Books for free

I recently read this article  by Dawn Finch, an author, a children’s librarian and a campaigner for the rights of authors. It's about how books by celebrity authors are damaging children’s publishing for writers, bookshops and most of all children themselves and every word of it rings true.

Resolution – or why I read (and write) fiction

What is story for?

To be honest, this is a question I mostly try to ignore. Why does something have to be for anything? It’s like looking at a painting and saying, “But what is it?” But I suppose it’s a perfectly reasonable question. So here goes:

1. Story can take you out of your own life.

Through reading or writing stories that are different from your own lived experience, you can escape whatever is going on in your own life – lifting you out of the boring everyday or respite from turbulent times.

2. Story can take you out of your own head.

Reading and writing can also give you a temporary escape from yourself –being able to shut out all the things that are going on inside your own head can be delightfully restful.

3. Story can show you what it’s like to be someone else.

This is the one educators often like. Reading stories about other people’s lives can help the reader to develop empathy for other people. It can help young people to understand other people’s situations and problems. Encouraging young people to try on other people’s lives is the surest way I can think of to move forward from the ‘othering’ of people which is poisoning our society.

As for writing, inhabiting a character is a marvellous thing. It’s a little bit like being Frankenstein and a little bit like an accelerated version of bringing up a child. And just like both of those scenarios, there’s a magical moment when your character turns out to have a mind of their own…

4. Story can reflect your own experiences.

Here’s a place where the publishing industry – and in particular, children’s publishing – are working hard at the moment. Children and young people need to recognise themselves in the books they read. It breeds self-esteem and inclusion. In some cases, it can help young people to understand the situation they find themselves in or to deal with a problem.

Do I want to reflect my own experiences in my writing? I’m not sure. I certainly thread snippets of things that have happened to me together with little bits of language I’ve heard. I’m there in the opinions of some of the characters and the dress-sense of others. All my stories are a little bit me, of course they are. No one else could write quite like I write because they have not lived my life. But that’s as far as it goes: it’s a reflection of some things I’ve experienced, but I’m not sticking to ‘write what you know’. Oh no – that would be much too dull.

5. Resolution

What I’m looking for in a story is a pattern of problem and resolution which singularly fails to appear in real life most of the time. For me, it’s fiction’s biggest asset. Hope of satisfying ending is the thing that carries you through the trials and setbacks of the plot to the moment when you turn the last page and feel uplifted by the rightness of it all. And when I say uplifted, I don’t necessarily mean that the ending has to be happy. It just has to be right.

Writing a truly satisfying ending is incredibly difficult. I can see the appeal of the happy-ever-afters of romance fiction and the final unravelling of the crime or capture of the culprit in crime fiction. Of the three books I’ve published to date I’d say I’d got the ending just right once and nearly right twice. The problem is to tie things up neatly enough to give the reader a satisfying resolution to the problems of the plot, but not so neatly that it seems the characters have only one way forward. I suppose you could say that I want my characters in the right place to live happily ever after with the choice to not live happily ever after if it suits them. Bit like real life then.

It's all about the story

I’ve been talking to some teachers lately about the difference between reading for pleasure and reading for education. It’s something that’s on the mind of educators a great deal: reading is a tool they use for teaching children, but many of the ways reading is used in education can put children off. Picking apart texts in order to analyse the way sentences are put together can ruin the enjoyment of story. Searching for particular information or writing techniques can blind a reader to the pleasure of prose or poetry. One answer to this is to ensure there’s time for ‘reading for pleasure’ within school, but this can be a tough call in the busy classroom schedule, and if a child’s not in a reading mood when ‘reading for pleasure’ time comes along, suddenly the pleasure becomes yet another classroom chore.

My fascination for fairy tales

My mother used to take me to the library once a week to change my books. Considering the book-buying habit I have these days it seems odd that I don’t remember ever feeling that I needed to own any of these books. Or perhaps it was that I felt that I did own these books. After all, there they all were – I could take any five I wanted.

The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature

In 1985 I bought a copy of The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature. I was 20 years old and it had just dawned on me that I was not just interested in children’s books because I had rather juvenile tastes; I was interested in children’s books because I was interested in children’s books.

I loved The Oxford Companion. I still do. I have read it pretty much cover to cover and it’s my go-to whenever I come across something children’s-literary that I don’t know anything about. Of course over the years it had become less useful (though no less interesting). A lot has happened in the world of children’s books since it was published in 1984. Most of the books and authors that would spring to most children’s minds aren’t there. Most of the stuff that would occur to anyone younger than me isn’t there. Harry Potter isn’t there.

