Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Poetry Technology, Part Two
As if by magic: I ask out loud for a poetry app (see a previous post) and hey presto, one has been produced. Sounds amazing and with a great story to it too.
Sunday, 25 March 2012
Blasts From The Past
I used to work as a bookseller years ago, while I was a student. And, like most booksellers I know, I dreamed of owning a second hand bookshop. Playing fantasy bookshop is, I suppose, a niche activity, which is why there isn't a Nintendo version available. Shame. Luckily, it's one game you can tip, if only slightly, into reality. While I might dream about my specialist shop, with its bow windows, creaky door and gently-tinkling bell, its framed photos of Virginia Woolf and HD, its marmalade cat and its chintz fireside chairs, the joy is that I can start to buy the stock, book-by-book, now. And if my lovely specialist poetry/twentieth-century-British-novelists bookshop fails to materialise, there will still be the books on my own bookshelves at home. Win-win situation.
There is something thrilling about a second-hand bookshop that new, glossy bookshops lack. Big chains are efficient, perfectly pleasant and usually have the book you want in stock, but lack the cosiness and quirk value of little shops. Tiny independents are fabulous - our local one does have a fire, and a chair, and a bookseller who will read stories to The Babe while I browse (heaven) - but they still have an order and a logic to them necessitated by ordering/marketing/best-sellers.
Second-hand bookshops are a glory of randomness. From the distinctive smell of warm paper as you open the door to the stained old chairs and booksellers (the only uniform is a knitted waistcoat or tank top), second-hand bookshops are the nearest thing to a time-machine that exists. Step across the threshold and prepare to be transported to any era you choose. Tat nestles happily with out-of-print wonders, and there is nothing more exciting than opening a musty book to find an enigmatic dedication written in copperplate on the inside cover, or following a trail of pencilled notes throughout the book - these are often stories in themselves, and a testament to the many lives of the book. Or, even more excitingly, as in a recent 1919 campus-novel find of mine, a ticket to an author event, with the inscription in the front of the book revealing that it's first owner was indeed the author himself. You don't get that with a kindle. Or indeed a new copy of the latest Martin Amis.
I live in a big city where second-hand bookshops abound. But the Pram Grandparents have just moved to rural Wales, away from the centre of civilisation. Yet, joy of joys, in the one-street of their new town is a brown cafe with a used books section above. Oh wonder! Upstairs seems to run the whole length of the street - a higgledy-piggledy, up-and-down-steps depository of thousands of books, in shelves that stack high beyond reach.
I have found ancient Tintin volumes for Little Boy, Greek primers from 1904 for First Born, and, ultimate pleasure, two corridors of old Penguin novels for moi, where I bought a whole run of Alice Thomas Ellis novels. The shop is bigger than the town itself, or so it seems, and I am able to leave The Babe and Little Boy happily playing with the Pram Grandparents while I set off to make my way through the maze of tottering books there for an hour or two.
The serendipitious nature of second-hand bookshops never fails to work like a kind of literary I-ching, so that whenever I'm in need of direction or solace in life, I manage to find the book that's been looking for me, virtually glowing on the shelf so that I can't miss it. Last week, feeling burdened with the cares of housewifery, a little book stumbled into my path - an unassuming, slim, plain-bound volume that could easily have gone unnoticed among the bigger, more colourful books at either side. And yet it didn't. It found its way into my hands, weighing no more than a prayer-book. And indeed, that's kind of what it is - a post-First World War book of poetry: The Verse Book Of A Homely Woman by Fay Inchlawn - a Persephone Book in-waiting if ever I've seen one! Ah, the smell of it!
With poems entitled "The Housewife", "On Washing Day" and "To An Old Teapot" it had just the mix of domesticity and transendence that this trammelled housewife needed - a sisterly pat-on-the-back and "chin up!" from across the century, held in the roughened hands of housewives down the years. Beat that Waterstones!
There is something thrilling about a second-hand bookshop that new, glossy bookshops lack. Big chains are efficient, perfectly pleasant and usually have the book you want in stock, but lack the cosiness and quirk value of little shops. Tiny independents are fabulous - our local one does have a fire, and a chair, and a bookseller who will read stories to The Babe while I browse (heaven) - but they still have an order and a logic to them necessitated by ordering/marketing/best-sellers.
