Small pig

I think it's time for the husband's favourite book to make an appearance; Arnold Lobel's 'Small Pig'.
In some ways, this should have featured during my learning to read diversions of last week as it comes from the classic 'I CAN READ' (I like the urgent capitalisation) series of US origin that seems so superior to the many similar series here. The fact that the 'Frances' books are published under the same imprint gives an idea of the quality of story telling on offer.
 I'm split as to whether it's a good thing that they are 'leveled' and marketed as 'readers' or whether that again turns them into work to be joylessly ticked off and progressed through for the reader. In truth I suppose, it depends on the child. Still; hurray for the quality of 'em.

This is the only book from his childhood library that still accompanies the husband- and from his account it certainly wasn't something he read and reread as 'work' even if it originally went on the bookshelf for his Improvement. It's also one of the few pieces of fiction he references from childhood before he turned (in the manner of many boys) to reading the encyclopaedia instead. He's really useful on country walks in explaining the geological formation of landscape or  the differences between Aztecs and Incas but he knows nowt about Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Small pig lives on a farm, beloved by both farmer and farmer's wife. He leads a peaceful life where his greatest pleasure is to 'sit down and sink down in good, soft, mud.' Then, one fateful day, the urge to clean and tidy comes upon the farmer's wife and she washes the pig and hoovers all his good mud away (never a good idea to clean see?). Small pig becomes angry (there's a great picture); 'This place is too neat and shiny for me'. He runs away.
But the quest to find a satisfactory new puddle of mud proves harder than he expects; until he arrives in the city and finds a lovely pool of fresh cement. Small pig becomes stuck in the pavement and a crowd gathers.

'The farmer and his wife drive by in their car. "Look at that big crowd of people," says the farmer. "Let's stop and see what is happening."
"All right," says the farmer's wife, "but hurry. We must keep looking for our lost pig."
The farmer stops the car. "What is happening here?" he asks a man.
"Oh nothing much," says the man.
"There is just a pig stuck in the pavement."'

With the help of the fire brigade the family are reunited and the farmer's wife promises never to clean  the mud away again.

Funnily enough, the future of a small male pig on a farm is not elucidated.

Lobel's illustrations animate pig's pleasures and furies beyond the simplicity of his 'easy reading' words. It's just plain delightful in combination. The husband has great taste. Of course he does.

'Small Pig' by Arnold Lobel, pub. Harper Collins isbn 978-0064441209

Learning to read diversions; Franklin Watts

Why do reading schemes have to look like and be so obviously reading schemes? Why are they so distinguishable by both adult and child at 20 paces from 'proper' books? Leveled and colour coded to provide a point of instant playground comparison. 'What level are you on then?' is something I've heard children ask each other on numerous occasions; great for those who wish to swank but confidence destroying of course for those who are getting stuck.
The great thing in theory about volunteering with VRH and working one to one with developing readers is that we use real picture books and not readers. The children are free to choose whatever they fancy. The problem with this of course is that what they fancy can be frustratingly difficult to decode and then they get discouraged.

What I would like, please, is a range of beautiful books of different shapes and sizes, illustrated by all our best and lovely illustrators that beginning readers might be able to pick up and access without knowing they were 'doing' reading practice. Can't we get a bit sneakier and more imaginative in designing these objects? I sense the US, with Dr Seuss as a founding father (put him on Mount Rushmore surely?) is better at this; Arnold Lobel and now apparently fab pigeon-on-bus man Mo Willems spring to mind. Julia Donaldson's 'Songbirds' are good but should just be the starting point. I am trying to form my own collection of titles where I find them (Vivienne Schwartz's 'There are cats in this book' has proved a great book giving day purchase for VRH box incidently) but it remains a bit hit and miss.

One of the ranges in the library that I find most useful in this respect (although they still look too uniform not to be clocked as work by the kids) are those published by Franklin Watts; Tadpoles, Leapfrogs, Reading Corner and particularly the more complex Hopscotch have all made for pretty good foraging. They're often genuinely funny, they use a good mix of illustrators and they cover a great variety of styles and topics from traditional fairy tales to some imaginative historical titles: It's hard to resist a book called 'Henry 8th Has to Choose'.

