Words our children no longer need to know

Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe. Dwarf, elf, goblin. Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar. Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade. Adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panther, pelican, piglet, plaice, poodle, porcupine, porpoise, raven, spaniel, starling, stoat, stork, terrapin, thrush, weasel, wren. Acorn, allotment, almond, apricot, ash, bacon, beech, beetroot, blackberry, blacksmith, bloom, bluebell, bramble, bran, bray, bridle, brook, buttercup, canary, canter, carnation, catkin, cauliflower, chestnut, clover, conker, county, cowslip, crocus, dandelion, diesel, fern, fungus, gooseberry, gorse, hazel, hazelnut, heather, holly, horse chestnut, ivy, lavender, leek, liquorice, manger, marzipan, melon, minnow, mint, nectar, nectarine, oats, pansy, parsnip, pasture, poppy, porridge, poultry, primrose, prune, radish, rhubarb, sheaf, spinach, sycamore, tulip, turnip, vine, violet, walnut, willow.

These are words that Oxford University Press has removed from the latest edition of its Junior Dictionary. I find this all so depressing that I can't bring myself to pass comment. Except to say that I find this all so depressing . . .

Full news story here, and an excellent blog post on the issue here .

Oliver Postgate, 1925-2008

Having posted a clip from The Clangers on my late-night musings about soup (and Soupdragons) yesterday, I was especially saddened this morning to hear the announcement of the death of Oliver Postgate, co-creator - with Peter Firmin - of that wonderful programme. Postgate's deliciously comforting voice is embedded deep in the soundtrack of my childhood.

There's a good obituary on the BBC website.

The blogosphere is already, unsurprisingly, awash with appreciations of Oliver Postgate and his work: where would we be today without Noggin the Nog , Ivor the Engine or The Pogles?

I was too old to appreciate his most popular series - Bagpuss - when it first hit the screen, but my children have certainly made up for that in subsequent years: the 'Complete Bagpuss' DVD still makes an appearance occasionally, and not just at the behest of the 7-year-old!

I'd like to remember Oliver Postgate today with something less familiar, indeed the one Postgate-Firmin creation which no-one else I've ever met seems to remember - The Pingwings.

These delightful little characters were knitted by Peter's sister Gloria, and their adventures were aired (in black and white) between 1963 and 1967, but never subsequently repeated. My parents didn't even possess a television in 1963, so I imagine that much of my vivid recollection of the Pingwings is owing to the novelty of watching it while staying with my maternal grandparents.

Here's the only Pingwings clip on YouTube. Until today, I didn't think I'd ever see them again, so I'm wallowing in misty-eyed nostalgia:

Edinburgh in October

This is plainly ridiculous, but . . .

For the sake of completeness, here's a short post about the remainder of my day in Edinburgh six weeks ago! There's nothing like running a little behind with one's blog.

At the opposite end of Bruntsfield Place from Halibut & Herring, resides The Children's Bookshop - home of Fidra Books and brainchild of Vanessa of the Fidra Blog ("The ramblings of a book-lover who created her dream job… ").

How very nice it was to have the chance to pop in and say 'hi' to Vanessa (above left) and some of her team - and, of course to choose a book each for the SDs. And these are the books which, with Vanessa's expert assistance, I posted home to the tribe:

After a quick but very welcome cup of coffee, I dashed across the road and hopped on a bus for my next destination, Princes Street, and thence to the Best Bar in Edinburgh. Where I enjoyed a surprise lunch (and a Guinness, naturally) with a very dear friend.

Apart from the wonderful decor, what I love about this place is that if you order a sandwich, what arrives at the table is a sandwich with salad and chips! Brilliant.

After that, it was tea at The Dome , which was already, in mid-October, lavishly decorated for Christmas.

I'm not a big fan of early decorations, but these were so unbelievably splendid that I let them off. By now, there will be a lofty Christmas tree rising up into the dome itself.

I have never in my life taken a photograph in a public (or indeed any other kind, come to think of it) lavatory, but the ladies' loos at The Dome are so sumptuous as to necessitate the quick snap above (bit blurry, but you get the general idea, and it's not minimalist).