Second-hand bookshops are a glory of randomness. From the distinctive smell of warm paper as you open the door to the stained old chairs and booksellers (the only uniform is a knitted waistcoat or tank top), second-hand bookshops are the nearest thing to a time-machine that exists. Step across the threshold and prepare to be transported to any era you choose. Tat nestles happily with out-of-print wonders, and there is nothing more exciting than opening a musty book to find an enigmatic dedication written in copperplate on the inside cover, or following a trail of pencilled notes throughout the book - these are often stories in themselves, and a testament to the many lives of the book. Or, even more excitingly, as in a recent 1919 campus-novel find of mine, a ticket to an author event, with the inscription in the front of the book revealing that it's first owner was indeed the author himself. You don't get that with a kindle. Or indeed a new copy of the latest Martin Amis.
I live in a big city where second-hand bookshops abound. But the Pram Grandparents have just moved to rural Wales, away from the centre of civilisation. Yet, joy of joys, in the one-street of their new town is a brown cafe with a used books section above. Oh wonder! Upstairs seems to run the whole length of the street - a higgledy-piggledy, up-and-down-steps depository of thousands of books, in shelves that stack high beyond reach.
I have found ancient Tintin volumes for Little Boy, Greek primers from 1904 for First Born, and, ultimate pleasure, two corridors of old Penguin novels for moi, where I bought a whole run of Alice Thomas Ellis novels. The shop is bigger than the town itself, or so it seems, and I am able to leave The Babe and Little Boy happily playing with the Pram Grandparents while I set off to make my way through the maze of tottering books there for an hour or two.
The serendipitious nature of second-hand bookshops never fails to work like a kind of literary I-ching, so that whenever I'm in need of direction or solace in life, I manage to find the book that's been looking for me, virtually glowing on the shelf so that I can't miss it. Last week, feeling burdened with the cares of housewifery, a little book stumbled into my path - an unassuming, slim, plain-bound volume that could easily have gone unnoticed among the bigger, more colourful books at either side. And yet it didn't. It found its way into my hands, weighing no more than a prayer-book. And indeed, that's kind of what it is - a post-First World War book of poetry: The Verse Book Of A Homely Woman by Fay Inchlawn - a Persephone Book in-waiting if ever I've seen one! Ah, the smell of it!
With poems entitled "The Housewife", "On Washing Day" and "To An Old Teapot" it had just the mix of domesticity and transendence that this trammelled housewife needed - a sisterly pat-on-the-back and "chin up!" from across the century, held in the roughened hands of housewives down the years. Beat that Waterstones!
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Children Love Poetry
Children are a natural audience for poetry. Sound, rhythm, rhyme, imagery, metaphor, metre - it's all playful, and play is a child's medium. So it's not surprising that children love poetry. Breakfast times in our house are sometimes accompanied by the soundtrack of Little Boy reeling off jokes from a giant joke book. Can be torturous. Recently though, this has been replaced by limericks from his Edward Lear compendium - he cracks up after every one, and listening to "There was a young lady whose chin/ resembled the point of a pin..." is much more easy on the ears than the latest offering from the Bumper Book of Kids' Jokes Volume III. Limericks seem to appeal to his sense of the absurd, and satisfy an instinctive need for rhythm and rhyme. Within a day of getting the book, he had raced up to his room, found pen and paper and attempted a couple of his own. Any book that inspires children to create spontaneous poetry has to be a winner.
One of my own favourites as a child was Spike Milligan's nonsense verse. Even now I'd find it hard to resist a poem which starts "On the Ning Nang Nong where the cows go bong". There's something deliciously subversive about these poems, too. Often the target of a poem is a usually-esteemed adult: "Through every nook an every cranny/The wind blew in on poor old granny." Cue lots of sniggers. And of course, these poems beg to be read aloud, which enriches the joy of playful language.