So, when I heard that a new edition of The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature was being published I was thrilled. I’m amazed that it didn’t happen sooner. I have checked once or twice, over the years, certain that OUP must have updated it, amazed that it should have taken them thirty years.

So, shiny new edition, edited by Daniel Hahn, writer, editor, translator, chair of the Society of Authors. The thrill of opening it. What’s new? What’s gone?

What’s new is all that you would expect: entries on all your favourite authors, JK Rowling, Lauren Child, Patrick Ness – you name them, you’ll find them, articles about young adult books, about diversity, about translation. The new entries fit well into the quirky, opinionated tone of the original entries that remain. There’s a useful appendix of children’s book prize winners that wasn’t there in the original.

I’m sorry the summaries of literature from other countries have gone. Of course an overview of the whole of a country’s literature in a single column or less was never going to tell you enough, but we are so unaware in Britain of what is going on and has gone on in children’s literature in the rest of the world that it seems a pity to have excised it. Still, perhaps this is a strand for a longer and more detailed work. Hahn says as much himself in the introduction, referencing Jack Zipes’ four-volume Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature (better put that on my wishlist).

I have a few other quibbles. I expect a reference work to be rigourously edited and proof-read, but in the hour or so I spent looking through The Companion, several errors jumped out at me. The cross-references aren’t perfect, with a good number that I checked missed out. In the piece on Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses, the author is referred to by her surname only (and not cross-referenced). The Doctor Who piece is in the wrong place alphabetically (I checked this in the old edition, mostly because I wanted to know if the authors in 1984 had thought Doctor Who was a thing which had a place in this book and found that they did, but that they had titled the entry ‘Dr Who’ and alphabetised it accordingly; the new version had updated the entry, corrected the spelling, but not reordered the entries.)

Quibbles, as I say.

I love The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature. It is a marvellous reference book and an entertaining book to dip into. I shall sit my new edition on the shelf next to the old one. Thirty years of being into children’s books (plus the twenty years before when I just read them). Feeling my age!

A Haven from Dystopia

Lots of people were worrying about the end of the world when I was a teenager. It was the middle of the Cold War. Who knew what small incident would grow into the crisis that would make one or other side press the button that would be the beginning of the end? The imminent end of the world didn’t worry me though. I didn’t take an awful lot of notice of current events. What kept me awake at night was worrying about the end of the universe. Once I’d decided that the God above us version of reality was nothing but a fairy tale, I was left with nothing but the scientific version, which appeared to be telling me that all human existence was nothing but a chance blip in the life of the universe and that in time humanity would be wiped out leaving nothing to mark its passing, and, beyond that, the universe would cease to exist. This meant that I was not simply an insignificant minor who might or might not make a mark in the world, but that my existence was a matter of total indifference to anything ever.

Nothing has changed. I still don’t believe in God and as far as I can see the scientific version of our future is likely to come to pass. It’s even possible that someone may press that button and hurry things up a bit. Glaringly dreadful as these facts are, you learn to turn away from them, to push them back behind the everyday business of living your life.

It seems to me that many teenagers feel as I did: a horror at their own insignificance in the greater scheme of things. They’re just starting to shake off the arrogance of childhood and the future is an uncertain place. So it’s obvious that they should turn to books about dystopias. Such books present futures or other worlds where the heroes have tangible struggles, definite foes, real battles. They’re fighting for survival against discrimination or authoritarian rule or a dying world. But no matter how impossible the task that faces these characters seems, they have the power to overcome it. And what is more, in almost every book, there is a haven that the characters will come to at the end, where all will be made right, where they will be understood. What better metaphor for the fears and hopes of teenagers?

10 Fabulous Dystopias

 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Offred is a Handmaid, a servant whose function is a bear a child for her Commander and his infertile wife. She remembers life before the authoritarian, patriarchal, religious present but can see no way to escape.

The Death of Grass by John Christopher
Ecological disaster leads to worldwide famine.

The Hunger Games sequence by Suzanne Collins
I don’t really need to say anything about these, do I?

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
A man and his son travel through a landscape devoid of plant and animal life, searching for food and shelter and hiding from other people who would kill and eat them.

Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien
A girl believes she may be the only person left alive in the world until a stranger arrives.

1984 by George Orwell
The ultimate authoritarian dystopia, but be warned – no happy ending here!