My whirlwind day-trip ended, emotionally for me, at the National Gallery of Scotland , a stroll through the Princes Street Gardens, and back to Waverley Station for my return trip to Berwick.
A day I shall remember always.

War Horse

Woke last Sunday to the threat of snow.

By the time the children and I were leaving for Colchester Rugby Club at 9.00, it was falling fast. With tedious predictability, and despite this weather having been forecast for a week, the roads were ungritted and cars and buses were sliding backwards down hills and slipping on roundabouts.

Made it to the rugby club, only to find that all training and matches had all been cancelled. Northeast Essex was grinding to a halt. This did not augur well for the rest of the day.

SDs 1 and 2 and I were planning to catch a train to London at midday. Would the trains be running? And if they were, and the snow continue to fall, would they still be running when it was time to come home?

I sat in the rugby club, drinking hot chocolate and making calls to stations and theatres on my mobile, not one of which eased my mounting grumpfest.

Someone brought me a consoling bacon roll. I bit into it. It contained a slimy fried egg. I have nothing against eggs, per se. I just don't appreciate being surprised by slimy fried ones in the morning. Or ever, really.

I added 'feeling queasy' to my list of insurmountable trials and tribulations, along with the prospect of cancelling a long-awaited pre-Christmas treat, nursing half-frozen toes, and, most worryingly, wondering what had happened to the chin-up-best-foot-forward attitude which had been drummed into me since earliest childhood. Weep, wail, and woe was me.

Someone sensibly suggested that I pull myself together. I agreed. We drove to the railway station. The trains were running. We bought tickets. The snow turned to gentle rain. We ate some egg-free bacon rolls on the station (it was a bacon-rolly kind of a day). We boarded our train - and lo! there were seats!

We sat back and read books for the hour-long journey. Mine was Michael Morpurgo's children's novel, War Horse, which I was attempting to finish before we arrived at our final destination - the National Theatre - to see this year's revival of the award-winning stage adaptation.


My children and I are great fans of former Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo's books (I reviewed one of last year's favourites here).

Morpurgo has written about the inspiration behind War Horse:

'I was in the pub . . . "Are you writing another book, Michael?" said the old man sitting opposite me by the fire, cradling his pint. I told him that I'd come across an old painting of a cavalry charge in the First World War. The British cavalry were charging up a hill towards the German position, one or two horses already caught up on the barbed wire. I was trying, I told him, to write the story of the First World War, as seen through the eyes of a horse.

"I was there in 1916," the old man told me, his eyes filling with tears. "I was there with the horses too." He talked for hours about the horse he'd loved and left behind at the end of the war, how the old horse had been sold off to the French butchers for meat.

I determined then and there to tell the story of such a horse. But how to tell it? I had to find a way that didn't take sides. So I conceived the notion that I might write the story of the First World War as seen through a horse's eye, a horse that would be reared on a Devon farm, a horse that goes to the front as a British cavalry horse, is captured by the Germans and used to pull ambulances and guns.'

You can read the whole of his account of the genesis of the novel here.

A million horses were taken to France from Britain in in the First World War. Only 62,000 returned. War Horse tells the story of one of them - Joey, who arrives on a Devon farm as a frightened young foal and is befriended, nurtured and trained - both as a hunter and to pull a plough - by young Albert Narracott. When war breaks out, Albert is too young to join the army and is forced to part from Joey when the horse is taken into military service and sent to France. Eventually, Albert manages to join up (under-age), and sets of for France to fight for King and country but, most urgently, to seek the horse with whom he's formed so close a bond.

Apart from knowing that the play had received enthusiastic reviews when it first took to the stage in 2007, and that it used puppets, I didn't have very much idea what to expect when we took our seats and the lights went down.

What followed was one of the most brilliantly inventive productions I've witnessed in all my long theatre-going days. The horses - brought to life by the wizardry of the Handspring Puppet Company, and each one operated (animated, in the true sense of the word) by teams of actors - are so acutely lifelike that they simply defy all expectations.

It really is quite impossible to describe their movement in words or photographs. They twitch, they frisk, they shy, they shudder and, yes, sadly, some of them die. I have not wept over puppets since I was about three. But I was not alone in finding Joey and his companion in arms, Topthorn, heartbreakingly moving. The tears streamed.

