Rah!

Some books deserve a far better and wider-reaching reputation than the have. What goes wrong? Not fitting with the precise marketing fashions of the time I guess: some books – albeit often brilliant ones – receive saturation coverage while others come and go with a whisper.

Rah! was published in 2002/3 and we must have picked it up in the library around that time - and we fell instantly in love with it. Now B has got to know it and loves it just as much. But no-one else seems to know about it. It has receieved just one review on Amazon, I’ve never seen it in a bookshop and nobody else has listed it on Librarything. But it’s great.

Lotte is a toddler/preschooler who spends the day at home with her mum – she’s pretending to be different animals as the day progresses and any parent or child will recognise the swift-changing moods and the way that play and chores merge together when dealing with a lively child. By suppertime Lotte, now a crocodile, is tired and crochety and shouts at her Mum, resulting in her sitting alone at the bottom of the stairs. Tor Freeman is sparing with the details here, but if you are the sort of household which uses the ‘naughty step’, I am sure that a child would assume that was what was happening. Or is it just that Lotte discovers that the attention she has enjoyed from Mum all day doesn’t happen when she is unpleasant?

But Lotte’s Mum, with support and insight, helps Lotte out of her crocodile mood and welcomes the real Lotte back with affection – while Lotte shows the resilience so typical of kids this age, because by the time she falls asleep, she’s already turned into another animal!

The illustrations are lively, colourful and full of gentle, everyday affection. Text and images work well together, pacing the story beaustifully. Be calls ‘Rah’ the “ME book” – in clear recognition of the dramatic moment-of-truth point in the story.

Tor Freeman has a lovely little website with lots of examples of her work. I’ve yet to see another book by her, but I’m on the look-out.

The Mysteries of Zigomar

E’s current school reading book is The Mysteries of Zigomar by Allan Ahlberg.

What a strange book.

Allan Ahlberg has written such an eclectic range of books, from babies’ first board books right up to big kids’ spooky stories. This is probably much closer to the latter. It’s a collection of poems and short stories, and I’m not certain if it was written specifically for the scholastic market, or for general reading. All I’ve been able to find out on the internet is that it was the book he was working on when he fell in love with his second wife.

The contents zig-zag through a huge variety of topics, but one theme which comes through is education. You’d not have trouble guessing that the author has been a teacher at sometime, and he writes about schooling from a teacher’s point of view in a way rarely seen in a children’s book, for instance looking at the chldren from a teacherri’s point of view which is reminsicent 18th century poet Christopher Smart’s poem about his Cat Jeoffry. How many kids are ever going to get that? Come to that, how many teachers? I doubt he expected them to. He also wirtes about good teachers, who patiently help children develop, and those that work to undermine them, with an honesty that’s astonishing in a book for primary school children.

Then there’s poems about subliminal education, in the style of a country and western song, poems about vampires and lots of richness - references to Arthurain legends, clever little asides, all sorts of things that really keep you on your toes and inspire a lot of discussion between adult and child.

Never come across anything quite like it.

Hooray for Fish

Some books hit the spot immediately, with both parent and child. This is one of those.

Hooray for Fish (or ‘Fish Book Hooray’ as B calls it) is instantly recognisable as the work of Lucy Cousins. Now I have to confess that I just didn’t get Lucy Cousins in the days before I had kids myself. I saw Maisy books at a friend’s house and thought that they were just crude and simplistic. Since then I’ve seen the error of my ways. Lucy Cousins’ work isn’t simplistic, it’s deceptively simple. There’s a joy and a spontaneity and a boldness to the images; there’s a neatness and a flow to the writing.

And all of this is demonstrated perfectly in Hooray for Fish. The stage is instantly set, the text swoshes along like a wave, the illustrations are bright, vivid, varied and attractive, all on lovely blue-green pages. It’s fun for everyone from small babies, just learning to focus; to toddlers who love the rhythm and concepts, to adults enjoying reading the text aloud and pointing out the details.

I knew we needed to own a copy on first reading. It’s a book to treasure.

The Reluctant Dragon

I don’t like abridged books, as a rule. Many abridged classics just don’t work because the emotional content is so hard to edit or omit. Plus what often makes them resonate is the language. Watering down the vocabularly may increase understanding of individual sentences, but loses the overall power.

But I enjoyed reading this abridged version of Kenneth (Wind in the Willows) Grahame with E. The story moves along at a neat pace. The vocabularly feels of its time without being impenetrable and – of course – Inga Moore’s work is well up to its usual standard. In fact this book contains some of her best illustartions. She does a beautiful job of capturing unspoilt England drowsing in the summertime – dreamlike for a ‘fairytale’ book involving knights and dragons - but not sentimental. And it feels as if she’s really enjoyed doing this book.

It certainly feels like a book designed to read out loud to a preschooler at the far end of the age range, or – as in our case – a child who can read but still enjoys being read to. It’s a book that looks at first glance as if it belongs in the toddler book boxes in the library, but is probably too long and too dense for most of the littlies. It would take anywhere between 2 and seven readings to get through it. I’d never have found it for E if I hadn’t been looking for books for B as well. Some older kids might balk and what looks like a ‘baby book’. thankfully, E has no such hang-ups!

Monkey and Me

Talking of books which are just too bouncy for sleepytime…

Bookshelfdad put Monkey and Me in B’s sleepytime bookpile by mistake. It’s a lovely book, but not one I’d tend to choose for just-before-bed. There are ‘anticipation’ pages which just beg to be acted out – vigorously – by an adult bouncing the child about. Great fun rather than very restful!

