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

Maps

There are a lot of maps in this house.

For a start there's a magnetic map of the world in our hall with name magnets that we push around as friends and family go on travels like military planners. We really value friends who disappear to interesting destinations for months at a time for their magnet value. The small matter of not having them around to chat to matters not a jot in comparison. P and L who have spent the last five years in first Pakistan, then Zambia and now Burma get the gold star in this respect. We sponsor a child in South America solely for the benefit of that map really.

Then there are Eddie's beloved bus maps which wallpaper his room and are spread over his floor, doubling as Total Wipeout course obstacles when he's not studying their intricate poetry. As I type this I am readying myself for today's treat of travelling the entirety of the 102 whilst his brother is at a party. "I'm so excited!" says Eddie.

There is a substantial collection of books of maps too; both of the entirely practical variety- Pah I say to your Satellite Navigation Devices; I LIKE driving with an open book on my lap giving frantic glances down to where I should be going- and of the ancient and decorative. Basically, whenever I can't think of a present to buy the husband, which happens increasingly frequently as the years pass and I have given him everything, I buy him a mappy-type book. And it never fails to make him happy. He is happy with the mappy.

But best of all is this one which he has painted and is a work in progress on Bill's wall. It was supposed to be covered in 'things' by now. Alas an RSI-type collapse put a dramatic halt to is completion in the last few years but the husband's caterpillar slow recovery is marked by the new addition of St Basil's cathedral last week. The big red balls of the Total Wipeout course are set to adorn Argentina next...

Which brings me to 'Maps', a book of simply astonishing loveliness by Polish author/artists Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski and which formed part of Eddie's birthday book haul last month.

It's like Bill's wall but turned up to 11. Each double spread is devoted to a different country and crammed with illustrations incorporating not only the sights, but also the people, stories, food, animals and history of the place. All hand drawn with dizzying gorgeousness. It's LUSH this book is. Lush. Not a word I've used for a a good few years that but exactly what's required here. It's also big and thick papered and Proper. A coffee table book or rather in Eddie's case; a hot chocolate table book.


Just look at it-

See? SEE? Loveliness. (and excuse the photography which is extra specially poor today)

I like the 'facts' on the UK page which include 'The British are famous for their luxury cars' and 'Afternoon tea is a British tradition'. One rings truer to me than the other.

Have to admit it's the husband that has been appreciating this book even more than Eddie since it arrived; if in a slightly wistful I-would-like-to-be-fit-to-paint that way, poor lamb. But Eddie will get round to it. He's just rather hung up on another birthday book at the moment- his absolute best present that he would recommend to you ALL. It's the 2013 edition of 'The London Bus Guide- the routes, the buses, the garages, the companies' by Ken Carr.

I am fairly confident that it's 'Maps' you should be putting on your Christmas list though. Unless you prefer buses.

'Maps' by Aleksandra Mizielinska and Daniel Mizielinski, published by Big Picture Press, isbn 978-1-84877-301-1

The little boy/girl who lost his/her name

Snappy title for this post eh?

Personalised things were few and far between in the 1970s. One of the main frustrations of my childhood was the sheer absence of 'Polly' mugs/magnets/lollipops/bedroom door signs available in Motorway Service Station's named-thing racks. Ah The Curse of the middle class labelled child. How we suffer.

I don't think personalised books existed at all. I seem to remember coming across the concept in late teenagerdom and feeling a sense of burning injustice at the fortunes now bestowed on an ungrateful younger generation. All I had to make do with was a napkin ring engraved with the number 6; my position as youngest in the family.

Of course now all your possessions can be personalised in any way you want. But it's true that adding a name to something is not an end in itself. In fact if something has your name on it you want it to be even better than the average to mirror your own very particular brilliance. And personalised books may have suffered particularly from being a bit ho and a bit hum in the past.

So along has come www.lostmyname; a group of friends with a self funded, self published project to produce individual books that are a bit more ooh and aah than ho and hum. And I think they've just about pulled it off.

We were sent three samples for Bill, Eddie and (AT LAST!) me. The books follow the story of a child who has lost their name and must be reunited with its letters. He or she goes on a magical adventure meeting characters who have their own dilemmas and part with their own letter in exchange for advice; a lion needs somebody to play with for instance, an Inuit needs warm holiday ideas. Each story is thus genuinely unique and it depends on your own letters as to who you'll meet.

The boys thought this an amazing magic trick. "But HOW did they know? HOW is it done?" Bill really enjoyed unpicking them and comparing the stories. Because his name is short he ends up with an extra linking 'story' page in the middle. Duplicate letters are dealt with my means of a few generic letter generating characters- although Eddie did get both eagle and elephant, suggesting the commonest offenders get extra characters. I did wonder whether you'd lose the will to live reading it out if you'd called your child Guinevere or Jeremiah or something. But then you reap what you sow...

There's a lot of craft and thought gone into these books; particularly the number and quality of the illustrations I think. I'm less of a fan of the rhyming prose. (I think people coming fresh to writing children's books often make the mistake of thinking they'll work best in rhyme. The answer to that, unless you're very skilled, is generally No.) But the stories are warm and funny and Eddie and Bill enjoyed them. The production values are faultless and these books would make interesting and original christening/naming/new baby presents. They're not cheap but you wouldn't expect them to be given the up front investment that's been made. Have a look at the website and see what you think.

Incidently, and for free, Persil has produced some online personalisable adventure stories here. Written by Adam Perrot and illustrated by Clare Elsom I thought they were surprisingly good quality. The stories are funny and unexpected and pleasingly un-gendered in their approach to fun. There may be a debate to have about mixing major corporations marketing budgets with children's books but I'll applaud anyone prepared to generate free access to quality words. Even Mcdonalds have been at it with Michael Morpurgo after all.

As a final note, both 'Lost my Name' and Persil run into difficulties when it comes to personalising the illustrations of their lead characters. Some generic decisions have obviously been made about the 'Lost my name' children. The boy and girl both have black hair and white-with a very faint hint of coffee skin. They don't look like  my children. They're fairly likely not to look like yours. The Persil characters are customisable but only to a very limited degree which may end up being even more frustrating. "But I have glasses!" "But I have long hair even though I'm a boy" etc. etc. These things bothered me more than my children though so perhaps I'm just Mrs. Finickerty Pants. (you'd definitely get fed up reading your name through THAT one.)

With thanks to the Lost My Name team for providing us with lovely free samples. Our decision to review and our opinions are our own. They also kindly provided me with some 15% off coupons- just chuck me a comment/tweet if you'd like one.
Persil did offer me a FREE no-strings-attached  sample of their washing tablets when they told me about their books. I turned them down folks. My integrity in that respect is clean (even if my clothes are grubby...)