Another read-aloud favourite here is Dr Seuss's Oh Say Can You Say with it's one-after-the-other, increasingly-tricky tongue twisters, accompanied by gloriously bizarre illustrations, and peopled by characters such as the Fuddnuddler Brothers, "who like to pile each on the heads of the others." More than once, this book's been whipped from my hands with an excited "Can I read it?" Far more fun than The Cat In The Hat
But it doesn't all have to be silly stuff. The most beloved book here contains a collection of poets that include Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, Blake, Byron, Ted Hughes, Larkin, Longfellow, Andrew Marvell, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Wordsworth and WB Yeats. It's a children's collection, but not a worthy one. The chosen poems are not the usual suspects, and range from tiny couplets to longer narrative poems. There's a range of tone too, with one starting "Colonel Fazackerly Butterworth-Toast/ Bought an old castle complete with a ghost", and another, "The two executioners stalk along..." (Hardy of course - what did you expect!) It's The Usborne Book Of Poetry, a book of exquisite loveliness. In every childhood, it seems, there is a well-remembered book that is more than just the sum of its contents. It is usually hardbacked, with pages that crackle when you turn them, and pictures so vivid, or so whimsical, that you're immediately transported to that world. Often too, it seems, the content is strange and maybe just out of intellectual reach - a book which promises some treasures yet to come, a world of possibilities just beyond understanding. This is such a book. Its beautiful tactile cover is the colour of Wedgewood china, and embossed with looped silver writing and fern leaves. In the centre is an oval of colour - a painted tiger, looking straight into the reader's eyes and enticing you to enter. Inside, beyond the bright yellow endpapers, each slightly glossy page is washed with colour, and brought to life by magical illustrations that have an other-worldly quality. It feels like a book found in an old junk shop in a story about magic and adventure. As an object it is magical, and as an anthology it opens a world of mystery, tomfoolery and wonderful wordplay. Children love poetry, and with poetry books as fabulous as these, there's a whole lotta lovin' going on.
One of my own favourites as a child was Spike Milligan's nonsense verse. Even now I'd find it hard to resist a poem which starts "On the Ning Nang Nong where the cows go bong". There's something deliciously subversive about these poems, too. Often the target of a poem is a usually-esteemed adult: "Through every nook an every cranny/The wind blew in on poor old granny." Cue lots of sniggers. And of course, these poems beg to be read aloud, which enriches the joy of playful language.
Another read-aloud favourite here is Dr Seuss's Oh Say Can You Say with it's one-after-the-other, increasingly-tricky tongue twisters, accompanied by gloriously bizarre illustrations, and peopled by characters such as the Fuddnuddler Brothers, "who like to pile each on the heads of the others." More than once, this book's been whipped from my hands with an excited "Can I read it?" Far more fun than The Cat In The Hat
But it doesn't all have to be silly stuff. The most beloved book here contains a collection of poets that include Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, Blake, Byron, Ted Hughes, Larkin, Longfellow, Andrew Marvell, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Wordsworth and WB Yeats. It's a children's collection, but not a worthy one. The chosen poems are not the usual suspects, and range from tiny couplets to longer narrative poems. There's a range of tone too, with one starting "Colonel Fazackerly Butterworth-Toast/ Bought an old castle complete with a ghost", and another, "The two executioners stalk along..." (Hardy of course - what did you expect!) It's The Usborne Book Of Poetry, a book of exquisite loveliness. In every childhood, it seems, there is a well-remembered book that is more than just the sum of its contents. It is usually hardbacked, with pages that crackle when you turn them, and pictures so vivid, or so whimsical, that you're immediately transported to that world. Often too, it seems, the content is strange and maybe just out of intellectual reach - a book which promises some treasures yet to come, a world of possibilities just beyond understanding. This is such a book. Its beautiful tactile cover is the colour of Wedgewood china, and embossed with looped silver writing and fern leaves. In the centre is an oval of colour - a painted tiger, looking straight into the reader's eyes and enticing you to enter. Inside, beyond the bright yellow endpapers, each slightly glossy page is washed with colour, and brought to life by magical illustrations that have an other-worldly quality. It feels like a book found in an old junk shop in a story about magic and adventure. As an object it is magical, and as an anthology it opens a world of mystery, tomfoolery and wonderful wordplay. Children love poetry, and with poetry books as fabulous as these, there's a whole lotta lovin' going on.