I actually even bought a couple; 'Beowulf and Grendel' is by Martin Waddell and  illustrated by Graham Howells and is part of the Hopscotch 'adventure' range which also covers King Arthur, Robin Hood and Blackbeard amongst others. It tickled me that it was possible to introduce one's children to the roots of Anglo Saxon story telling in under 500 words. It's really bloodthirsty. The boys love it.

'Grendel filled a huge, dragon-skin bag with human flesh. Blood dripped from the bag as he dragged it back to his lair.'

I'm not going to subject you to the picture that accompanies that text, you might be eating a biscuit by your computer or something. But it's pretty cool.

oh go'arn then...you can have a bit of Thursday gore.

That'll make them want to pick it up and carry on won't it?

'Beowulf and Grendel' by Martin Waddell, illustrated byGraham Howells, pub. Franklin Watts isbn 978-0-7496-8563-8

Learning to read diversions; Oxford Reading Tree

I spent a while after posting yesterday musing on whether I had been unfair on poor old Peter and Jane. Does the process of learning to read (at least in the early stages) have to be so supportively repetitive that feeling like you want to stab out your eyeballs with cocktail sticks for sensation as you work through the books is just a necessary phase?

Having rejected P 'n J and knowing Bill to be able to sound out those words that worked to sound out  I cast about for alternatives in the library and discovered Julia Donaldson's 'Songbirds' range for Oxford Reading Tree. Hurray for Julia! No cocktail sticks required; these were pithy, varied and fun for both Bill and much more importantly obviously ;), me. He still talks about the story of the Red Man and the Green Man who live in the traffic lights and the chaos that results when they go on holiday. We liked those. And hurray also for the fact that they employed more than one illustrator and style in the making of them; anything to keep us awake and guessing.

These are a recent addition to the Oxford Reading Tree canon. Since the late 1980s or so (judging from Mum's hairstyle, earrings and the children's red striped wallpaper choice) the majority of Primary School children in this country have been taught to read by Biff, Chip, Kipper and Floppy the dog. With the beginning of the Phoney Phonics War  I sense their star has been on the wane; and they are not currently in use at the boys' school. They are being reinvented in synthetic phonic form- but too late for us-and for the school who have invested in the fairly knuckle-chewing, cheek-slapping, quick-jog-around-the-room-and-back-to them but Local Authority Approved Get The Job Done, Rigby Star series instead. sigh.

I started to get some Biff and Chip 'classic-style' out of the library as Bill progressed to quicker recall reading. I approached them with a sense of gloom and foreboding but was pleasantly surprised by how involved we both got. If you haven't hung out with them; Biff, Chip and Kipper (strange names I know- presumably Very Evidence based for Supportiveness) move into a new house and during the course of some renovations discover a secret room, a precise miniature replica of their house, a mysterious box and a magic key.
Once you get to level 5 or so the 'magic key begins to glow' with predictable regularity in each book, shrinking the children and transporting them on a range of educational adventures. They get to influence the design of the sphinx, meet Queen Victoria, party with pirates and fool around with Laurel and Hardy amongst many other fun times. Not revolutionary but interesting enough for Bill to actively request me to get the next one out so he could read on. And for me to (cough) read ahead to find out what happens. I see the appeal and why they were so ubiquitous for so long. We were a little sad to reach the end of them

I imagine if I were a teacher reading them every year for a twenty years they might start to pall.

Last year the bookpeople (online book discounters- my dirty little secret haunt when not visiting Proper Bookshop) started offering something called the Time Chronicles which turned out to be a whole new set of Biff and Chip books- revisiting them when they were all 3 or 4 years older and offering first 'chapter' book experiences. They were a good deal so I bought 'em for Bill and me to find out what happened next.

Cool! It turns out that all those magic key adventures were just testing and training the children for their future role as Time Runners saving humanity throughout history from the threat of the evil alien Virans. Mr. Mortlock, the school caretaker (who I always marked as a man of mystery- often appearing in the background of the original books  having trouble with his baseball cap and glasses) is actually a centuries old Time Guardian who has been watching them carefully before revealing their true purpose. Each book involves a different dangerous mission into the past to stop the Virans interfering with the Web of Time (and involving a nice trot through different historical events too) We were hooked and Bill rattled through them reading in long chunks non stop during daylight hours for the first time. Like a less scary Dr. Who primer.
I love the fact that Roderick Hunt was able to return to these characters over 20 years after he'd first invented them and imbue his old very simple stories with whole new layers of secret meaning. He and Alex Brychta the illustrator must have had fun letting all their conspiracy theories loose and I loved having mine realised.

