A Cautionary Tale

It’s confession time again. I do know Hilaire Belloc, but only as a name. I had very little idea of what he was famous for, though a quick trawl on Wikipedia has remedied this situation a little. He’s got a new book out. Well, new and new, it’s obviously old, but has nice new clothes.

Mini Grey has done new illustrations to Jim, who ran away from his nurse and was eaten by a lion. Despite this early warning, along with the warning on the cover of the book, I was still unprepared for Jim being eaten by the lion. No happy ending there.

I’m not terribly familiar with Mini Grey, either, but this book is enough to make me a fan. I’d forgotten the fun you have with pop-ups. The lion is a little scary, but more surprising. (Though I could see it having the same effect on young readers as the pop-up crocodile we used to have. Sort of, aarghh..!) Mini has thought up a lovely map of the fateful zoo, but I’m not sure I like the snake house all that much. I may stay away from this zoo. The staff are a little remiss,

even if little boys shouldn’t run away from their nurses, or mums, or anybody, really.

There is a lot here to make reading this book over and over again a lot of fun. The poem is fun to read, and the pictures will last a long time. And if it can prevent any more boys being eaten by lions, then it will have done a good job.

Mr Treemountain and other stuff

We travelled to Bali Rai-country on Sunday, to retrieve Daughter from outer space. On the drive to Leicester, which it is better known as, we listened to the second outing of Quote Unquote starring Adèle Geras, which the Resident IT Consultant had thoughtfully recorded and saved and remembered.

I had hoped that the lovely round library we went past last year, would be Oadby Library, which Bali praised back in June. It’s not. It’s Southfield Library, but it’s still very nice looking. We were late for our rocket launch, but so were the rockets. Spectacularly so, in fact. And luckily the ‘Cape Kennedy’ aspect of the sports field rocket launch pad broke down after about ten rockets, or we’d still be there now.

We returned to witch territory via another route, which took us past the prison where Stephen Booth did his research for one of his Fry and Cooper novels. I always like to feel literary when out, and seeing the bus shelter where the newly released prisoners catch the bus from, is pretty literary.

As we sped past the Dovedale walking centre we once stayed in, we debated when exactly it was we were there. The conclusion was between Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which takes us to spring 2000. That was when three of us mothers, having returned from a really wet walk with the small children’s group, relaxed in front of the fire with cups of tea, agreeing that we all loved – and fancied – Lupin. The bonding you can do over the most unexpected things…

Date decided on, the Resident IT Consultant had had enough of conversation, so switched the radio on, which I tend to hate. We accidentally hit on ‘Allan Ahlberg at 70′, which had just started, so we got to listen to most of this repeat. And it was good. I’m not all that into the Ahlbergs, Swedish name notwithstanding, but found it both fun and informative.

But let me tell you this, Allan. Your name does not mean Treemountain in English. You are Mr Aldermountain. Although your own idea of calling yourself Roald Blyton is not a bad one. Almost rhymes with Aldermountain.

Book Fairs and Festivals

Programmes have been perused at length. Why do they have to be quite so long? Could be because book events have a lot to offer, which is good.

I’ve had the printed programme for the Gothenburg Book Fair for a few weeks, and it’s made me see spots. Probably due to the cover being very spotty, in black and white, and I hope they’ll do something less dizzying next time. Might mean that the book bags and the water bottles available at the Fair will be spotty, too. Won’t find out, as I most likely won’t be going. If money grew on trees I would. The programme lists many of the usual suspects, like the archbishop and Mark Levengood and Henning Mankell. Plus lots of Spanish writers, as the emphasis is on Spain this year. ¡Hola!

Bath is also on in September, and usually clashes with Gothenburg in my diary. Bath is special, being children’s books only, so it’s right up my street. Except it’s a bit further away than that. The annoying thing with events spread over two weekends with a week in the middle, is that there is usually something particularly good on at each end of the thing, and you either go for too long, or have to go twice. Or, horror of horrors, you may have to choose.

Most of my recent muddling has been around the Edinburgh programme, which I’ve tried to decipher online, which is very green of me. Or maybe not, as I burn electricity every minute on the computer. It’s a lovely, long programme, covering three weekends with two weeks in the middle. ‘Luckily’ Daughter’s needs mean that the beginning and end of my available period is decided for me. So I have a shortlist of people I want to see. Except by now most events are sold out, so I have to hope that they will want to consider this outstanding (!) blog as press-worthy. Don’t know yet. But do feel free to tell them that you need to hear what went on in Edinburgh from me.

Campaign for the Book (1)

As I usually seem to do, I ran into Fiona Dunbar in the Ladies at the start of the proceedings of the Campaign for the Book. Since this was held in the impressive King Edward School in Birmingham, which is a boys’ school, we have to be grateful for there being facilities for us girls at all. And while in toilet mode, I may as well admit to ending the day in the Gents, where the lone male customer was showing considerable courage in the face of so many women invading.

