Where do I come from? (part 2) by Lynne Benton

Last month I wrote about the origins of five famous children’s books.  I was fascinated to discover what inspired the writers to come up with such long-lived classics, and I hope some of you were equally interested.

Anyway, as promised, today I want to go on with five more famous children’s books and/or series.

The first of these is Mary Poppins, by P L Travers, published in 1934.

P L Travers’ creation, unlike her screen portrayal, is a “fierce, witchy heroine who imparts the deeper meaning of life to her charges.”  Travers moved among mystics and magicians, such as AE Russell (a writer on mysticism), WB Yeats, (as well as being a poet, he was a devotee of Irish mythology and folklore) and GI Gurdjieff, (a Russian philosopher, mystic and spiritual teacher) from whom she soaked up mythology and esoteric lore.  Mary, blown in on the east wind, is more of a shaman than an Edwardian nanny, able to understand the language of animals and stars and coming “from the Dark where all things have their beginnings”.  So forget Julie Andrews, then!  No wonder Travers was less than enthusiastic about Disney’s interpretation of her books!  (Though no doubt many more children have become attracted to the books purely because they enjoyed the film so much.  And anyone who saw the film "Saving Mr Banks", starring Emma Thompson as P L Travers, will have a little more idea of the origins of the books.)

Next comes The Chronicles of Narnia, by C S Lewis, published in 1950.

In their middle-class Belfast home, Jack Lewis and his elder brother Warnie enjoyed sibling camaraderie in their nursery, presided over by a large wardrobe.  Jack, obsessed by Beatrix Potter’s books, created stories about anthropomorphic animals.  In depressed middle age, Lewis, now an Oxford don, finally found a way through the wardrobe doors to the Christian allegory that lay beyond.  (For a great deal more about all the Narnia books, do read Katherine Langrish’s lovely book “From Spare Oom to War Drobe.”)

And now for three more recent books:

The first of these is The BFG, by Roald Dahl, published in 1982.

He’s bald, nobbly, scary, extremely tall and has a way with words.  He carries off children, at least Sophie, to an unknown land.  He turns out to be warm, funny and protective.  The BFG is Dahl himself, and Sophie his real-life granddaughter.  The land of giants derives from the Norse myths related by Dahl’s Norwegian mother.

Next, as if I could leave it out, is Harry Potter by J.K.Rowling.  The first book in the series of seven, Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone, was published in 1997, and of course, as we all now know, it created a publishing phenomenon.

Rowling says “Harry strolled into my head fully-formed”, though it’s possible to glimpse a touch of Sherlock Holmes about him. She also says that Hermione is a caricature of herself at the age of eleven, and that Ron Weasley resembles a best friend from sixth form.  Her rich vocabulary has classical and mediaeval sources: Dumbledore is Middle English for bumblebee, while Muggles is jazzspeak for marijuana.

And finally, Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer, published in 2001.

This is described by its author as “Die Hard with fairies”.  The story of the teenage criminal mastermind is also indebted to Hill Street Blues, and also to “all the leprechauns the Irish author has grilled”.

 

And that’s the end of my ten books/series and their origins.  I hope you’ve found it as interesting as I did when I first read about what inspired the writers to write their famous books. 

Website: lynnebenton.com

From Badger to Vixen by Sheena Wilkinson

This is a weird thing to link to writing, but bear with me. Over the years, I've become like a vicar who can make any apparently random subject relate to Jesus in a sermon. Only in my case, it's writing not Jesus. 

Exactly a year ago I stopped dyeing my hair. That might sound trivial, but I agonised about it for years.

My natural hair colour was very dark brown, and the grey hairs came through early, probably in my twenties. It did not occur to me for one moment that I could leave them be and they would gradually do their own thing, and that that would be OK. My granny's hair was jet black until she was about seventy (it wasn't, obviously), and my mother, even today at 76, has no intention of 'letting herself go'. And I was female. I was young. I was single. Grey? No way! 

