Why were the royals weeping? by T. M. Alexander

Despair at the lack of spontaneity, creativity and inspiration in education thanks to the straitjacket it's forced to wear had no place last Thursday at the Deer Park Hotel (the only place I've ever encountered men in breeches that were neither hunting nor scrambling up a crag).

Deer Park Country Hotel

For the fifth year I was the judge of a children's short story competition run by the Honiton Writers Group. For the fifth year I was blown away by the inventiveness and enthusiasm of young minds, the eloquence and courage. The event is so happy and feel-good that it's not just the kids that go away beaming - everyone from the hotel staff to the grandparents have only praise for the initiative that has grown every year. And me, I bask in the positivity of it all.

This year there were 400 entires, from 5 to 15 years. The youngest winner was 6. Can a 6-year old write a story worth reading? Yes. Loretta's idea was about the Mona Lisa coming to life, leaning out of the frame and finding she had no bottom. I hope you're laughing. In the younger age groups humour is common, whereas by 12 the submissions are mostly bleak. (Think back to your teenage poetry - or was that just me?) Bucking the trend was Sarah, who wrote a touching story of a hat waiting to be bought. The hat's joy at finally leaving the shop was brilliantly conveyed. The desolation when the wearer returned it, unbearable. (Don't worry, she came back for it.)

My favourite line was by Harriet, aged 8, who started her story with 'why are the royals weeping?' That became my mantra for the evening, and I tweeted it. A close second was 'there was a large sign saying "Bowels"' - a perfectly appropriate statement given that Sophie's story was called 'Lost in the Body.' Harrison wrote an edge-of-the-seat drama that seemed bound to end in carnage but he was fooling with the reader as I found out when the terrifying event turned out to be a death slide at the local pool. He was also a winner in 2011 and hadn't looked back since, completely changing his attitude to putting pen to paper in all subjects. As we all know, a little encouragement can go a long way. While we tucked into the buffet, several of the children came to tell me their ideas for next year. I'm looking forward to reading about Lady Lalum already.

Winners in the 5-8 age group

I asked the winners for permission to use snippets of their work in this blog. 'Come and find me afterwards if you don't want me to,' I said. This lot in the photo waited until after the buffet to come up behind me en masse and shout 'we don't want you to!' I nearly fell for it.

I was on the M5 North when I heard the news that Nelson Mandela had died. Unlike Obama, protesting against anti-apartheid wasn't my first political act - I'd been to Greenham Common with my mum and sister carrying a WI-type basket of food including a Victoria sponge. It was however the cause that, thanks to my sister, was a big part of my coming of age. She became secretary of the Anti-apartheid group in Walthamstow and I went along whenever I could. We marched through a London estate where the pavements were full of National Front types and scary dogs, were there at the Free Mandela concert, learnt to sing the beautiful Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica - Lord Bless Africa, which always makes me cry, sold T-shirts, mugs and tea towels at every fair that would have us, and celebrated when he was freed as though we knew him in person. Memories of those years came back clear and bright - Cry Freedom, Joe Slovo, Winnie Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Trevor Huddlestone . . . as I drove, listening to Jacob Zuma on the World Service and then Radio 4's epitaph. 

I was pleased when I got home, red-eyed, to find my 16-year old still up and about. He was indignant at a post by one of his friends on Facebook, seconds after the news, dissing all the RIPs that would now appear. My son called him an unrepeatable word, which in the circumstances I approved of. The cynic took down his post shortly afterwards. The friends were reconciled, something 'Africa's greatest son' would have approved of.

www.tmalexander.com

Children Don't Change - John Dougherty

Individual children change, of course. They grow up, and much too quickly for my liking. And childhood changes, because it’s a cultural construct and our culture is ever-changing; and also because some childhoods are filled with more horrid plastic toys than others.

But what a child actually is - that doesn’t change. A twenty-first century baby is no different from a Tudor baby, or a Viking baby, or a stone-age baby; and a modern child has the same needs for love and nurture as any of its historical counterparts. I’m therefore deeply suspicious when anyone working in the field of children’s books talks about ‘the modern child’ or ‘our readers’ as if they’re substantially different from the children the industry was serving ten, or twenty, or a hundred years ago.

My daughter has recently become something of a Beano addict, so for Christmas - among other things - we gave her a big pile of Beano back-issues. She loved them. It became at times impossible to have a conversation with her that wasn’t preceded by “Put that Beano down!”

The interesting thing about this is that they weren’t new Beanos. They were 35 years old or so - copies I’d saved from my own childhood, and which had recently emerged from the back of a dark cupboard. And while she loves the old Dennis the Menace and Minnie the Minx strips just as much as the current ones, her all-time favourite Beano feature is Tom, Dick and Sally.

