measures.

I don't often blog about what he likes to read but that's mainly because what he likes to read is pretty canonical. You'll have heard of what he likes. He likes to tick off series; sometimes in a devouring-can't get-enough-way (How to Train Your Dragon), sometimes in a dutiful-this-must-be-FINISHED-for-credibility-way (Percy Jackson). Some books he reads fast,almost in a single sitting (Tom Gates, any David Walliams, Guy Bass, Wimpy Kid) some take him weeks and bog him down a little (poorly edited 5th Harry Potter j'accuse). Some books are apparently too 'old' for him but he loves (Wonder) and I'm delighted to say he'll still happily read those too 'young' for him too. He wrote a book review about 'Hug' a month ago for school. It was pasted on the wall next to one for 'Stormbreaker' by an overly sophisticated classmate which tickled me.

He starts books and stops them. His bed is surrounded by possibilities, choices, some begun and abandoned permanently, some just waiting for the right moment, some in a patient queue. My bed is the same. Everyone has the right to be a flaky, distractable, occasionally impatient  reader I reckon. At the moment he's mainly reading 'Silverfin' but seems also to have finished a Lemony Snicket or two and be dabbling with a compendium of entertaining deaths called 'Dreadful Fates'. He likes to treat us to treasures from the last at the dinner table.

I read to him. We've just finished Jane Johnson's 'The Secret Country'; the first in a trilogy. With definite shades of Narnia in a contemporary setting; it's a funny adventure story of a boy who discovers his 'Other World' destiny by way of a talking cat and an incarcerated dragon. Nothing especially revolutionary but who needs revolution? He or I or a mixture of the two of us'll read the next two eventually. First, as it's Advent, 'The Box of Delights' is calling; another book passed down to read by my dear dad. Christmas's past will be brought into focus, cue more sobbing.
And how long do I get to carry on reading to him? Forever I hope against hope.

There's one thing that Bill reads every, every week without fail which is also celebrating a sort of birthday: The totally marvellous 'Phoenix Comic' has its 100th issue out this week. The only independent comic to have achieved such a feat in 40 years; it's ad-free quality story telling of the highest order and mighty pretty to boot. Every Friday it arrives in the post and I sneak it out of its envelope to have a read over my lunchtime soup and cheese before resealing it. Then Bill gets home from school and pounces and doesn't even turn on the telly until he's finished it.

Happiness.

Happy Birthday Bill. Happy Birthday Phoenix.

Happy reading = happy reader. (and of course a Wagon Wheel never goes amiss either)

And here's a sample of The Phoenix if you want some happy reading of your own.

How Cars Work

Anyone who gets talking to Eddie is soon going to get talking to Eddie about buses. As regular readers of this blog will know, buses are just a little bit important to Eddie right now.
(entire route of the 210 in both directions is tomorrow's treat for us...)
So inevitably kindly adults caught in a route interrogation conversation will ask the question, "Are you going to be a bus driver when you grow up then Eddie?"
Which sends him into a bit of spiral of panic and denial; "No. That would be too hard. I don't know how to drive. I'm just a child."
The idea that it is a skill he could be taught one day seems to be Dreaming the Impossible Dream.

I knew it was formenting in his brain though when I started finding him craning over the dashboard and crawling in the footwell of the driver's seat of the car on a regular basis, examining pedals and buttons and grilling me on their purposes. I am really not the person to grill on this subject beyond the basics. Eventually he admitted, "I need to learn to drive soon because when me and Ella M fly to Australia together I've said I'll drive the hire car." It was news to me that he was planning an imminent return trip to Oz with his 6 year old fiancee but I understood the pressure of responsibility he was feeling.

Enter 'How Cars Work; the interactive guide to mechanisms that make a car work' by Nick Arnold and Allan Sanders, part book, part cardboard meccano; a properly unpatronising primer in car engineering which is also a little bit tasty-looking.

The book has a removable peg board at the front and a back pocket full of numbered coloured cogs, levers and screws. Each page looks (in detail- this will really properly satisfy any budding engineer who wants to look under a bonnet) at a different aspect of a car's mechanics and then provides a plan to build a working example on the peg board. You get therefore to make and see how a piston moves, or the motion of a windscreen wiper or the principle of an accelerator in action amongst others. It's really very nicely done.

The making is reasonably technical, requiring the following of a plan and grid references and appropriate selection of parts. Eddie is not of the mindset to do it yet, Bill had a good play around. But Eddie does pore over the technical descriptions with a bright and beady eye. Hoovering up the knowledge he needs for a golden future on the buses.

I've started keeping the car keys hidden.

nice bit of suspension

Incidently in a week where there has been much discussion about the pros/cons of the Goldiebox range of toys to encourage girls into engineering, after their rather fun ad went viral, I think this book does a reasonable job of gender neutrality. The illustrations are just about evenly split between male and female drivers and the colour palette is not agressively 'blokey'. All you DO need to enjoy a read/play is an interest in how cars work.
Here's the Goldiebox ad if you've happened to miss it-

'How Cars Work' by Nick Arnold and Allan Sanders, published by Templar, isbn 978-1-84877-737-8