The stagecraft was mesmerising - lighting, sounds and music conveying the horror and carnage of battle so vividly that the hairs on the back of my neck were exhausted by the end of it all. It was completely involving in every respect. And I clapped so hard I raised bruises on the palms of my hands!

Special mention must go to the brilliance of the teams who operated the horses, and a deeply moving performance by newcomer Kit Harington, for his portrayal of Albert Narracott, from humble farm boy to battle-scarred soldier. Also central to the show was the 'Song Man', Tim van Eyken, whose narrative musical interludes wove together the shifting scenes quite hauntingly. Singer, melodeon player and winner of the BBC Young Traditional Musician of the Year, van Eyken's website plays some nice tracks from his album Stiffs Lovers Holymen Thieves.

You can read Michael Billington's review from 2007 here and Charles Spencer's here.

And here are Morpurgo, cast members, audience reactions and a very brief glimpse of the puppets in action:

So, a memorable day from start to finish. The bruises on my hands disappeared after a couple of days, but the bruises on my legs, where I repeatedly kicked myself (and continue to do so) for not having taken my camera with me are still much in evidence. Why in heaven's name had I imagined there would be nothing to photograph? Eejit!

The light as we walked over the Thames via Hungerford foot bridge was spectacular - glinting on the London Eye through the complex structures of the adjacent railway bridge. I saw hundreds of photographs begging to be snapped!

And then there was the South American jazz band, playing a witty version of Jingle Bells, with a big yellow plastic barrel for a drum. And . . . the Christmas fair on the South Bank; skateboarders leaping against a backdrop of spraycan art on concrete; the wonderful Dazzle exhibition of jewellery and other delights; the children, eating chocolate cakes whilst enjoying the fabulous foyer music of Errol Linton (vocals and harmonica) accompanied (quite thrillingly) by Jean Pierre Lampé on double bass - kind of blues with a reggae feel

. . . so many pictures I could have shared. Ah well. I won't make that mistake again!

Here's Errol Linton doing his stuff:

Oh, and finally, our grateful thanks to Jane at Books, Mud and Compost, without whose timely tip-off about tickets going on sale I should never have grabbed our three seats for War Horse many months ago. Thanks Jane!

Does this explain everything or nothing?

How do we acquire aesthetic awareness?

Naturally, as a (ahem) right-thinking, Guardian-reading, NCT-subscribing, art-loving mother, I took great care to ensure not only that my babies listened to plenty of Bach and Mozart in utero, but also that they were surrounded from their earliest days only by the very finest visual stimuli. No kitchy trash allowed in my Parenting Project, thankyouverymuch. Oh no, certainly not. Only the best for my babies. How else could I ensure that they would develop Exquisite Good Taste and the enhanced appreciation of line, colour and form commensurate with their borderline genius status?

After all, they were Children of Mine, and I, naturally, have all those qualities (excepting the borderline genius bit, obviously) in abundance, don't I? It must have been the way I was brought up by my own discerning parents. 

Well . . . actually, NOT! Here are a few pages from some of the children's books (comparatively few of them, compared with the abundance owned by the current generation) I used to pore over for hours at a time (no telly in them days!).

And look - aren't they just hideous? The epitome of kitch. If they weren't a precious part of my childhood, I wouldn't give them house room.

One thing, though - perhaps this picture explains my penchant for finding spectacular sunsets heavenly?

There are undoubtedly plenty of instructive conclusions to be drawn from all this.

I'm just not sure I want to investigate them!

Age-banding update

The children's books age-banding debate rages on.

The Society of Authors has added an extra session at their Cambridge Children’s Writers & Illustrators Conference, 29-31 August, to include a discussion on age guidance. They are keen to air all views.

The session will be chaired by R4’s Libby Purves and will include Philip Pullman and Anne Fine, prime movers behind the No to Age Banding appeal, Graham Marks from Publishing News and Becky Stradwick UKHQ Children’s Buyer from Borders. Publishers have also been invited to take part. Other conference speakers include Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen, Hollywood scriptwriter William Nicholson, multi-award winner Anthony Browne and rising star of illustration, Polly Dunbar.