Monday, 20 February 2012
Poetry Technology
Are there any poetry apps? And if not, why not? Poet-techies out there (there must be one, at least), I'd like to be able to listen to poets reading poetry at the touch of a screen. Am I just one voice crying in the wilderness?
Poets I like
Oh I do like Annie Freud. Especially in The Mirabelles. Only she could have a poem with the title "The Breast-Fed and the Un-Breast-Fed." And the poem be fabulous, to boot.
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Similes 'n' metaphors 'n' that
Back after a short haitus. Time is tight, as ever, and so reading has been adapted to fit what little time is available. I'm rather pleased, as it's meant I've been reading a lot more poetry. Delighted to discover Alice Oswald's new book, Memorial, an interpretation of Homer's Iliad. Oh, it's good.
Read, if just for the wonderful similes which tumble out with the relentlessness of the war and destruction they describe. But Oswald's The Thing In The Gap Stone Stile remains my favourite collection of hers.
Just to prove she's also a dab hand with a metaphor, here - on a seasonal note - is her description of frost (from "Pruning In Frost"):
Last night, without a sound,
a ghost of a world lay down on a world,
and again:
All life's ribbon frozen mid-fling
Wowzers. It's not all new-fangled stuff though. I've enjoyed a lingering re-visit to Ezra Pound's shorter poems.
It's hard not to read them without superimposing that slow, rumbling voice of his over the top, which only adds to the richness of the experience. He's another one who can work a simile - here, from "The Garden" :
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal of a sort of emotional anaemia.
How's that for an opening sentence? You've gotta love him. Apart from the fascism. And the insanity.
In the spirit of mixing similes 'n' metaphors 'n' that, I'll leave you with this: in the way an ancient heiffer heaves herself up from rest and makes her way, in a swaying plod across the field, I set out upon the wooden hill to Bedfordshire. Reader, goodnight.
Read, if just for the wonderful similes which tumble out with the relentlessness of the war and destruction they describe. But Oswald's The Thing In The Gap Stone Stile remains my favourite collection of hers.
Just to prove she's also a dab hand with a metaphor, here - on a seasonal note - is her description of frost (from "Pruning In Frost"):
Last night, without a sound,
a ghost of a world lay down on a world,
and again:
All life's ribbon frozen mid-fling
Wowzers. It's not all new-fangled stuff though. I've enjoyed a lingering re-visit to Ezra Pound's shorter poems.
It's hard not to read them without superimposing that slow, rumbling voice of his over the top, which only adds to the richness of the experience. He's another one who can work a simile - here, from "The Garden" :
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal of a sort of emotional anaemia.
How's that for an opening sentence? You've gotta love him. Apart from the fascism. And the insanity.
In the spirit of mixing similes 'n' metaphors 'n' that, I'll leave you with this: in the way an ancient heiffer heaves herself up from rest and makes her way, in a swaying plod across the field, I set out upon the wooden hill to Bedfordshire. Reader, goodnight.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
I'm feeling a bit Pam Ayres
So...
And at my back I often hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near
On this occasion prompting me to pick up Ted
So ticking clocks instead of poems fill my head.
The time is just announced: twelve forty-five
And so away goes pencil, Rachel, notepad. I must drive
To school! My small boy must be retrieved
And Flora woken from her sleep. She will be grieved!
But what can I do? My writing must fit in
With childcare, mess, meal prep and tidyin'.
Saturday, 30 May 2009
Perfect Morning
My perfect morning occurred on the recent Bank Holiday. With three children, a lie-in is not really a possibility, but there are advantages to rising early. The day dawned clear and forget-me-not blue, with a heat already in the air that promised a scorching day ahead. Mr Pram took the children downstairs for breakfast in the garden, ran me a bath and brought me breakfast in bed. Wholemeal toast, honey and a cup of Yannoh, a feather duvet, silence, sunshine and an Iris Murdoch (The Nice And The Good). Couldn't think of a better start to the day. If only every day began this way, I'd be in permanent Mary Poppins mood.