For a while I kept the grey at bay (yes, I saw it as an enemy to be fought on all fronts) with natural henna. It was a messy business but my hair always felt good afterwards. Then, probably in my mid-thirties, the henna stopped working and I embarked on two decades of chemical dyeing, first at home (the stains on my bathroom floor and the brown-streaked towels bearing witness both to my clumsiness and to the tenacity of the chemicals) and then, every five weeks or so, at the hairdresser's. 

It was a pain. It was a palaver. It was very smelly. It was expensive. But not once, in all those years, was I tempted to stop. Not once did I think, grey's OK! It was rare to see a woman my age with grey hair: either they dyed it, or they hadn't started going grey yet. Any woman who did go for the natural look was regarded as a frump. Just look at how Mary Beard was treated, and compare that with, say, George Clooney. Because of course it's different for men. 

It's not that I spent all my time thinking about my hair. But every date in the calendar sparked the worry: what will my hair be like then? Will it be freshly dyed and therefore fit for the world to see? There was only ever a window of a fortnight for that. On about the fifteenth day (it was like having an extra menstrual cycle to think about), the telltale white line would start to appear. Then it would be root spray, coloured mousse, root mascara -- you name it, I tried it. Hair appointments always had to be booked for the days of book launches and public appearances and parties. My hair is quite fine, so the white parting always, to my mind, made me look as though I was balding. I knew that the constant dyeing wasn't helping its condition. 

silver fox with non-silver bride 

Lockdown was a game changer for so many women. Lots of my friends embraced their natural grey, and I was tempted. But I was getting married in 2021, and though I could do nothing about being a 53-year-old bride, it never occurred to be me to be a grey bride. Even though the groom had been grey for decades. And when that was over, I thought I can't do it now, or people will say, she got married and then she let herself go! Maybe sixty, I thought.

But this time last year, I cracked. I was fed up with this constant cycle. I was worried about what the chemicals were doing to me: they were certainly making my scalp burn in a way that didn't feel healthy. And -- because I am as clearly as suggestible as the next woman -- suddenly I seemed to be surrounded by friends, and people in public life, who were grey and gorgeous. 

the last event for which I had my hair dyed -- exactly a year ago

You could do a PhD in grey blending techniques, but I decided that none of that chemical stuff was for me. My hair had suffered enough and the healthiest, if not the easiest way was to do nothing. Let nature take its course. My hairdresser was unenthusiastic, telling me the dye covered the hair shaft and so my grey hair might seem even thinner. Deep down, I had a feeling she was wrong. I had an instinct that there was some nice grey hair just waiting for a chance to shine. And anyway, I had committed: whatever I had, I would deal with. I'm far too stubborn to change my mind so I prayed it would be OK. 

in London last summer looking badgery 

I'm not pretending it was easy. The first few months were tough - the badgery streak, the two-tone look, the fading of the remaining dyed hair to an unbecoming beige no-colour. But the grey kept coming through, fifty shades of it -- well, not quite, but there's certainly quite a nice natural highlighty thing going on. I had to be quite bold in some situations. I started saying, 'Yes, it's deliberate, I haven't just been too busy to go to the hairdresser' when people gave me funny looks -- which they did. 'I just wouldn't be brave enough' was something I heard a lot.' And the classic (from my hairdresser), 'Well, as long as you like it.'

yes, it took some guts to out looking like this

I do like it. I love it. My hair is in better condition than it's been for years. I love my new author photo where yes, I look older. I am older. I'll be 56 this year. Some people, including friends of mine, aren't granted that. And I'm so pleased to be living in a world now where there's not the same pressure on women to dye their hair, to deny aging, to fit societal norms. Of course people should have the choice and on one level they always did: nobody forced me to dye my hair. But as a feminist, and a non-conforming woman in many ways, it never occurred to 30- or 40- or even 50-year-old me that that was a choice I could make. 

new author photo 

So what, dear reader, if you are still with me, has that got to do with writing? Maybe not much. But I do liken that year of looking first pretty awful, and then a bit weird, and then sort of in flux and then, eventually, the way I'm meant to look, to the development of a novel from idea, through rough, even embarrassing first draft, to eventual polished book. And even more, it's the book I really wanted to write. 

loving it now! 