For further details about the conference, click here.

Distracted

Too overwhelmed with work this week to get my head round some long overdue book reviews. As soon as I've shifted a particularly complicated manuscript off my desk, however, I shall apply myself to musing about some excellent recent reads.

Meanwhile, briefly, a couple of updates:

Some very welcome developments on the No to Age-Banding campaign collected together on The Fidra Blog (see in particular the comment from Steve Augarde under the main post).

A round-up of Buy a Friend a Book Week prize draws on Juxtabook. And just a reminder that for your chance to win a copy of my favourite booky book of all time, J L Carr's Harpole & Foxberrow: General Publishers, just leave a comment here. The draw will be on Saturday. (NB something has gone wrong with Blogger and it won't let me add any more names to the list on the sidebar. I hope this is a temporary blip. Meanwhile, rest assured that, if you leave a comment or send an email asking to be included, then your name will definitely go into the hat.)

Finally, thanks to everyone who joined in my little First Blogversary celebration, both via comments and by email. Thanks so much for your very kind words.

Age banding/branding - update

The campaign against age-banding/branding now contains more than 1,700 signatures.

Since my last round-up, I've landed upon some more views in the blogosphere:

Adele Geras on the Guardian blog

It's a Crime (or a Mystery)

Fictions

ManiacMum

The Naughty Step

A chair, a fireplace & a tea cozy (for a view from the US)

Phil Bradley

and some second thoughts on the matter from Books, Mud and Compost

plus [later addition] here's Alan Garner's comment on Fidra blog's excellent post on the subject:

"The Thought Police seem to have been wrong-footed by the surge of rage over this proposed attack at the root of literature. My agent and I each objected to age banding, and my publisher, HarperCollins, has agreed not to apply age banding to any of my work. Philip Pullman reports the same instant climb-down. The speed with which the publishers have backed off may be simple courtesy (yet why were authors not consulted in the first place?), or there may be something in Kay Tie’s blog in the Telegraph last week, which pointed out that authors now have moral rights in law. Did the Publishers’ Association take legal advice before attempting a fait accompli? It could be, though this is only conjecture, that the Association is now running scared. Anyway, let’s hope so. The best way forward is for as many authors and illustrators as possible to object to their publishers; and to do it now. Once the pebbles start to tumble out of the dyke, the structure must fail."

and [even later addition - I can't keep up!] yet more on Fidra about what's really behind age-banding - ie more Tescofication of our lives . . .

Age-branding - more pros and cons

The age-branding debate is still bubbling away. Here are some more bloggers who've joined the fray:

Table Talk

Books, Mud and Compost

Logorrhea

Emma at Snowbooks

An afterthought on Fidra, wondering about the silence on the issue from a certain JKR.

Also see the dozens of interesting comments onthe Telegraph's piece


Jean Hannah Edelstein on the Guardian blog - again, worth a look at the dozens of comments from both camps (including a couple from Meg Rosoff, who is vehemently pro age-branding - or at least vehemently anti the anti-branding protesters!)

By far the most important contribution I've seen today, however, is Catherine's long, impassioned, thought-provoking and persuasive argument on Juxtabook in favour of some form of age-branding. It's a message from the coalface - from someone who's worked with children for whom books play no part in their home or family life. Is this whole debate simply about middle-class children and their reading, she suggests. And while writers, editors, librarians, readers and middle-class parents are all adding their names to the petition in droves, where, asks Catherine, are the voices of the teachers in all this? It's excellent stuff -and I would urge everyone who's interested in this issue to read it.

One small response to Catherine's piece which springs to mind is that bookshops, libraries, the ELC shops, and even supermarkets, all shelve children's fiction in broad age categories anyway. Some more specifically than others, but there is usually some clear indication, so that the most bored and uninterested Saturday assistant can point and say 'over there' in a rough approximation of 'help' for the frightened once-a-year book buyer.

But this kind of broad guidance isn't the same as a publisher printing a million stickers and then trying to squeeze each of their children's books into a single age-banded category in a formulaic fashion. I can't help seeing Catherine's boys who only wanted 'boys' books' (presumably because they needed to reinforce their view of themselves as tough and non-girly) as the other side of the coin from the hesitant reader aged 10 who doesn't want to be seen reading a book with an 'age 6 to 8' sticker on it.

