Once there was and twice there wasn’t…

As well as being the author of some books for children, I am the father of two boys under 10. Like many (most?) parents, I can feel regrets about the things I’ve not managed to do together with my boys. We’ve never built a tree-house. I haven’t taken a half-day off to sit down with them and make that model pirate ship they were once given. The campervan trip to Ireland hasn’t happened yet… But I have read to them as much as I possibly can. And there are no regrets about that.

These are ten reasons why:

1. THE SHARING

In modern times, many parents have lost touch with what you could call ‘traditional children’s culture’. I’m thinking of the stories, games, songs, rhymes, traditions and rituals which would once have been passed from one generation to the next. Reading to your children can go some way to making up for that. If there were books you loved as a child, it’s easy to pass them on. I’ve had a fantastic time revisiting (by reading aloud) old favourites of mine like John Burningham’sHumbert, Winnie the Pooh, Moominsummer Madness, James and the Giant Peach and Treasure Island. And the fantastic-ness is doubled when it’s shared with a child.

2. LANGUAGE

Books offer language that goes beyond the range of everyday talk. And stories offer delights that ordinary conversations rarely do. So reading aloud to a child is a great way to help them become confident language users. This has been particularly important in my family. I’m British, but my wife is Brazilian. Our boys grew up in São Paulo. Their ‘mother tongue’ is (quite literally) Portuguese. I know the fact that they are both good English speakers today, owes a lot to all the books in English we’ve enjoyed together.

3.THE BOOKS THEMSELVES

As you can see from my post on Maurice Sendak (somewhere below) I think picture books are one of the great art forms to come out of the 20th century. (Up there with the three-and-a-half-minute rhythm and blues song!) You get characters that children love, page-turning stories, inventive, skilfully-crafted illustrations, flights of imagination, colour, humour, emotion and – as if all that wasn’t enough – endings which uplift, provoke, surprise, or do all three. The wealth of picture books available is a treasure chest to share with any child. And it’s not just picture books that are special. Middle grade fiction is very much abuzz. So I’m not planning to stop reading to my boys any time soon!

4. LITERACY

Most children find learning to read and write a tough business. But if they’re being read good books they’ll be more motivated to succeed at it. They’ll be more at home in the landscape of words on pages. And you can give them bits of practice too – by pausing the flow of a story, and getting them to read out words. Our six-year-old doesn’t have much patience for practising his phonics and key-words. But if I give him reading challenges from a book that I’m reading aloud to him, he’s noticeably more motivated, calm and persistent.

5. QUESTIONS

Children’s questions are wonderful (wonder-filled) things. They are a marks of curiosity and the desire to learn. They contain hope. So I always listen carefully to them and give the best answers I can. (Even if the conversation goes: “Does everyone in the world die?” “Yes, it’s sad but everyone does.” “What about mermaids?”) Reading-time with children is a great space for these questions to come out – whether they’re old questions waiting to be asked, or new ones inspired by what’s being read. When you’re reading together, there’s time and space for reflection. Your child can ask you things. Or you can ask them.

6. COMPANIONSHIP

Sometimes children need you to go with them on the journey into a book. Our 9-year-old likes to read a lot of things on his own, these days. But there are books he’d like to have read to him. This may be because the story looks challenging to him, in some way. Or it may be that it’s a book from a different era that he’d like an adult to help ‘interpret’. One way or another, if you offer yourself to a child as a book companion, you’ll broaden their reading horizons.

7. LAUGHTER

There is so much comedy in writing for children. And laughter (like most things) is best enjoyable when it’s shared. I did actually fall off the bed from laughing so much…when reading our oldest son Roald Dahl’s, The Twits.

8. CONVERSATION

It’s not just questions. There is other talk sparked during and after the reading. Good stories stay with us. My boys and I chat about books we have read days, weeks, months or years after we have finished them.