Having spent a whole day looking into the future of libraries in schools there is a lot of stuff to tell, so let the number one in the title be a warning that I will not disclose all right now. In actual fact, having begun by not being serious, I may as well continue not being serious. I had a surprisingly easy journey, only getting a little lost cutting through Birmingham University. That is despite the great help from that super-organiser Jean Allen, librarian at KES. Beautifully visible in cerise, and with a beautifully audible voice – so many people whisper, you know – Jean masterminded a first class event. Lots of food. Good food. Things worked.

I have always wanted to write the words stone mullioned windows. There! I have done it! They had them, you see. Great Hall. The school’s Chief Master (what a title!) spoke. He’s a former pupil, along with his mate Lee Child (who I distinctly remember saying a few years ago that he had had an ordinary English school background…), and he was suitably amusing before leaving in order to stop his son setting fire to their house. Or maybe that was a joke.

It’s fascinating with events where the authors are mainly in the audience. I have only listed the ones I know and recognise, although the list provided had more people on it. (From an alibi point of view I don’t want to state that X was there, in case he wasn’t.) Was pleased to discover Theresa Breslin was on the list, and worked hard at deciding what she might look like. She was, of course, the one sitting to my left.

Alan Gibbons is the driving force behind the whole campaign, so he was there. Celia Rees had a speaking role, and so did Gillian Cross. Steve Skidmore kept people in order during one discussion, and Beverley Naidoo and Frank Cottrell Boyce ended the day.

We had two sittings for lunch, and if I say that I first lunched with Theresa Breslin and later with Fiona Dunbar and Lucy Coats, you’ll wrongly assume I ate twice. I just didn’t leave when I should have, since it was so nice to finally meet Facebook friend Lucy.

Most of the 200 conference goers were librarians and others similarly occupied. And not a single Gudrun Sjödén stripe in sight. With so much on the programme I was amazed to find we finished on time. I had done a little autograph hunting during the day (my bag would have been a lot lighter with fewer books carted round), and then I finished off the day’s hunt by catching Gillian Cross and Beverley Naidoo as they were leaving.

The Haggis-knee played up on the way back through the university, so some hobbling was engaged in, and I was overtaken by loads of librarians. Like the famous tortoise however, I caught the train and they didn’t. Ticket issues, I believe. Found Beverley Naidoo again at New Street station, where I was also offered a Malteser by polite young Muslim man. All in all, very nice.

(Sincere apologies for being such a very dreadful photographer.)

Free?

The older of us grew up with the idea of the United Nations as something good and natural. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was also a very obvious thing to believe in. And to belong to Amnesty International was more or less expected. At least where I came from. So, what happened?

Here is a new anthology to mark that it’s been sixty years since those rights were put down on paper, and things are still not right. They are not right, somewhere worryingly close to home. Because it’s quite natural that things can be bad somewhere else, somewhere far away, isn’t it?

In Free? fourteen writers give us stories, each connected to one or two of the rights on that list. Some are set in the recent past, but most are from the here and now, and things are not good. Hopefully young readers will learn from this collection.

There are some very big names in the children’s fiction world on the list of authors, but as with many anthologies, it’s not always that the best stories were written by the people you know. That’s what I like about collections. You find new people who write very well indeed. I may not be able to pronounce their names, but we all speak the same language.

I was interested to see that Malorie Blackman’s poem, set in the future, echoed the ideas that she mentioned in the interview in November. And I can’t help but mention the story by Sarah Mussi, about the boy scout from Ghana who accidentally stole the Crown Jewels. Your Crown Jewels. That story belongs in my Aspie list, whether or not the adorable Prometheus Prempeh has AS.

Read!

Poets are only human

Oh, dear. Going into poet overload, here.

Once upon a time the much younger witch ‘inter-railed’ like everyone else. She and School Friend were on a train, when they witnessed a teenage girl across the aisle shouting at her poor mother. I’ve no idea what the woman had done to upset her daughter, but she was just sitting there quietly, not answering back. I think that’s what made me remember them.

A week or two later I was reading Mother-of-Witch’s glossy magazine, Femina, when I came a cross an article about a poet I’d never heard of before. Not surprising, I suppose, as I was even less into poetry in those days. I did recognise the woman in the photo accompanying the article, however. It was of the quiet mother from the train.

Her name was Elsa Grave. Then I forgot about her again, since I still wasn’t into poetry. Five or six years later I found myself working for the Post Office in my home town, where I came into contact with the “Postman Pats’ of the day, ie the car borne postmen who deliver post in the countryside. They are not only postmen, but provide a ‘mini post office’ service from their cars to the customers on their route.

The ones based where I worked were lovely and helpful, and whenever Elsa Grave went away she would leave a note to her postman about feeding the cat and watering the plants. He always did.