'Readers' that both you and your children actively choose to read. Now that is a bit revolutionary.

Learning to read diversions; Ladybird beginnings.

I want to write some posts about the process of teaching my kids to read and the relative drearinesses or otherwise of the various reading 'scheme' books we have come across in that journey.
I realise I'm dipping my toes into possibly controversial waters in doing so however- so I'll 'fess up at the outset I have no qualifications or expertise to pontificate on this subject (well, I hope I won't pontificate), no strong feelings about synthetic phonics versus whole word recognition or whatever the current controversies are and no wish to evangelicise results of paths followed. This is intended as an interesting diversion only for anyone who has opened their child's bookbag and flicked through its contents with a heavy heart and a sense of gloom at having to spend the next 15minutes dutifully ploughing through whatever it contains.

The first controversy I may be unravelling seems to be teaching your child to read at all. I did (whispered confession) actively teach Bill to read and provide alternative support around that beyond what he got from school. I felt vaguely shady in doing that; encountering the terrifying tiger mother that lurks within and allowing her a small piece of steak before (hopefully) locking her firmly back in a very small cage, buried very, very deep in an underground bunker.
Here's the thing though; I love to read and both boys appeared to love books and being read to. I was just impatient hungry to help them unlock that experience further. We're all guilty of wanting our children to share our enthusiasms- so I hope it wasn't that different to those that put their babies into an Arsenal strip and buy them their first season ticket at an inappropriately young age-just my version of it. I gave them their first chocolate cake too soon too.

My mum taught me to read. We had a complete set of Ladybird 'Peter and Jane' books that had already seen service for my older siblings and I did a little each day. When I finished a book I got a sweet. When I finished a level I got a packet of dolly mixture. This may have set up some less beneficial lifelong habits that accompany my love of books but I have matured; now it's squares of dark Green and Black chocolate.
I accordingly purchased my own 'starter' set of key word Ladybird books when I thought I'd start introducing some learn-to-read material to Bill- on the 'it was good enough for me' principle (but no dolly mixture).

This was an error. Peter and Jane are really, really dull. I boggle slightly at the rave reviews on Amazon for them. Lovely collectables for their classic font and illustrations (and gender stereo-typing) but unbelievably dull to learn to read from-however supportive the science behind them. Besides which Bill had an understanding of how to phonically build words before he developed an eye for whole word recognition so these were the wrong starting place for us at least. They sat on the shelf unloved by any of us.
Other  Ladybird books were much more useful/popular however. Their 'Read it Yourself' leveled fairy tales remain some of Eddie's absolute favourites and the classic re-issued 'Danger Men' is cracking:

'Some men jump from an aeroplane, then the aeroplane falls into the sea.
The men fall into the sea some way from the aeroplane.
There is some ice in the sea.
The men are in danger, but other brave men are going to help.'

They are so well designed for small hands to carry about; satisfying objects that haven't been fiddled about with too much over the decades. I like all their non-fiction titles, the brilliantly simple but exciting 'Extreme Weather' and 'Vikings' were much enjoyed by both my boys and the VRH kids I've passed them onto.
It's a shame these don't seem to be currently in print, but then I'm not sure anyone buys their Ladybird books new anyhow. Baskets of 10p priced recycled dog eared copies are the foundations of any decent church jumble sale or school 'fayre' and one of my favourite things to rifle through. Ladybird may need to consider making their books less hard wearing if they are worried about their profits.

not my favourite

better

best

I'll continue with some more 'reader' musings throughout this week. I shouldn't leave Ladybird however without mentioning their other favourite sibling pair; 'Topsy and Tim', also constants in various reissues since my childhood. My relationship with them is corrupted. They used to be read aloud to me by the strange rabidly right wing father of a friend who would insert his own pro-Tory anti- Labour government of the 70s narrative into the text: 'Then Topsy shook nice Mrs. Thatcher by the hand whilst Tim spanked naughty Mr. Callaghan over the fence and into the field with the bull...' A strange weekly experience whilst waiting for Brownies to begin.

Right, time for a chocolate square.