And we keep using the word 'stickers', but I'm sure we've all encountered those dreaded 'stickers' which turn out to be printed on the covers (I'll mention no names but the letters R and J spring to mind) because how much more economical that is for the publishers, in the long run, than paying for the additional palaver of applying stickers to existing books. If 'stickering' goes ahead on what's in the warehouses now, then come the reprints it'll be non-removable, non-optional, printed flashes on covers.

And it is that to which the authors who are heading up this campaign are so adamantly opposed, because it's the thin end of a very fat and festering wedge.

*************

Anyway, this is all most exhausting and I'm off now in search of the corkscrew and a good book. On a lighter bookish note - Legend Press are conducting a survey of fiction reading habits in the UK . I suspect that the results will show 'reading habits of bookbloggers and existing purchasers of Legend Press books', and thus be somewhat skewed, but hey, they've asked for our input, so we may as well spill the beans (it's not very complicated and takes about 1 minute to complete).

Bloggers and buyers taking a stand

Following the report in last week's Bookseller that publishers are determined to press ahead with their ill-conceived plan to stamp age branding on children's books, and Darren Shan's impassioned argument on Vulpes Libris, it's been exciting to see the book blogging community, over the weekend, adding its weight to the campaign opposing this move.

I vented my own spleen at unnecessary length here. And from a quick whiz around the blogosphere this evening I see that many others are raising their voices and signing the petition, among them: Emma Darwin; Random Distractions; Fictionbitch; Fidra blog and Dovegreyreader (in a guest post by Steve Augarde). I'm sure there are, and will be, many more.

If this is something you feel strongly about too, then you can add your name to the petition here, which now comprises well over a thousand names.

And on the other current bookselling hot-potato, Amazon's falling out with Hatchette, the UK's biggest publishing group, which accuses the online giant of a 'breach of trust' with its customers, see Emma Darwin , and also BlogRabbit (the blog of BookRabbit.com).

Perhaps this might be a very good juncture at which to consider abandoning the over-powerful Amazon and hopping over to BookRabbit or one of the other excellent alternatives which are expanding their range of services for customers, at a time when Amazon seems intent on alienating both publishers and buyers.

Not suitable for all readers

Should children's books display 'age branding', labelling them 'suitable' for a particular age range?
Publishers, it seems, have decided that they will sell loads more children's books if they brand them all with an age recommendation and are pressing ahead with a move to make this the industry standard on book covers.

The campaign No to Age Branding passionately believes that this is a wholly misguided step:

'We are writers, illustrators, librarians, teachers, publishers and booksellers. Some of the undersigned writers and illustrators have a measure of control over what appears on the covers of their books; others have less.

But we are all agreed that the proposal to put an age-guidance figure on books for children is ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers, and highly unlikely, despite the claims made by those publishers promoting the scheme, to make the slightest difference to sales.

We take this step to disavow publicly any connection with such age-guidance figures, and to state our passionately-held conviction that everything about a book should seek to welcome readers in and not keep them out.'

Since the campaign went online on 2 June it has received over 800 messages of support.

Signatories include Philip Pullman, Quentin Blake, Anne Fine , Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Rosen, Shirley Hughes, Anthony Horowitz, Terry Pratchett, Alan Garner, Alexander McCall Smith, Nina Bawden and Darren Shan, as well as many less well-known writers and illustrators, librarians, teachers, booksellers, editors and parents.

Darren Shan offered his forceful, cogent, 'definitive' argument against age-branding on the consistently excellent Vulpes Libris yesterday.

He is absolutely right.

I am extremely lucky. I have never had to cope with dyslexia or any other learning difficulty, either personally or as a parent. My children all read well for their ages but, even so, each of them stalls quite frequently, and needs some (low-key, softly-softly) encouragement to help them pick up something to read which will absorb them completely and carry them off again, into other worlds and down new avenues of discovery and enjoyment. It often seems that, at any given moment, I have two reading voraciously and one who's 'stuck', unable to find exactly the right thing.