Mortal Engines sequence by Philip Reeve
The world operates on principles of ‘municipal Darwinism’ by which cities travelling on tracks attack and destroy each other.

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
When World War 3 breaks out, anorexic American Daisy and her English cousins learn to survive and adapt.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
In a world where being different can lead to being cast out or killed, a group of teenagers keep a terrible secret.

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
A struggle to survive and rebuild after disaster strikes the world

Again! Again! or How to avoid burning your child’s books

I’ve always loved children’s books. When I was first pregnant, one of the things I was looking forward to was reading picture books with my child. But I discovered that small children have dubious taste and that they love repetition. Really love it. ‘Let’s read a book!’ I would say, cheerily, to my small daughter. And before I had a chance to lay my hand on something fabulous by the Ahlbergs or Lauren Child or Julia Donaldson, or any of the marvellous, clever, beautiful picture books that exist, she would produce Tinky Winky’s Bag from somewhere or other. (This was some years ago. I suppose it is possible that you may have missed out on Tinky Winky. He was one of the Teletubbies and featured in a TV programme for pre-schoolers).

‘What about Each Peach Pear Plum?’ I would say, weakly. ‘Or Where the Wild Things Are?’

‘I want this one,’ she’d say, settling herself on my lap.

There was no persuading her. Every time we sat down we had to read Tinky Winky’s Bag. I might get away with reading one or two other books as well. But sometimes I had to read Tinky Winky’s Bag twice.

I hated that book. I hated every word of it. I hated the expressionless faces of the characters, the repetitive text, the sheer dullness of it. The funny thing was, I quite liked the TV programme. There was a charming randomness about what happened in it; it seemed to me to reflect the experiences of little kids in a completely engaging way. We never missed it, even the repeats.

I tried various ways to avoid reading The Book.

‘Daddy loves this book,’ I would say. ‘He’ll read it when he comes home.’

‘OK,’ she’d say. ‘He can read it to me then. You read it now.’

‘How about you read it to me?’ I’d say. ‘You know all the words.’

‘Don’t be silly, Mummy,’ she’d laugh. ‘I can’t read.’

So what happened was this. First The Book fell apart. She picked it up one day and the cover fell off. It was pretty ratty-looking by this stage. You should have seen her: a picture of misery. So, of course, I mended it. And then I read it to her.

Then it fell apart again. When I was tidying up. After she was in bed. And the fire was lit. And so… You know what I did, don’t you? I threw it in the fire.

To this day, my husband guilt-trips me about this. He says this was Wrong (with a capital W). He says it was a mean thing to do to a child. He went on quite a bit about Burning Books.

But you know what? She never even looked for it. It wasn’t there and she wasn’t bothered. Suddenly we were reading the Ahlbergs and the Julia Donaldsons and the Quentin Blakes and all the other glorious, riotous, silly, funny, clever, imaginative stories. There never was another one that stuck the way Tinky Winky’s Bag had though. But I think maybe it was a stage that she had to go through, like all those other reading stages that you’d like to hurry your children through, the one when they have to read every single book in the Beast Quest or the Rainbow Fairies series, the one when they seem to be unable to see the value in anything that makes them read slowly enough to stop and think.

I managed to avoid another Tinky Winky’s Bag with my two other daughters. I’d like to think that this was judicious book management on my part, but I suspect it was simply that my older daughter was listening in and wouldn’t put up with anything as boring as that.

My advice? If your child loves a book that you hate, try hiding it for a day or two in the first instance. If they’re not bothered, get rid of it. If they are, ‘find’ it again and try to make sure someone else gets the job of reading it to them.

If there are older children around, get them to read. Either they won’t mind the boring book or they’ll tell the younger child that it’s rubbish. Chances are the younger child will be happy to accept their opinion.

You could also try not buying any picture books at all, but going to the library instead. That way you have to take all the books back every week or so, so nothing’s ever going to get the chance to turn into a Tinky Winky’s Bag.

That’s not that realistic though, is it? Who can resist a picture book? Just make sure you buy the best you can find – it’s not that hard, there are so many out there.