For those of you unfamiliar with the strip, Sally is the youngest of the three siblings, forever put down and put upon by her big brothers. They play tricks on her, offload their chores onto her, and generally do her down… but of course it’s Sally who wins out in the end, and often because the boys are hoist with their own petard. Hmmm… I shall have to ask my son if he has any idea why his younger sister relates so strongly to this.

Anyway, the point is that this is a story that was phased out of The Beano some time in the 1980s. But it’s just as relevant to today’s children because it deals with something that’s a childhood constant, regardless of cultural shifts.

And don’t the best stories?

John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com.
He's on twitter as @JohnDougherty8.


His latest books include:

Finn MacCool and the Giant's Causeway - a retelling for the Oxford Reading Tree
Bansi O'Hara and the Edges of Hallowe'en
Zeus Sorts It Out - "A sizzling comedy... a blast for 7+" , and one of The Times' Children's Books of 2011, as chosen by Amanda Craig

The Tale of Two Labours - Eve Ainsworth

It dawned on me the other day that writing is very similar to raising children. Bear with me on this, it may sound crazy, but there are parallels.
I guess it goes without saying that I'm a mother - a bit obvious I guess and a bloody tired one at that. I'm not your 'Earth-woman' type. I hated NCT classes and physically recoiled if anyone pushed a childcare manual my way, but somehow, god knows how, I managed to raise two, slightly quirky but still very beautiful-to-me children.

One of my bundles of joy...













I guess my writing is quite similar. I wasn't particularly academic (never had the concentration), I hated reading any 'how-to' manuals, but somehow, god knows how, I managed to produce a book.

And the coincidences do not end there. I noted the following:

• I fell pregnant the first time and it was a bright and exciting moment (this was long before the morning sickness and other uglies kicked in). You are full of hope and wonder. The world seems a bright and exciting place. You start writing an idea down, it's the same - bright and exciting. You can't stop thinking about it. It's alive and growing.  Everything is good.
• In pregnancy you think of names. You toil with the absurd and the traditional. Something might grab you and stick. In the early stages of writing, you might gift your book with a title. For me It has to have one. I can't physically write without it. And it has to be right. This has caused me serious neurosis.
• In both pregnancy and writing you grow. Pregnancy is pretty obvious, especially with my cravings for deep fried chicken and waffles. In writing, if you're like me, you'll eat constantly - grazing like a demented sheep. Crumbs will litter your keyboard like scabby snow. I know this because my bum has slowly expanded to the size of a cow.
• Then birth, the agonising labour. Sweating and cursing to get that baby free from you.Not so dissimilar to the sweating and cursing at the last stages of the first draft. You start shouting at people (my husband in both cases) and you wonder why the hell you bothered in the first place.
• Then relief. Love. A feeling of satisfaction - achievement perhaps?
• That's until the sleepless nights kick in. After childbirth, the baby whines and moans. After drafts, it's me whining and moaning as I wait for feedback. I rethink sentences at night, torturing myself, wondering if I did enough.
• A slow sense of worry claws at you. You wonder if you're actually any good at this, as you plaster the nappy on backwards (yes, I did do that...). Or re-read your book and hate EVERY SINGLE WORD.
• You look at other writers/mothers. Why do they seem so 'together'. Why are their babies perfect and behave like they should. How do they manage to write so beautifully. Why can't your writing be like that?  
• The baby is growing, the baby smiles and you feel good again. As you edit, your book is becoming stronger. You re-read a bit you love and feel good again.
• Someone tells you how beautiful/well behaved your baby is and you glow. A blogger/reader tells you how wonderful your book is and you glow.
• You look at the finished product with a sense of pride. You want to tell the world about it.This is what you wanted. This is what you must always remind yourself.

I guess the most important thing of all is that either in writing, or in children - or perhaps both, we have left some kind of legacy. Some sort of stick in the ground.
Although as I watch my little boy trying to walk backwards with a cat basket on his head....this could be a very wobbly stick indeed.

Second thoughts on the value of reading in childhood - Clémentine Beauvais

After the let’s-call-it fruitful debate a few months ago on this blog on the value of reading, I was left uneasy. I felt that the question I was truly interested in hadn’t been addressed; instead, the discussion revolved around ‘trash’ and ‘quality’ literature, which wasn’t what I felt to be central to my post.

But I fully understand why. My original post was unnecessarily vociferous and talked about ‘trash’ without definition. I knew very well that it would be a controversial post, but I wrote it too fast and I should have anticipated that this particular aspect would dominate the discussion.