How can it ever work (part 2)? Anne Rooney

 Lsat month I wrote about the impossible economics of writing books as a way to make a living. Several people asked how the economics works for publishers if it's so bad for writers. The truth is that it often doesn't, though it doesn't 'not work' to the extent described in the article No one buys books. I'm not going to dissect the article here as its limitations have been well analysed already. Instead, I'll let the much better informed GalleyBeggar answer the question What does a book cost? This is a great breakdown of how much it costs to produce and sell a book. Depressingly for those of us who scrape a living writing books, it just confirms that even with a publisher paying the unusually high royalty of 10%, an author who sells out the print run of 3,000 copies can still only expect to receive £2700 for the 300 page book that will have taken them at least a year to write.

One important thing to bear in mind is that authors can be paid in different ways:

Flat fee: all they get, ever, except perhaps money from collecting societies for library loans and photocopying

Royalty: a percentage of the money the publisher receives for each copy of the book, typically 5-10% but can be less or (rarely) more. Remember the publisher typically receives less than half the cover price

Advance: a sum paid in advance, against royalties. So royalties will only be paid once the book has 'earned out' — has gained enough 40ps or 50ps for sales to recoup the money the publisher has already paid the author. Most books don't earn out, so most authors never get more than the advance. (You don't have to pay the advance back if it doesn't earn out.)

There might also be some money from foreign rights deals. 

(Some people will say 'yes, but then you get money from festival appearances/school visits/events'. Although some authors do, they are being paid for the day they spend doing that: it is payment for more work, it is not more payment for the book.)

Importantly, the publisher makes money even if the book doesn't earn out. Suppose a publisher paid an advance of £2000, with a cover price of £10 and the author earning 5% (and 5% to the illustrator), and the publisher got 50% of the cover price. The author would get 25p per copy. The book would have to sell 8,000 copies to earn out for the author, but that's more than are likely to be printed, so it won't. But if the publisher couldn't make money if the book sold out, they wouldn't publish it. If the publisher just covers costs and makes no profit, that only means shareholders don't get a dividend.* Covering costs means everyone has been paid for their work. As most people won't take a job that pays £2,700 a year, even for the supposed glamour of working in publishing, plenty of people are making a living — just not most of the people who write the books. 

People who work in publishing are not well paid, but they are certainly paid more than most writers. The industry is sustainable only because there are more people wanting to write books than there are books needed, so plenty of people will subsidise their own jobs. This is why the battle to get wide diversity in book publishing will be lost. People who are poor can't afford to subsidise their job as a writer by working for way below the minimum wage.

*Incidentally, to earn £2,700 from just owning Hachette shares and doing nothing, you need to invest only £90,000 in Hachette. Rather than pay to do an MA in Creative Writing, invest the same money in Hachette shares as you would run up in student loan and you can earn as much as if you wrote a 300-page book every year  for the rest of your life

Anne Rooney

Out now: 81 Mind-Blowing Biology Facts, Arcturus, April 2024

 

The Sense of an Ending by Paul May

Yes, I am getting close to the end. This month I read Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner, the 2013 Carnegie Winner, and The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks from 2014. Neither book did much to cheer me up, even though both are about the human spirit in the face of adversity. Both books (spoiler alert) end in death, and in the case of The Bunker Diary (even more spoiler alert) everyone dies.

I found things to admire in both books. In Maggot Moon Standish Treadwell is a wonderful creation and his relationship with his friend Hector is touching and beautifully drawn. But the future dystopian world where Standish lives—or is it a 1950s world where the Nazis won the war?—that world seems to me very like the unconvincing stage-set the authorities of Motherland have built to fake a moon landing. There's not much to it—a street, a school, a housing estate and a weird building. It's like a TV series that's been shot on a very tight budget. What's very real is the extreme violence—a teacher beating a small boy to death, critics of the regime with their tongues torn out. 