I don't despair, however, because I remember only too well the wilderness years in my own early adolescence when I was too old for Enid Blyton and pony stories, but not old enough for Charlotte Bronte or Jane Austen. What I remember most of all was (a) yearning for books which would give me the kind of all-consuming enjoyment which Enid Blyton had given me at the age of 7; and (b) harbouring a steely determination not (on any account) to read anything of which my mother had proclaimed 'when I was your age I was reading this'. (Hence I have never read Treasure Island or Children of the New Forest!)

After a lot of browsing through mainly non-fiction in my early and mid-teens, I discover Monica Dickens and Daphne du Maurier and then Thomas Hardy and - whoosh! - I was off and have never really stopped. Right up until A-level, however, the books on my school's curriculum seemed absolutely guaranteed to turn off any interest in reading whatever. Apart from some dire and deeply boring 'age-appropriate' novels, written apparently exclusively for the schools market, I was forced to plough reluctantly through H Rider Haggard and T E Lawrence, plus Dickens at far too young an age. All jolly good improving stuff for a Boy's Grammar School in the 1940s, perhaps, but this was the 1970s and I was a girl!

The relevance of these autobiographical ramblings is that what got me reading again was not the pointed recommendations of my mother but chance encounters with interesting novels which I discovered for myself. They were never books which declared themselves 'suitable for my age-group'.

I read my first Agatha Christie under the bedclothes with a torch while staying with my great-aunt, and felt very daring for having purloined it from her shelves. I sneaked Tess of the d'Urbervilles out of the 'senior' section of the school library when I was really only eligible to borrow books from the 'junior' section. I read my first Ian Fleming James Bond when I was 12 - stolen from the top shelf of my father's bookcase purely because its position there flagged up the fact that it was 'unsuitable for children'.

As a former bookseller I am only too familiar with the customer who wants 'something suitable for a 7-year-old boy'. My own response was always to try to establish what kind of 7-year-old we were talking about. What were his likes and dislikes? Was he able to read to himself or were we looking at something which he'd enjoy having read to him? Often the customer didn't have the first idea. The 7-year-old was a godson, or a nephew. They were on uncertain ground (and consequently often defensive - even aggressive). They would have loved to see stickers on books which branded them 'suitable for 7-year-old boys you don't know very well'. But what effect would such stickers have had on the 7-year-old boy who came in to browse through books himself? If a book had a 'suitable for 8-year-olds' sticker on it, would he reject it? Yes, probably, he would. Which would be a Bad Thing. A Very Bad Thing Indeed.

Here on the Muddy Island, we have been sorting out SD#3's bookcase these past few days. 'Oh, I can't have this any more, you'd better send it to the charity shop', she said, holding up Stories for Five Year Olds. 'But you love those stories', I replied, 'don't you want to read them any more?' 'Yes', she answered, 'but I'm 6 now, so I can't'.

Age branding helps the hesitant buyer of books for their own or (more likely) other people's children. It certainly does not help children themselves. If children are exposed to a wide range of books, at school, in libraries and at home, they will find what is right for them. It may be a surprising choice. It may very well not be what we would have chosen for them ourselves. But they will be becoming real readers and forming the habits of a lifetime.

Personally, I take a fairly 'how dare you?' attitude to being 'marketed at' by publishers or by purveyors of any consumer goods. I want to discover things all by myself, thankyouverymuch. I do not fall for the transparently cynical 'hey, if we make the cover of this useless book look almost identical to the cover of that good and very popular book then those stupid mugs will buy it' conspiracy between too many publishers' marketing and design departments. I don't know many people who do fall for it, but still the publishers persist. Neither am I particularly keen (call me a snob by all means ) on having non-removable 'stickers' printed on to the book I am reading which proclaims it to be a favourite of Richard and Judy's.

How much worse, then, to be 8 yet to find that the stories one really, really loves in all the world are stamped with the words 'suitable for aged 2-4'. How would that make us feel? Babyish. Foolish. Hopeless. Lost.

(Which brings me neatly to another first-rate post on Vulpes Libris, about the estimable publishers Barrington Stoke , who publish ‘real’ books for less able or struggling readers. So a 14-year-old with a reading age of 6 or 7 will find books with themes, characters and plots which interest and excite them rather than have to be stuck with books aimed far younger readers.)