What I was really interested in was the following question: ‘Who benefits most from the notion that any reading is preferable to no reading (or to encounters with other media such as films and video games) in childhood?’

My original blog post failed in part because I was not assertive enough in expressing why there may be an issue with the valorisation of (‘just any’) reading in childhood. I tentatively said things like ‘There are problematic ideological and economic reasons why…’, but didn’t spell them out. I would like to go back to this point because I do think it’s important to have a discussion about it.

Of course, I see reading as essential – and not just because verbal literacy is an important skill. Like all of us on this blog, I do believe that there is something about reading that sets it apart from other types of artistic or fictional encounters, and I love nothing more than seeing children who enjoy reading.

However, I think we have to admit that that somethingis very hard to pin down, and I am unconvinced by the unspoken hierarchy which puts reading ‘above’ film-watching, video-game-playing etc. in the minds of adults who care about and look after children.

(Therefore I completely agree with all the commenters who said that there should be no hierarchy between ‘classic’ novels and comics, for instance. I said this in a comment that got buried somewhere: I am NOT a 'genre' or 'media snob': I do not classify 'low' and 'high' quality literature in terms of genres or media. On the contrary; I think such distinctions can only exist within genres and media. This is between brackets because I don’t wish to get into another conversation about ‘trash’ and ‘quality’, but go ahead if you really want to…)

I’m unconvinced by this hierarchy, but moreover I am worried about who and what it serves. Of course, it uncontroversially serves children. Having motivated and passionate mediators, teachers, librarians, parents who value reading makes children from all backgrounds more likely to encounter books and to enjoy reading.

However, the undebated claim that any reading is good is also highly profitable to the publishing industry as a whole, indiscriminately. And here I'm uncomfortable. As authors, we don’t want to criticise the publishing industry; we want to support it. Publishing is in a state of unprecedented crisis, so we don’t want to make distinctions as to which parts of the industry to support and which parts to criticise, especially on such elusive grounds as ‘quality’.

Furthermore, authors are under pressure (implicit or explicit) not to express negative opinions they may have about the publishing industry. Mid-list authors, especially, can’t afford to talk about requests they get to make books more commercial, more gendered or less political. The problem doesn’t come from individual editors of course; very often they are distraught to be making such requests. They are themselves under pressure from other departments.

Regardless; in the Anglo-Saxon market, children’s publishers profit to a very large extent from the consensus that any readingis better than no reading when it comes to children.  We should talk about this fact much more than we currently do, because it is problematic. The publishing industry has a very strong financial incentive in maintaining this consensus – and currently, I think that we (authors, mediators, teachers, librarians= 'child people') are maintaining it for them, for free.  

When we say that ‘it’s good’ that children are reading, whateverthey may be reading, we are not just supporting ‘reading for pleasure’ (though I accept that we are in part). The sincere desire to be on the side of children is not met by an equally sincere wish on the part of the publishing industry, too many aspects of which are utterly unburdened by such considerations as artistic worth, child development or the value and pleasures of reading. And yes, I know, #NotAllPublishers.

Like several other commenters, I think the dichotomy between ‘reading for pleasure’ and ‘serious’ or ‘quality’ reading is hugely problematic. This dichotomy happens to profit, very conveniently, contemporary children’s publishing in its most undesirable aspects.

By ‘most undesirable aspects’ I mean extreme commercialism, market imperatives superseding or driving editorial work, reliance on formulae and ‘what sells to TV or cinema’, etc. And often, this leads to the production of books which are ideologically problematic (resting on lazy sexist, racist, classist, etc., clichés).

There is always the argument, of course, that those profit-driven aspects of the publishing industry serve to fund the more niche, quality books. This argument may be valid in part, but it’s too neat a defence to convince me fully.

I’m not naïve – I know very well that ‘publishing isn’t a charity’ (that’s something we hear a lot as writers - another mantra we gradually internalise.) I don’t think there is an easy solution to these problems. Other countries do things differently, privileging quality and accepting very niche books, but writers earn much less money than we do here (yes, it’s possible…) and there’s virtually no way of scraping a living out of writing.

I do believe that a quiet way of making a small difference could be to stop condoning the indiscriminate statement that any reading is a good thing (which doesn’t mean ripping books out of children’s hands – just saying this in case someone is tempted to pull the ‘censorship alert’ cord).

A not-so-quiet way is to have this kind of debate, politely but firmly, on a public forum such as this one. 

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Clementine Beauvais writes children's books in both French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia and is on Twitter @blueclementine. 