Friday, 15 May 2009
The Schlock of the New
I'm finding it harder and harder to find contemporary writers that I love. There are some I like. Patrick Gale. Helen Simpson. Some I really like - Esther Freud springs to mind. I'm always a little bit excited when she has a new book due out (I really must get a life).
But none I love, in the way that I love Antonia White, or Charlotte Bronte, or Wodehouse. I find myself more and more agitated these days trawling round Waterstones trying to find the book that'll hit the spot. Nothing's exciting. Everything's too tame and boringly middle class. Nobody dares any more. So although I threw down Nancy Mitford in exasperation last week, I still enjoyed the utter revelling in privilege in which she indulges. It felt good to be irritated.
No fettering of taste and correctness. Boldness. That's what's lacking now, and honesty. Nobody dares to offend anyone, or if they do, it's calculated - someone trying desperately to uncover a new taboo. Even then they're coming from that same place of Guardian-reading earnestness that taints everything with a liberal, moral high ground.
But none I love, in the way that I love Antonia White, or Charlotte Bronte, or Wodehouse. I find myself more and more agitated these days trawling round Waterstones trying to find the book that'll hit the spot. Nothing's exciting. Everything's too tame and boringly middle class. Nobody dares any more. So although I threw down Nancy Mitford in exasperation last week, I still enjoyed the utter revelling in privilege in which she indulges. It felt good to be irritated.
No fettering of taste and correctness. Boldness. That's what's lacking now, and honesty. Nobody dares to offend anyone, or if they do, it's calculated - someone trying desperately to uncover a new taboo. Even then they're coming from that same place of Guardian-reading earnestness that taints everything with a liberal, moral high ground.
So for sheer kicks I sought out the politically incorrect and the truly shocking. I read Flannery O'Connor. Fabulous.
I tossed aside the fluffy and emasculated horror of The Gruffalo at Little Boy's bedtime and instead read to him(with relish) a 1930s version of Hans Christian Andersen's The Tinder Box, complete with deliciously frightening descriptions of the dog with eyes as big as towers that swivelled round and round. He loved it, along with the graphic details of cutting off the witch's head with a sword.
I balanced out the terror by making chocolate cornflake cakes with him the next day (organic cornflakes, natch), so could still profess to being a good and thoughtful mummy. I over-reached myself a couple of days later, however. Spurred on by escaping the good and the bland, I re-told him the story of Little Red Riding Hood and decided to reclaim the wolf's true horror from the sing-songy cartoon versions of modern fairy tale books. Eschewing books completely, I told the tale with gusto, creeping up close to him to narrate the wolf's part with, if I say so myself, impressive lupine veracity. Sheer fright overtook him and he cracked me hard between the eyes with the heel of his hand. I really did see stars. I bet that's never happened to Julia Donaldson.
I tossed aside the fluffy and emasculated horror of The Gruffalo at Little Boy's bedtime and instead read to him(with relish) a 1930s version of Hans Christian Andersen's The Tinder Box, complete with deliciously frightening descriptions of the dog with eyes as big as towers that swivelled round and round. He loved it, along with the graphic details of cutting off the witch's head with a sword.
I balanced out the terror by making chocolate cornflake cakes with him the next day (organic cornflakes, natch), so could still profess to being a good and thoughtful mummy. I over-reached myself a couple of days later, however. Spurred on by escaping the good and the bland, I re-told him the story of Little Red Riding Hood and decided to reclaim the wolf's true horror from the sing-songy cartoon versions of modern fairy tale books. Eschewing books completely, I told the tale with gusto, creeping up close to him to narrate the wolf's part with, if I say so myself, impressive lupine veracity. Sheer fright overtook him and he cracked me hard between the eyes with the heel of his hand. I really did see stars. I bet that's never happened to Julia Donaldson.