Makes a change to the one where we used to live, who put the police in a murder case on our trail. Sigh.

It seems it’s laureate week

OK, so this is my second blog this week about laureates. It won’t come as a surprise that today it’s about Carol Ann Duffy, our new Poet Laureate. The papers are full of the news, but bandwagons are there to be jumped on, so why not?

I am as you well know, not into poetry. But I do own a Carol Ann Duffy. And it’s signed. In fact, we have two, because Daughter insisted on a poetry collection when we met this great poet a few years ago. Mine is Another Night Before Christmas, which I suppose is apt for someone named for Christmas.

Carol Ann Duffy probably qualifies as ‘children’s literature’ more than many other adult poets, seeing as you read her for GCSEs, along with people like Benjamin Zephaniah. I quite liked meeting her at the local bookshop, because she was surprisingly unsmiley, which is rare at signing events. (So are you more genuine if you refuse to smile?)

In today’s Guardian Review Carol Ann has chosen poems by other current female poets, and the non-poem-reading witch has to own up to actually possessing a volume of  poems by one of them, Imtiaz Dharker. Also signed. Something about terrorists, which I carried with me on planes a few times, wondering what would happen. (Nothing, is the answer.)

Now that everyone has exclaimed over the choice of a female, and gay, Poet Laureate, to prove how lacking in prejudice we all are, the question is who we can give the bottles of sherry to next time. A Martian?

World Book Day books

Dare I admit to somewhat dubious behaviour on my part? Early last week when I read somewhere about the WBD tokens, which would be handed out to all school children, I swore a bit, because Daughter didn’t get hers the last couple of years. Not a big deal, but annoying. Who knows how many other children haven’t had theirs?

Then the girl comes home with six tokens. End of swearing, I promise. It seems she first got her token. Then when the rest of the tokens weren’t wanted by the ungrateful non-readers in her form, the form teacher gave her all the rest, too.

We went to town, literally and figuratively, on Saturday, dividing up our shopping between two bookshops, to lessen the imagined burden. Since this year’s WBD books come as two-in-one, we ended up with 11 titles. The uneven number is because Julia Donaldson had a mini picture book all by herself, with illustrations by David Roberts.

The Tyrannosaurus Drip Song even comes with music, so I’ll get my pianist to try it out later. It’s about a baby duckbill dinosaur who is born in a T Rex nest, and is bullied by the big dinosaurs. But he’s no wimp…

If memory serves I think it’s possibly the first time there has been a picture book among the WBD offerings, which is good, because not all school children are big readers.

I’ll get back to the other books later.

Gone and forgotten

It seems to be an accepted fact that for each generation the behaviour of the young gets worse. We were all better than our children. People have been saying this for generations.

So when Andrew Motion complained of the literary equivalent in the Guardian this week, I wondered if it’s any different, really. We can’t all know exactly what the generation before us thought of as the norm. Things change, and the young know many things the older ones don’t.

Andrew thinks children need to read the Bible more. I don’t think he’s wrong, and his reasoning is sound. But it’s not the children’s fault they aren’t given the same Bible background that we had. And I suspect we don’t have what people had 50 years before us. We’ve survived.

They need the Bible to understand Tennyson and Milton and TS Eliot. Fine, but will they read much Milton? I’m sure he’s slipping, too.

The worst thing about my own dear Swedish teacher in the 6th form was that she was almost two generations older than me. She couldn’t understand why her favourite student was quite so dense. Neither did I. Then. Afterwards I worked out that she taught in a way that expected me (us) to have a background we didn’t have. Couldn’t have. If she’d known, she would most likely have been able and willing to bring us up to speed.

I don’t know my Bible all that well, and Greek mythology is Greek to me, most of the time. I couldn’t analyse poetry to save my life. Another teacher suggested a Finnish poet as a good starting point, but that just made things worse. She was a generation in-between, so her suggestion was probably geared to her own knowledge, not mine.

I think children should learn the Bible, if it’s at all possible. But these are the children we sometimes worry about reading at all. Or attending school.

So what have you forgotten, or never learnt? And is it a serious handicap, or does it feel normal?

My children don’t know what I know. I don’t know what they know. What will be their children’s shortcomings?

Love That Dog

Before Hate That Cat came Love That Dog, and it’s caused tears to run down my cheeks again. Maybe I could do a piece entitled Quite Like That Sharon Creech?

The adorable Jack is back, or rather, he’s not back, because this came first. So this is the beginning of Jack, his introduction to poetry and the story of his lovely yellow dog. His dear Ms Stretchberry introduces Jack to computers and their spell-checking magic.

Ms Stretchberry also gets Jack and his friends going with the “let’s-invite-a-writer-to-our-school” idea. Jack’s hero is Walter Dean Myers, and a very nice poet he turns out to be.

This is first class feel-good writing.