I've signed the No to Age Banding petition. If, reflecting on your own reading journey and/or those of your children, you too feel strongly that books should welcome readers in and not keep them out, then do please sign up too

.

Allan and Janet Ahlberg

Very pleased to see that Millie's Grandma's Bookshelf, over at Random Distractions, already contains a copy of Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg.

The Ahlberg's books formed an important part of my own children's home library when they were very young. Other big favourites here included Peepo! , The Jolly Postman and The Jolly Christmas Postman (indeed, SD#3, who is six and a half, still adores the Jolly Postman books).


From the 1970s until Janet's premature death in 1994, Allan and Janet Ahlberg were one of the most successful author/illustrator teams in the world of children's books. After Janet's death, Allan wrote and privately published a beautiful and very moving account of her life and their work together, Janet's Last Book, which was subsequently published in paperback by Penguin but is now out of print and quite expensive to buy second-hand. (So if you ever see a copy in a charity shop, snap it up quick! ) I have a copy somewhere, but can't lay my hands on it right now.

There's an excellent account of the Ahlbergs' lives and work on the Puffin website , more about Allan's books published since Janet's death at Walker Books, and a good illustrated interview in the Telegraph, which is well worth reading.

Allan - now happily remarried - has recently celebrated his 70th birthday, and was featured in this excellent radio portrait, broadcast earlier this week and available on 'listen again' until 9 June. Highly recommended, even if you're not familiar with his books.

You can hear Allan reading some of his poems on the Children's Poetry Archive.

A favourite island artist

Seeing some lovely photos of Loch Linnhe (which lies between Glencoe and Fort William in western Scotland) while surfing around some photography sites has inspired me to extract another book from the TBR Mountain (the height of which is reaching Highland proportions itself). And this is what I have chosen: Sea Change: The Summer Voyage from East to West Scotland of the "Anassa", by Mairi Hedderwick.

I bought this three years ago while saying on Mull but have never got round to reading it. At the same time, I bought Eye on the Hebrides - a personal record in words and sketches of Mairi Hedderwick's six-month solitary journey of the Western Isles of Scotland - and Highland Journey: Sketching Tour of Scotland Retracing the Footsteps of Victorian Artist John T. Reid , both of which I did read at the time.

Sea Change slipped through the net, but I'm really looking forward to snuggling down with it. The back-cover blurb is promising:

'What possessed Mairi Hedderwick to undertake a six-week voyage with the Captain down the Caledonian Canal and out to sea in a small, antiquated sailing boat? . . . The names of the places she visited ring out like an old Gaelic song: Lock Linnhe, Loch Etive, Lochs Ailort and Moidart,Loch Nevis, Loch na Droma Buidhe, Loch a'Choire and Loch Leven. And finally, mysteriously, to the "island", her old home, her pilgrimage complete and the purpose of the journey fulfilled.'

There are hand-drawn maps and pull-out watercolour panoramas. I'll post a review here as soon as I've finished it. It seems that it's out of print, but there is a plentiful supply of new and used copies on offer via Amazon and Abe Books.

Mairi Hedderwick is one of my family's top favourite artist-writers. It all started when SD# was a toddler and I used to take her down to Colchester library every week, and it was there that we first discovered Katie Morag.

Katie Morag McColl lives on the tiny fictional Hebridean island of Struay , where her mother is the postmistress. Her father runs the island shop (and in later stories the island Bistro), and her 'Grannie Island' has a croft at the other side of the bay. Grannie Island drives a tractor and wears wellies and doesn't suffer fools gladly - especially Katie's other grandmother, Grandma Mainland, a city-dwelling confection of frothy pink clothes, feathery hats, wafting perfume and bouffant silvery hair.

Struay is populated by a delightful collection of characters of all ages, and Katie's adventures are homely but significant for small children, and filled with love, laughter and the sound of the sea. When a new baby arrives in the family, Katie gets in a grump and hurls her beloved teddy in the tea - but luckily, he survives a few submarine adventures of his own and the tide washes him up on the beach. Katie gets into scrapes with her visiting Boy Cousins, shampoos a sheep ready for the Island Show, makes a point of visiting her neighbours on Baking Day, and takes a starring role in Grandma Mainland's wedding to a local fisherman (spoiler alert!!).