Friday, 10 April 2009
Fictional Diaries
Well, I've been shamed into writing a new post, after many months absence. Life had taken over, I'm afraid. But nobody wants a run-down of the dull minutiae of my life. Or do they? Diaries are some of my favourite books for that very reason. Real diaries are fascinating in their own right - not for dazzling political or intellectual insights, but for the tiny crumbs of trivia, the petty details and ridiculous foibles of the great and the good - but fictional diaries are even better: funny, and crammed with the kind of domestic detail that make me want to pour myself a cup of earl grey and imagine myself at someone else's kitchen table, eavesdropping and flicking crumbs off the oilcloth. 
Here are more of my favourites:
King of the fictional diaries has to be Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith, written back in the 1890s. The premise sounds deeply unpromising: the life of a clerk in Victorian London. But boy, oh boy, it's funny. Utterly English, fascinating in its revelations of Victorian life, but most of all, one of those books that you wish you're still to discover. I love it, and it's hero, Charles Pooter, a man whose personality can be summed up in the entry, "I left the room with silent dignity, but caught my foot in the mat".
Here are more of my favourites:
The Diary of A Provincial Lady by EM Delafield (see previous posts for more on this book)
Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther - more mid-twentieth century afternoon teas
The Hens Dancing series by Raffaella Barker - modern, eccentric, but with the same vibe
The Dulcie Domum books by Sue Limb -a late 20th century Mrs Miniver
And the ones I can't bear to read, because I couldn't stand it if they weren't as good as the ones I've listed above:
The Bridget Jones diaries, by Helen Fielding.
Let me know if you have any more recommendations.
Monday, 16 June 2008
Children's books
The best kind of books are those that take you to a different world, where you can escape your own, immerse yourself somewhere else, so that you're surprised when you eventually look up and find yourself in your own armchair, or bed, or at your kitchen table. This holds for children's books too. As a book-obsessed person, reading to my own children is a mixed blessing. I want to transfer a love of books, so I want to read with passion. But it's hard to fake enthusiasm for the sixty-eighth rendition of Interactive-Sounds-Fireman-Sam. So I'm a mean mummy when it comes to books. I censor. Cue deep intake of breaths all round. Although my little children are allowed to own such terrible wastes of card and paper, they find that they are mysteriously buried at the bottom of the book basket. Or, if I'm in really Terrible Mother mode, I blatantly wrinkle my nose and say "let's read this one instead". Freedom to choose is all well and good, but if I'm the one who has to read and re-read, I want it to be a good book. Anything else is just a wasteful sapping of reading time. So...the favourite reading books for children in this book-dominated house are ones that I love too, where I can enter the world of the book, revel in the sounds, the rhythms, the illustrations. Where dreams take over.
The Katie Morag books, By Mairi Hedderwick, are a constant choice here. The stories are about the wonderful life of a little girl in the Scottish Islands, complete with a cast of characters so well rounded and quirky they could grace any George Eliot novel. There's Grannie Island, the smallholding, tractor-driving grandma who covers her beloved tractor in CND stickers, dad- who is oft found serving in the Island's post office and simultaneously changing a nappy and mum who - gasp - is frequently seen to be breastfeeding a baby. Not only are the stories themselves whimsical and delicious, but the watercolour illustrations invite you to disappear into the colours, the scenery, the homely world of Katie Morag. I could happily spend an hour poring over the pictures of Katie Morag curled up in the rocking chair by Grannie's Rayburn, or the Big Boy Cousins (Hector, Archie, Jamie, Dougal and Murdo Ian) wreaking havoc across the village.
Another favourite is the Alfie books by Shirley Hughes. Similar to the Katie Morag books in that they are not saccharine-sweet, and there is not a fairy or a spaceman in sight. This time, though, Alfie is a city child, who lives with his mum and baby sister, Annie Rose. What I love about these books, is that Shirley Hughes, like Mairi Hedderwick, knows children. So when Alfie goes to Bernard's birthday party, Bernard is naughty and won't take off a tiger mask that frightens one of the other guests, blows bubbles through a straw into his jelly and has it taken away by his mum! Again, the illustrations are beautiful, detailed and create a world you can lose yourself in. I love Bernard's back garden birthday party, decked out with balloons and a table with mismatched chairs, set out under a tree and groaning with the weight of cakes, jelly and sandwiches. In fact, Bernard's garden has inspired some of the decoration of my own garden when we've had parties, with balloons in the trees, bunting and general English tea-party loveliness! But there are also appealing drawings of the urban streets where Alfie lives, and his stories echo the kind of situations many little children encounter.