And I wondered if The Bunker Diary is meant to be a metaphor for life. Is there a suggestion that although we imagine ourselves to be free we are really all in prison, locked in a bunker from which the only escape is death? Maybe. 

Once again I find myself thinking about the long shadow WW2 has cast over the Carnegie, though Kevin Brooks's bunker seems more likely to be an enhanced relic of the Cold War. How long is it before historical events fade from our memories? We no longer talk much about the Crimean war or the Boer War, though now the legacies of slavery and imperialism have returned with a vengeance. But the experience of reading and thinking about these two books has left me feeling depressed. Carnegie winners in the 2010s started grim and got steadily grimmer. I don't know, because I haven't read a lot of new children's fiction in the last few years, whether these winners reflect a general trend in children's literature. The winners were chosen by librarians, who do read widely among current publications, so I have to think that they are in some ways representative of what's going on. I'm hoping things will look up in the final ten years. There'll be a new winner in a couple of months time so I thought I'd look at the shortlist, and I got sucked in to looking at the judging criteria.

I found out some things. Here, for example, is why a non-fiction book is unlikely to win the Carnegie again:

'The whole work should provide pleasure, not merely from the surface enjoyment of a good read, but also the deeper subconscious satisfaction of having gone through a vicarious, but at the time of reading, a real experience that is retained afterwards.' (From the Yoto Carnegie website, 2024)

The criteria are listed under the headings of Plot, Themes, Characterisation and Style. They appear to be specifically and only designed for the evaluation of fiction. No mention is made of non-fiction, though verse is mentioned, but it's hard to see how a non-narrative verse collection could win. And the list of questions judges are supposed to ask about the books reminded me of the kind of criteria used to make National Curriculum assessments in Literacy. 

It all makes me wonder how true is this statement, also on the Carnegie website: 'All categories of books, including poetry, non-fiction and graphic novels, in print or e-book format, for children and young people are eligible.'

There are awards for children's non-fiction but it appears that the Carnegie itself is, in reality, an award only for fiction, whether in prose or verse. It might be better if it called itself the Carnegie award for fiction and had done with it.

Just in case this all sounds a bit too gloomy, I have as usual been leaping ahead in my reading and can report that there is at least one book published in the last decade that ranks with the very best, so there's that to look forward to!

As In The Long Ago my blog/website

A HISTORY OF MYSTERY (part 3) SERIES by Sharon Tregenza

 A HISTORY OF MYSTERY - the series.

Mystery series are a popular choice with children as most have a connected storyline with intertwining clues so that they can follow along with the plot from book to book.

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket (real name Danial Handler) is illustrated by Brett Helquist. It's a gothic spoof and was also made into a movie. Unlike most mystery series this one takes the whole series of books to solve the mystery. In the meantime though there are plenty of mini mysteries and danger to entertain the reader. The narrator's voice is prominent here as he tells us about the plight of three orphans who are pursued by a guardian intent on stealing the family fortune from them. The mystery concerns who killed their parents and why. The books are funny and addictive.

The Roman Mysteries is a series of historical novels by Caroline Lawrence. The first book, The Thieves of Ostia, was published in 2001. The books take place in the ancient Roman Empire during the reign of Emperor Titus and detail the adventures of four children who solve mysteries and have adventures in Ostia, Rome. It was also made into a television series.

The Harry Potter books need no introduction and are an example of the frenzy that can be generated by a good read. Although often advertised as fantasy there is a strong element of mystery which is an important component of their popularity. 

Mysteries have been the reading choice of kids for many, many years. Although Enid Blyton died in 1968, she remains one of the most popular children's authors. More than half a million copies of the Famous Five books are sold every year. Blyton has sold more than five hundred million books and still features in many of the 'most borrowed books' list from libraries. 

www.sharontregenza.com

sharontregenza@gmail.com

Don't panic it's your blog day!!! Too late! I panicked! By Steve Way

I'm sure you've had similar experiences... You're getting through the day fairly calmly, in my case I was having a chat with a student online, when your mind wanders for a moment and you think... I ought to get on with writing that blog I was thinking about... it'll be my day soon...