Ten of my family’s favourite picture books
(i.e. those that sprang to the minds of my daughters and me immediately the question was posed – we didn’t ask Dad, who’d probably have added Tinky Winky’s Bag)

Each Peach Pear Plum                        Janet and Allan Ahlberg

The Gruffalo                                       Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

Pants                                                   Giles Andrae and Nick Sharratt

Bread and Jam for Frances                 Russell and Lilian Hoban

Guess How Much I Love You           Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram

Cowboy Baby                                     Sue Heap

Queenie the Bantam                           Bob Graham

Mrs Armitage, Queen of the Road     Quentin Blake

The Enormous Crocodile                    Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake

Dear Zoo                                             Rod Campbell

Why kids SHOULD read Enid Blyton

When I was ten I went to boarding school. Tucked into the side of my overnight case was my favourite book: Claudine at St Clares by Enid Blyton. But by bedtime, the book was hidden at the back of my drawer ready to be surreptitiously returned home at half-term. Within hours of my arrival, I had discovered that Enid Blyton was banned at my new school. I do not remember ever having this explained to me, and at the time I would certainly not have been able to distinguish between the books which were on offer in the school library and the Enid Blyton books I loved. I simply accepted the ban and carried on reading her books at home with an added frisson of guilty pleasure.

The trouble is, of course, that parents and teachers feel they need to quality-control their children’s reading. Enid Blyton does use dull, repetitive language, and the pervading tone is of talking down to the reader. Blyton’s books are peppered with sexual and racial stereotypes considered unacceptable today (although in modern reprints the publishers have done their best to remove these). And that’s before you get to the whole middle-class thing...

But in spite of all this, and even getting on for half a century since her death, there are plenty of kids who still love Enid Blyton. The language we adults see as uninspiring gives many children their first taste of fluent reading. Because they don’t have to think too hard about what the words mean or how the sentences are structured, they may for the first time experience that feeling of running their eyes over the black squiggles on the page and having them transform into a story in their heads. Allowing kids to discover that they have this amazing, magical skill, is, I think, key to turning them into readers. And there’s a wealth of Blyton to read. With some series fiction, children may be left not knowing what to read next when they’ve finished the series. They may have discovered the fluent reading trick, but their focus has been narrowed. But Blyton’s prolific output means that once a child has discovered her books, he or she may read their way through all manner of stories: adventure, fantasy, family, detective.

So, let them read their fill of Blyton. Chances are they will one day turn round and tell you the books are boring. And you can always speed the process up a bit. Do they read and re-read the Malory Towers and St Clare’s books? So provide them with some other school stories. What about What Katy Did at School (Susan Coolidge) or Charlotte Sometimes (Penelope Farmer). Move Famous Five fans onto the Young Bond books by Anthony Horowitz or Robin Stevens fabulous Murder Most Unladylike books. You could introduce Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair fans to E Nesbit.

One word of warning though. Don’t ever, ever read Blyton out loud if there is any way you can possibly avoid it. Aloud, all the banality of the language comes plodding out, and you’ll find no matter what a skilled reader-aloud you are, you just can’t help sounding like a comedian doing an imitation of Enid Blyton.

Oh my, jolly hockey sticks and lashings of ginger beer!

Blyton to relish
The …of Adventure series
Kids go off on adventures in far-flung places. Remember Willard Price’s adventure stories? These are like that with a little less of the shrunken heads and shooting.

Naughty Amelia Jane series
Because everyone wants to believe that their toys get up and mess around when they go out of the room…

The Curse of the TBR* Pile

 The pile of books beside my bed is growing. There are the ones I bought for my new reading project (the one I haven't started yet). There's the bunch my sister-in-law lent me the last time I was there (six months ago). There are the freebies. There are the books other writers have lent me because I've just got to read them. There are the writing guides and reference books I'm currently browsing when I can't get my head into fiction. Oh, and there are the books I've bought myself because not only can I not pass a bookshop without going in, I pretty much can't pass a bookshop without buying at least three books (four always seems to be overdoing it, though, when I have my daughters with me, we generally come out with four, theoretically one each, but we will all read each other's).

The TBR pile is a beast. It makes me feel guilty when I buy new books and they skip the queue. Some books are never going to make it off the pile. I feel guilty about them too. Occasionally I slip the odd one into my husband's pile, which feels slightly less like I'm rejecting it.

You'd think having a great stack of books to read would be a joyous thing, but somehow it's not. It's off-putting. Like having a vast heap of food on your plate. You'd probably eat more if you started with a small helping and then took more. So maybe what I need to do is to rethink my TBR pile. maybe I should put them on a shelf somewhere, not too far away from where they are now, but far enough that they don't feel like they're nagging at me. Maybe then they'll look at appealing as they did when I bought them or was given them. Maybe then I'll browse through them for the next thing to read with more thrill than at present.

There's only one problem...

 .... no spare bookshelves.

*To Be Read (but surely you already knew that)