My First Born is long-past picture books. And although i wince every time I pass the bookshelves in her room and see rows of lurid-coloured paperbacks with titles like Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, I try to take heart that her bedroom actually has bookshelves filled with books and that she does read, albeit supplemented by piles of gossip mags with titles like Bliss and Sugar. But I remember the illicit thrill of Just Seventeen when I was a mid-teen, devouring the problem page (was it Dear Melanie?) along with the midget gems I used to buy on my Friday after-school trips to the newsagents. Ahh, those were the days. But, as a literate mother, I do poke my nose in unforgivably to my daughter's reading material. She has gone through the Jacqueline Wilson stage - all good in my opinion, as they encouraged her to be an avid reader - and was flailing for a while. So I sneaked in some books of my own. Holes, by Louis Sachar was an instant hit. The His Dark Materials books by Philip Pullman mysteriously appeared on her shelves, but she pooh-poohed these. Not one to give up, they were joined by some less-obviously-fantasy Pullman - The Butterfly Tattoo was a big hit. More hits were Coraline, by Neil Gaiman (once she stopped sniggering at his name) - a creepy pageturner about a girl who gets trapped in a parallel world. There are several illustrations throughout, some of which are terrifying. I enjoyed this one myself (and was a little bit scared). And The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Of the Asperger's sufferer narrator, she said "he's a bit like Dad, isn't he?" Make of that what you will. And she's currently deeply immersed in Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder - a history of philosophical thought in story form. Still sitting on her reading pile is Finding Violet Park by Jenny Valentine - it got rave reviews. I'll have to see if First Born agrees with them.
My own personal childhood faves were the Famous Five books. As a child I was blithely unaware of any alleged racist and sexist slant and tumbled head first into the adventures. I lived in that world and was often teased at school for using exclamations such as "Bother" and "Blow" rather than the more colourful Anglo-Saxon of the other kids. I couldn't have given a stuff. In my own head, I was off home soon for high tea, with buttered scones and home-made lemonade. That it was more likely to be Ross Beefsteaks and chips didn't bother me. I lived then, as now, in my books.
Another favourite that has followed me into adulthood is the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge. The tales, written in the 50s, follow the adventures of a prep school boy and his fellow pupils. I adore these - full of tales of ribbing the masters, and dive-bombing the tuck boxes and originator of phrases such as "What antiseptic eyewash, Jennings, you clod!" Whenever I'm feeling a bit low, even now, I get out my Jennings books. They are absolutely hilarious and open up a lost world of the English post-war prep school. I was dismayed to learn a few years back that they were to be re-issued to appeal to modern children and updated with computers, gameboys etc. No, no,no. This is to kill the essence of Jennings, Derbyshire and Co, who are so immensely of their time and place that to take them out of it would be to destroy them completely. I still root out the orange hardback copies in second-hand bookshops and it's always a thrill to find 'em. The phenomenom of the 'crossover' book didn't start with Harry Potter. A good book is a good book. Why should children be fobbed off with badly written tosh? And why should parents have to read it?!
The Katie Morag books, By Mairi Hedderwick, are a constant choice here. The stories are about the wonderful life of a little girl in the Scottish Islands, complete with a cast of characters so well rounded and quirky they could grace any George Eliot novel. There's Grannie Island, the smallholding, tractor-driving grandma who covers her beloved tractor in CND stickers, dad- who is oft found serving in the Island's post office and simultaneously changing a nappy and mum who - gasp - is frequently seen to be breastfeeding a baby. Not only are the stories themselves whimsical and delicious, but the watercolour illustrations invite you to disappear into the colours, the scenery, the homely world of Katie Morag. I could happily spend an hour poring over the pictures of Katie Morag curled up in the rocking chair by Grannie's Rayburn, or the Big Boy Cousins (Hector, Archie, Jamie, Dougal and Murdo Ian) wreaking havoc across the village.