The stories are amusing and realistic, and the illustrations are sheer delight. Hedderwick performs a wonderfully reassuring service to harassed, imperfect mothers who juggle work and family, by portraying a domestic life of general untidiness and sometimes utter chaos. No picture of Katie's bed is complete without a discarded apple core beneath it, and Mrs McColl struggles with breastfeeding and teething babies and burns the cakes on the day an important guest is coming for tea.

If you're new to Katie Morag, I recommend a quick look at her very own web page and suggest that the best book to start with is The Big Katie Morag Storybook, which collects together a selection of stories and poems.

Here's a quick biog of Hedderwick which I've lifted from her publisher's site:

Mairi was born in Gourock, Scotland in 1939. At the age of 17 she took a job as a mother's help on the Island of Coll in the Hebrides and there began a life-long love affair with islands and small communities bounded by sea. After attending the Edinburgh College of Art, Mairi married and had two children, Mark and Tamara. In 1962 she decided to opt out of the rat race, and the family moved to Coll where they lived in a house three miles from the nearest neighbour with no road or electricity, with the only water available from a well. The Isle of Struay, setting for Katie Morag, is loosely based on Coll, and some of the content reflects Mairi's own experiences: Katie's toys are those of her own children, Granny Island's Rayburn stove was Mairi's own, and Mairi admits she has thrown her own teddy bear into the sea - twice!. As an adult! As well as writing and illustrating children's books Mairi writes and illustrates travel books for adults. She spend a lot of time visiting schools and is always accompanied by Katie Morag's teddy that travels with her in a black bag.


And she featured in Scotland on Sunday's 'Welcome to My World' series last weekend, which you can read here here. I certainly like the sound of her 'perfect weekend'!

You can download and print this Katie Morag bookplate absolutely free, as many times as you wish, from Anne Fine's wonderful My Home Library website (there are loads of other bookplates here and printable bookmarks here - altogether a bit of a must for parents and teachers, this one).

And finally, while this Hebridean Desk Address Book sits on my desk (where else?), I do rather hanker after some other spin-offs in the Hedderwick range. There's a Hebridean Desk Diary, a Hebridean Visitors Book and a Hebridean Birthday Book.

Catching up

Gosh, has it really been five days since my previous post?

Usual excuses: work, work, family, work, family . . . oh, and I've even been reading books!

Yes, it happened yesterday:

while SD#1 and her father were in the European City of Culture, videoing and photographing, respectively, their favourite band at the most famous club in the world;

while SD#2 recovered quietly from his birthday party at Mersea Outdoors, a picnic, an afternoon and evening walking from East to West Mersea and playing on the beach, staying up to watch the Eurovision Song Contest, a sleepover with a couple of friends and playing all morning in the garden despite the pouring rain (their idea, not mine);

while SD#3 watched back-to-back classic musicals (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Oliver and Annie) while simultaneously trying out some new ‘blending chalks’, completing half a Ratatouille colouring book, and making ‘rubbings’ of every textured surface in the house;

while the washing machine chuntered patiently through several loads of muddy clothes and the wind and rain lashed the windows (hard to believe after such a glorious Saturday) . . .

I sat in a chair and I read a book.

And then I read another one.

It is hard to describe quite how luxurious this felt. A rare treat. I could get used to it.

Anyway, what with one thing and another, I’ve had time for only the briefest skim across the blogosphere but here are some bits and bobs I’ve landed on:

* Are there simply Too Many Books out there?

* If so, maybe Amazon’s swingeing new rules on selling Print on Demand titles will help . . .

* Is there ever anything new in Crime Fiction?

* Hooray (as always) for Mick Inkpen. But which Kipper character are you? (And why couldn’t I find a copy my favourite Inkpen title in any local bookshops last weekend?)

* A comment on marginalia on one of my favourite blogs leads to an enquiry into the implications of Green Ink.

* Further ripples in the Sea Glass pond.

* And Leonard Cohen is back.

Hallelujah!