Clang! The penny drops! It's nearly the end of your day! Now I have to think about what I'm going to do, knowing I don't have time to write the blog I was intending and concentrate on the lesson because I can't do anything about it just yet!

The solution. I'm sharing some silly deliberately short versions of well-known children's stories and poems, which I've used in the past to get children (and adults!) to write their own versions. I hope you enjoy them - and maybe also write your own versions!

Next month let's hope I can remember what day it is!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 There were once three pigs and a wolf. As it happens the wolf was useless at huffing and puffing. What was worse was that the three pigs had no idea about building houses. Soon there was just one wolf, with blood dribbling out the side of his mouth…

 

~~~

 

“All the King’s horses and all the King’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again…”

        “We dunno where to start, Sir,” the Sergeant told the Commanding Officer.

        “Alright, don’t bother. Leave him where he is. Serves a bally egg right for sitting on a wall in the first place,” replied the Commanding Officer. “Oh and Sergeant, don’t go talking to the horses again… bad for the men’s morale, don’t you know…”

 

~~~

 

“Little Bo Peep, she lost her sheep…” So she was sacked.

 

~~~

 

“Share a bite of my apple, pretty maiden,” said the evil queen, disguised as an old lady.

        “But I don’t like apples,” replied Snow White. “Have you got any bananas?…

 

Contrary to popular belief, the evil queen knocked Snow White out with the fruit basket.

~~~

 

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, throw down your hare…”

        So the fair maiden Rapunzel threw down her hare.

        The prince put it on the floor and it hopped off into the forest.

        “At least my poor pet is now free,” Rapunzel thought to herself. “If only I hadn’t had a haircut yesterday. I might be free as well then.”

 

        A little while later the hungry prince made himself a stew. “If I can’t get her, I might as well have her hare,” he thought to himself.

~~~

 

Little did the evil witch know that Sleeping Beauty suffered from insomnia.

~~~

 

It wasn’t the pea that disturbed the princess. All night long she lay awake, thinking, “Why are there so many mattresses on my bed?”

        She wondered if she’d been put in the mattress storeroom and not a proper bedroom.

~~~

 

As the person she thought was her grannie turned out not to be her grannie, Little Red Riding Hood wished she hadn’t been too vain to wear her glasses.

~~~

 

The bridge the three Billy Goats Gruff would have to cross was right at the other end of the field.

        “I can’t be bothered walking up there,” said the Little Goat.

        “Neither can I,” said the Middle Goat. “Why don’t we wade across the river here?”

        So they did. While this was going on the hungry troll was watching them. He remembered now the wise words his Estate Agent had told him.

        “Before buying a home you’ve got to think “location, location, location”…”

        At least I ate the Estate Agent thought the troll.

 

Moral. Even trolls can have their uses.

 

~~~

 

One day Postman Pat had more than four letters to deliver!

        “I can’t take this stress,” he told the black cat.

 

~~~

 

“Flubber, flubber, wub…” said Bill.

        “Wubba, wubba flub…” said Ben.

        Weed smiled to herself. It was lovely living with the only two men she knew who ever said anything remotely sensible.

 

~~~

 

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow?…”

        “I watch that nice man Alan Titchmarsh on the telly.”

 

~~~

 

No magic on Earth could stop the school inspectors finding Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

        “You can forget Herbology and Transfiguration from now on,” the inspector told Dumbledore. “From now on we want to see the Literacy Hour and the Numeracy Hour instituted in this school.”

        “These people are more powerful and awful than Voldemort,” thought Dumbledore.

 

~~~

 

“For goodness sake,” thought C. S. Lewis. “If those children play any more roughly, they’ll end up going through the back of that wardrobe.”

~~~

 

The Emperor was suspicious of the two salesmen right from the start.

        “I don’t trust the likes of them,” he thought. “They’ll have my shirt off my back in five minutes if I let them.”

~~~

 

Winnie the Pooh got a First Class degree in Astrophysics.

        “Now who’s the bear of very little brain?” he asked Christopher Robin.

 