Another favourite is the Alfie books by Shirley Hughes. Similar to the Katie Morag books in that they are not saccharine-sweet, and there is not a fairy or a spaceman in sight. This time, though, Alfie is a city child, who lives with his mum and baby sister, Annie Rose. What I love about these books, is that Shirley Hughes, like Mairi Hedderwick, knows children. So when Alfie goes to Bernard's birthday party, Bernard is naughty and won't take off a tiger mask that frightens one of the other guests, blows bubbles through a straw into his jelly and has it taken away by his mum! Again, the illustrations are beautiful, detailed and create a world you can lose yourself in. I love Bernard's back garden birthday party, decked out with balloons and a table with mismatched chairs, set out under a tree and groaning with the weight of cakes, jelly and sandwiches. In fact, Bernard's garden has inspired some of the decoration of my own garden when we've had parties, with balloons in the trees, bunting and general English tea-party loveliness! But there are also appealing drawings of the urban streets where Alfie lives, and his stories echo the kind of situations many little children encounter.
My First Born is long-past picture books. And although i wince every time I pass the bookshelves in her room and see rows of lurid-coloured paperbacks with titles like Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, I try to take heart that her bedroom actually has bookshelves filled with books and that she does read, albeit supplemented by piles of gossip mags with titles like Bliss and Sugar. But I remember the illicit thrill of Just Seventeen when I was a mid-teen, devouring the problem page (was it Dear Melanie?) along with the midget gems I used to buy on my Friday after-school trips to the newsagents. Ahh, those were the days. But, as a literate mother, I do poke my nose in unforgivably to my daughter's reading material. She has gone through the Jacqueline Wilson stage - all good in my opinion, as they encouraged her to be an avid reader - and was flailing for a while. So I sneaked in some books of my own. Holes, by Louis Sachar was an instant hit. The His Dark Materials books by Philip Pullman mysteriously appeared on her shelves, but she pooh-poohed these. Not one to give up, they were joined by some less-obviously-fantasy Pullman - The Butterfly Tattoo was a big hit. More hits were Coraline, by Neil Gaiman (once she stopped sniggering at his name) - a creepy pageturner about a girl who gets trapped in a parallel world. There are several illustrations throughout, some of which are terrifying. I enjoyed this one myself (and was a little bit scared). And The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Of the Asperger's sufferer narrator, she said "he's a bit like Dad, isn't he?" Make of that what you will. And she's currently deeply immersed in Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder - a history of philosophical thought in story form. Still sitting on her reading pile is Finding Violet Park by Jenny Valentine - it got rave reviews. I'll have to see if First Born agrees with them.
My own personal childhood faves were the Famous Five books. As a child I was blithely unaware of any alleged racist and sexist slant and tumbled head first into the adventures. I lived in that world and was often teased at school for using exclamations such as "Bother" and "Blow" rather than the more colourful Anglo-Saxon of the other kids. I couldn't have given a stuff. In my own head, I was off home soon for high tea, with buttered scones and home-made lemonade. That it was more likely to be Ross Beefsteaks and chips didn't bother me. I lived then, as now, in my books.
Another favourite that has followed me into adulthood is the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge. The tales, written in the 50s, follow the adventures of a prep school boy and his fellow pupils. I adore these - full of tales of ribbing the masters, and dive-bombing the tuck boxes and originator of phrases such as "What antiseptic eyewash, Jennings, you clod!" Whenever I'm feeling a bit low, even now, I get out my Jennings books. They are absolutely hilarious and open up a lost world of the English post-war prep school. I was dismayed to learn a few years back that they were to be re-issued to appeal to modern children and updated with computers, gameboys etc. No, no,no. This is to kill the essence of Jennings, Derbyshire and Co, who are so immensely of their time and place that to take them out of it would be to destroy them completely. I still root out the orange hardback copies in second-hand bookshops and it's always a thrill to find 'em. The phenomenom of the 'crossover' book didn't start with Harry Potter. A good book is a good book. Why should children be fobbed off with badly written tosh? And why should parents have to read it?!
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