Emily Gravett’s spontaneous pencilwork is just perfect for the vivid, lively images, affectionately realised without a sniff of sentimentality. I like her website too.

And much though I love it, it was great to give Sharing a Shell a rest, for one night at least….

Clip Clop

B is still well enscounced into her Sharing a Shell jag, and chooses it as sleepytime reading twice a day, most days. Burying it in a pile of other enticing books makes little difference. But she’s loving it, so I’m not going to stop until she wants us to.

But we did get Clip-Clop by Nicola Smee out of the library, and it’s been a popular one. It just requires too much bouncing for a sleepytime book, especially as we sit on the floor at that point!

It’s as simple as can be – straightforward text, storyline and images. I’m guessing the pictures are done on computer? They look as if they are.*

A great bouncy fun book for any age between 6 months and 3 years.

* Nope – looking again, I can see the water marks in the colourwashes.

Hard-working Books

Kids’ books work hard, don’t they? I often blanche and grumble at the price of books, but the right book will earn its keep.

How often, I was wondering at storytime tonight, have our bookshelf favourites been read? Frequently enough for everyone in the house – even 20 month old B – to know some of them by heart. We can all join in singing out quotations. I can’t even begin to quantify it: dozens of times? Hundreds?

Thicker, shiny paper can help to keep childrens’ books durable for their marathon work. Even so, some pages pull clear of the stitching (last time this happened was in a signed first edition – sigh – but books were meant for reading).

Sticky tape, stripped spines, loose pages, bent covers and dog-eared corners – hopefully my kids are reasonably respectful of books and all these are signs of some long-cherished reads.

Easter Reading

Family busy-ness and personal poorliness have rather cut back on the postings recently, and now we’re into the Easter holidays: lots of reading, I hope, but how much time for posting?

I’ve managed to get to an ‘unusual’ library this week, and pick up ten fresh books for E. Plus a few that were on order came in. I’ve stashed the pile  on an upper shelf in the Study, and I shall eke them out like rations, otherwise she’ll go through them in a morning! There’s a Gaskitt book – The Woman Who Won Things – which is an easy read, and will last maybe ten minutes…

The Library is closed now till Tuesday, so this is all we’ve got. It’s E’s birthday further into the school holidays, but I don’t know how many books she’ll actually receive – the relatives are fighting shy in case they buy books she has already read. I’m wary of asking her what she wants, because it will be wall-to-wall Rainbow Fairies. If she receives birthday money I think we’ll have to insist on a balanced book diet. Rainbow Fairy books are rather like sweeties – colourful, insubstantial and trashy without being complete rubbish. I can cope with her reading them in occasional small portions,  but there has to be some real meaty stuff in between.

Sharing a Shell

This week, B is mostly wanting Julia Donaldson’s Sharing a Shell, and I’m probably to blame, because it is one of my favourites, so I’ve proably pushed it at her quite a lot before now.

But she’s obviously getting a lot out of it right now. What exactly, I sometimes wonder? Well: really bright strong illustrations. Lydia Monks’ work is not to everybody’s taste, but I feel that it works well here, maybe because humans are only background figures. As an added bonus, ours is one the editions with generous amounts of textured glitter on all the pages.

Then there’s Julia Donaldson’s catchy, effortlessly bouncy text. You really can tell that she comes from a songwriting background. The text is a joy to read, even when you’re as full of a cold as I am. The regular chorus pages encourage children to join in, and the repeated use of “Look!” (and one “Listen!” when B puts her finger to her ear) helps to rehook a child’s attention.

Only problem with it: you try saying “Sharing a Shell” without lapsing into a Sean Connery impression, and then you tend to be stuck with that voice all day.

Reading the Secret Garden

At this time of year, my thoughts always turn to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. My own garden – complete with an ivy-swathed stone wall and a friendly robin – is busy waking up, just like the garden in the story. I’ve been looking forward to E being old enough to enjoy this story, and this year she has been especially interested in gardening. So – tempted by the beautiful, Inga Moore-illustrated edition which I requested for Mother’s Day (thanks, Bookshelfdad!) – I’ve decided to read it to her. She’s not quite old enough to cope with FHB’s prose; I know she would just skim over words and phrases she can’t instantly recognise, and that would include all the Yorkshire dialect. She’d probably get the gist of the story, but miss so much along the way. Besides, I don’t often get to read to her nowadays, and there’s a real joy in sharing a much-loved book.

We’ve been managing a chapter or two most days this last week. Some parts keep her attention better than others: it’s quite a slow, downbeat opening,  but I think the novelty of the experience was keeping her attention at that point. One week in, and we’re up to Mary showing the garden to Dickon. We’ve not met Colin yet, who I now realise I have rather a fondness for. Bless FHB for ending most chapters on a bit of a cliffhanger.

One thing which I’ve really noticed reading aloud is the number of mentions of ‘blacks’. I can accept that FHB is simply reflecting the modes of speech from the time: usually these references are made by Martha the chambermaid, who is clearly described as someone with little education or knowledge of the world. I’ve obviously not noticed these on previous (silent) readings, but one of the things about reading out loud is that it obliges you to consider every word.

So what should a parent do? Read it with the usual level of emphasis, stop and explain, as if it were a tricky bit to understand? Mumble it quickly so the child doesn’t notice? Or edit it out of the text as you go, and hope that your (literate) child doesn’t spot the change?

I confess that I’ve done all three at different points in the text.