~~~

 

“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” whispered Juliet to the moon from the privacy of her balcony.

 

Meanwhile Romeo was hanging upside down in the prickly hedge surrounding the Capulet's garden, with his tights and waistcoat tangled in the branches.

 

~~~

 

Cinderella went to the ball… She hit it right into the top right hand corner of the net!!! The Brazilian keeper didn’t know what hadn’t hit him. The England Fairy Tale Team were 1-0 ahead!

        “We’ll win this quarter final, thought Cinders.

 

~~~

 

The three blind mice went to the opticians.

        “So, we weren’t blind, just in need of glasses,” said one of the mice.

        “If we’d have carried on without them for much longer, that horrible farmer’s wife could have done something nasty to us,” said one of the others.

 

~~~

 

It was so lucky that the three bears were security conscious. If they hadn’t locked up the house before they left it, that nuisance Goldilocks would have walked right into their house and messed everything up.

 

~~~

 

Bambi hopped and skipped playfully through the tranquil sunny forest… straight into a bear.

 

~~~

 

Mowgli observed the goings on in the village through the canopy of trees. The villagers were labouring away, trying to scratch a living out of the land. The men digging in the unforgiving stony soil, the women bashing the unrelenting grain into flour and the children playing in the dirt.

        “Are you sure you want to go back there?” Baloo asked.

        “Forget it,” said Mowgli. “Let’s go and find a paw-paw.”

 

~~~

 

Cruella De Ville discovered that she was allergic to dogs.

        “How could fate be so cruel,” the evil woman thought. “I’m audacious but allergic to crime!”

 

~~~

 

Lah Lah quit.

 

The others didn’t know what to say.

 

Mainly because they couldn’t say anything.

 

~~~

 

“But if we take from the rich and give to the poor, the poor will become rich,” pointed out Will Scarlet.

        “Well in that case, why don’t we keep the money ourselves?” suggested Little John.

        “But then we’ll be rich,” said Friar Tuck.

        “Forget it then,” said Robin Hood.

 

“So much for a life of romantic adventure,” thought Maid Marion. “I should have married the accountant after all.”

CHOOSING AND USING PICTURE BOOKS by Penny Dolan

Today is the first of May, a date with a sense of fun and jollity about it, but I am not dancing about in green ribbons or hurrying my dew-washed face home. I am busy thinking about the particular joy that comes from choosing picture books, particularly for a specific purpose: my next Under Five’s Story-time in my local library. I brought a few titles home with me, but which will be the best to use?

                                 

Books for this audience have to be ‘strong’ enough to take their turn among the attractions – if not for you – of nursery songs, noisy instruments, ‘sleepy bunnies’ and a bubble machine. So I will go through my selected titles well before the session, trying each one out for its ‘read-aloud’ qualities, and these are what I will try to remember:

THE WORDS:

The text has to work ‘in the mouth’ and the phrasing flow as well as when I first glanced through it after taking it from the library book box.

I like to be aware of the ‘voice’ of the book itself: how it sounds, what it is about and how it resolves so that I am comfortable and confident reading it aloud. I listen out for the rhythms within the narrative: the writer’s repeated words, phrasing and any assonance or rhyming pattern they might use. Like stones smoothed by the waves, the words within the best picture books were rolled around by repeated readings and drafts before they arrived on the page. Although rhyming texts are said to be less favoured by publishers because of translation difficulties, I enjoy reading out stories where there is a strong sense of word-play, musicality and enjoyable literary babbling.

                                

THE SUBJECT:

Does the idea of a book inspire interest, even at this very young level? Are the set of books varied enough? Personally I would prefer my next read-aloud to not to be another book about not knowing which animal family you belong to or which home you have, or about angry red feelings, or yet another book about poo, even though these titles might be just right for some people and places.

My current selection includes the following: a girl-mouse training her new kitten, a mole in a hole challenged by a goat; a pet-less flat where a child’s printed-packet pets cause havoc; a bear who didn’t eat the honey wanting to know who did; a rocking horse granted wishes by a sparkly unicorn, and a digger that digs itself in too deep.

