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.
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