Let's hear it for the kids: more literate and creative than ever - David Thorpe

Who says today's children are being dumbed down? Who says the intelligence, literacy and creative ability is weakening compared to previous generations? (Could it be Michael Gove?)

I personally detest it when people put down children in this way. Any writer or teacher who goes out to meet kids in schools knows how smart they are. I believe that modern technology has made them far smarter than us oldies were at their age. They have a wider vocabulary and a much greater appreciation of the world, brought about by the broadened horizons made available by the Internet, games, books and a smörgåsbord of television channels. They probably also travel much more widely than we did 50 or more years ago.

All of this has had a marvellous effect. This is underlined by the results of BBC Radio 2's and the Oxford University Press' 500 words competition for children announced a few days ago, in which children had to compose an original work of fiction of 500 words.

They received a record-breaking, staggering 118,632 entries. Wow. Oxford University Press dictionary's team has analysed the stories to find out what words kids are using the most and the extent of their vocabulary, etc., all stuff that is of interest to us writers.

The most interesting thing first of all is the gender split. Girls outnumbered boys entering the competition by about 2 to 1. Three quarters of the entrants were in the 10 to 13 age range, the rest being nine and under. That probably means that girls in that age range are more likely to read books than any other children.

Now: how reassuring that the most common noun used in the stories is: 'mum'; and the most common adjective: 'good'.

Despite the fact that girls wrote twice as many of the stories, the main protagonist is more likely to be a boy. Now why do you think that is?

And the commonest name, used 27,321 times, is Jack, closely followed by Tom, Bob and James, all solid Anglo-Saxon names. I was certainly surprised to find that the most common girl's name is Lily/Lilly (17,981), closely followed by Lucy, then Emily and Sophie, also traditional English names.

And the most common historical figure? Adolf Hitler (used in 641 stories) followed by Queen Victoria (258).

I'd like to see Nigel Farage and his ilk use this as evidence for the insidious infiltration of multiculturalism into British culture. Actually it goes to show the opposite: there is no cause for concern, if anyone is concerned, that British culture is being watered down (although the research results are not accompanied by an ethnicity breakdown of the entrants to enable us to determine whether Celtic or Anglo-Saxon-originating Brits are unevenly represented amongst the entrants).

Looking at the keywords used in the stories, children were especially interested by this year's floods, with that single noun being by far the most commonly used (4008 uses), followed largely by non-real-world originating terms, coming from films and computer games: Lego, minion (used in Despicable Me), Minecraft and flappy (from the game Flappy Bird). Other words commonly used derived either from games or recent events such as the Winter Olympics.

What about new words? The research found that popular culture and social media have given rise to new verbs such as 'friended', 'Facebooked' and 'face-planted'. These will no doubt be finding their way into the next edition of OUP's children's dictionary.

Now for the really good news: children know - and are not afraid to use - really long words, including some that you or I may not even know: how about 'contumelious'? As used in the following context:

The girl springs to her feet losing all caution and apoplectic with outrage. "How dare you?" she cries, "Fighting them is bad enough, but capturing one to be slaughtered, as if it were a common boar, is contumelious. They will take their revenge and it will be terrible." (The War Party, girl, 13)

Or hands up who knows what 'furfuraceous' means? As used in:

Folkrinne's crown was placed on his furfuraceous head. The Basilisks applauded and cheered for the corrination of their new king of Malroiterre. (The Basilisk king, girl, 12)

(OK, so there was a spelling mistake in that, but I forgive this author because I think furfuraceous is a lovely word, conjuring up such a beautiful image in my mind).

And what about making up words? Children are not afraid to do this because, as you and I know, it is so much fun. My favourite made-up word quoted from the stories is 'historytestaphobia' because I absolutely used to suffer from that when I was at school. I also love 'Mucaologist', which is apparently a collector of mucus.

Finally, telling stories is not just about the words you know but the order in which you put them, and these children seriously know how to build suspense using perfectly ordinary words. As the report writers say:

If asked to write on a theme of mystery and suspense, one would not immediately think of the words door, house, step, and walk and yet the following example shows clearly how these words can be used to build suspense:
'Something had caught his eye. He turned around and saw an old, creaky house standing on its own in the middle of the woods. He took one step towards the scary house. He got closer and closer until he reached the house. Ben slowly walked up the cracked steps to reach the front door. Ben was scared out of his skin. Although on the outside he was brave. He pushed the rotten door and took a step inside the house.' (Haunted House, boy, 11)

All of this makes me happy, because it shows that there will continue to be a hungry audience for anything we writers produce, and, moreover, in a few years' time there will be more fantastically creative young adults ready to take our place.

Let's hear it for the kids.