And before I begin, I have to decide if the book needs to be given a context, or start with a short bit of personal storytelling - ‘I like this book because it’s about . . . and I remember . . .’ and so on, to make the book more understandable.

                                    

THE ‘JOURNEY’:

My reading underlines and emphasise the narrative journey of the picture book, showing the way that the words and illustrations work together or alongside each other. I do this for the children, for myself and also, I hope, for any adults who might not feel comfortable when reading picture books to children yet.

I need to be aware of the best speed for the page-turns. Is this spread a simple repetition of an idea, or a busy expansion, offering many mini-stages of the story in one go? Is this a slow-going page or a steady building-up page? And where and what and when is the turning point, the big ‘jump” spread that will need extra dramatic emphasis? Often, with a limited word-count, I will have to use my voice to add emotional tone to the reading, or indicate that ‘this’ page is a significant page or moment of resolution within the tale. Small post-it notes make good page markers for when one is also consciousness of coping with fifty or more listeners.

During the test-reads, I’ll put aside any books where the twist shows the title is intended for an older child. While publishers like witty ideas, some jokes don’t fit easily or translate well for the under-fives audience. They require a wider knowledge or experience to work. On the other hand, there are what I think of as ‘family books’: those iconic titles that are so popular with the grown-ups that young listeners seem to absorb the greater atmosphere, and media companies welcome. Hello, Mog!

                                                                                                            

THE ART WORK AND TYPOGRAPHY:

A book is more than some printing and some pictures on some pages. Though the illustrations are what attract the eye, the whole layout of a book matters to me, too, and for practical reasons. I'd add that a hardback cover makes the pages much easier to display in such a group setting and the paper quality usually makes the pages easier for turning without fumbling for the essential next page.

I will be holding the chosen book in an outward-facing direction to make the pages clear and visible to the audience, although the font and size also need to be clear and readable to me as I view the pages at a slight slant from above.

This certainly doesn’t mean a single standard layout or a Ladybird books typeface. A playful use of capitals, punctuation, exclamation points, ‘noise’ words and ‘jokes’ on the pages will be fine, as long as the words are large enough to be easy to read. I’d like the print to and stand out clearly from any background colours too: no light-grey lettering on mouse-brown backgrounds, as an example? Not everyone, even young children, has perfect eyesight.

                                                 

Besides, how does the chosen book look from a distance? Although there’s the special rug on the library floor and beanbags, many small children are wary about stepping too far from ‘their’ own lap, and many grown-ups do prefer chairs. All of which means that most of my audience, small and larger, will be a metre and more away, so the easier the page is to see the better.

In any case, the best illustrations, as well as having a certain simplicity, make good use of colour and space on the page, making them easy to describe and talk about. ‘I really like the way this illustrator has used these paint marks to show . . .’

I also need to know how the artist’s illustrations work. Are the pictures direct interpretations of the narrative text, or do they show a contrasting dynamic? Is the artist painting real life or indicating a slip between a real world and an imaginary scenario that I should draw attention to? Does the visual viewpoint change dramatically – from as high as a drone image to low down or underneath – taking the attention to a scene that needs some light explaining? Or does something happen in an illustration that isn’t even mentioned in the words, though it does fit with the story? For example, should I point out that, on the last page, Maisy's newly trained and obedient kitten has crept up and is sleeping on her bed? The answer is a loud ‘Of course!’ which I know, because I learned how this book works first.

                     

AND FINALLY

As I write this post, I’m aware that my account might sound a little extreme and time-wearying, so I have to add that I’ve been reading to young children for decades. By now, the whole process flickers swiftly past for each book and, besides, I enjoy both the activity and the end result. I wonder which titles I'll finally choose?

Besides, I have to add that writing this ABBA post has reminded me to appreciate just how much work and time and skill goes into creating a really good picture book!

Wishing you all a very happy May Day.

Penny Dolan