9. DELIGHT!

You can choose what direction to travel (towards adventure, humour, poetry, magic, or more besides.) You take a break from the busyness of things. You can do it every day, home or away. You find somewhere comfortable to sit yourselves down. There is calm. You journey into the imagination, together with a child. It’s a delight.

10. SLEEPING…

All around us as night draws in, parents start up the quiet rhythms of telling stories to children. It goes on right round the world. And there’s nothing new in the knowledge that a story is the best way to end the day’s excitement and settle down for sleep. It’s been going on for tens of thousands of years. They are bridges that lead from the real world into the world of our dreams. (And if the adult readers sometimes fall asleep too…well…it happens!)

These are ten reasons why I have spent hours and hours reading to my sons. On reflection, I suppose those hours have really been our tree house, our pirate ship and our campervan adventure across the sea…

 

 

Many thanks to the special staff at Brent Libraries who invited me for an author visit yesterday.

Thanks also to the Year Two children (St Paul’s Class from Our Lady of Lourdes Primary, and Rose Class from Harlesden Primary) who answered riddles, listened to stories, filled the libraries with laughter and ideas, and borrowed a lot of books…

To celebrate the publication of DON’T CALL ME CHOOCHIE POOH! today, here is the poem St Paul’s Class invented:

 

THE SILLY NAMES POEM

Don’t call me BIBBY BOBBY GOO GOO GUMBO!

Don’t call me MY LITTLE OOFAM BOOFAM!

Don’t call me ISSUM WISSUM SWEETIE TOES!

All those sound like names for babies.

 

Don’t call me TEENSY WEENSY CHICKABIDDY!

Don’t call me OOPSIE BOOPSIE HONEY BUNNY!

Don’t call me YICKLE PICKLE BOO BOO!

I’D RATHER JUST BE ME!

 

by Year Two St Paul’s at Our Lady of Lourdes R.C. Primary, working with Sean Taylor, Wembley Library, 3rd February 2016.

 

Follow this link for a rhythm-and-fun-filled reading of my recent picture book, IT’S A GROOVY WORLD, ALFREDO! : http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/cbeebies/episode/b06z8xqr/cbeebies-bedtime-stories-520-pete-dalton-its-a-groovy-world-alfredo .

 

 

The book is dedicated to the big-hearted, political, performing poet, Adrian Mitchell.

My dedication reads:

In memory of Adrian Mitchell, 1932 – 2008.

He pulled music, unicorns, pirates and rockets

from his magical coat of umpteen pockets…

Adrian Mitchell helped me along my writing path. His help came from conversations I had with him (sadly, no longer possible.) And it came from examples he set in his own writing (very much still available and as fierce, funny and inspiring as ever…)

He is a poet remembered for the big-heartedness, the fierceness and the performing I have mentioned above. But I chose to dedicate IT’S A GROOVY WORLD, ALFREDO! to him because it’s a musical and a playful story.

Adrian Mitchell was the most musical of poets. He taught me that the rhythms and lyrics of songs can make words dance, even when there’s no actual music.

And he was playful, even when writing about things he took very seriously. Here’s an example which comes to mind – his words on the subject of bringing more poetry into school classrooms: “Make poetry something to look forward to. If you can’t get a poet, why not bring something else into the classroom? There aren’t enough animals in school – bring in a dog! Or puppies. Once the children have stopped playing with them they’ll want to write poems. Maybe the best thing to bring in would be a giraffe…”

 

A thought from the American writer, Maya Angelou (1928-2014) : “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

People in Lambeth, south London, are battling to save libraries from being closed, or turned into gyms with unstaffed book-corners. And they are not the only ones. So here are thirteen thank yous for librarians:

THIRTEEN THANK YOUS FOR LIBRARIANS

Thank you for the discovery that’s possible every time you unlock the library door.

Thank you for the learning and the concentration that goes on around you.

Thanks for the reading you do, so you can help others choose the reading they want.

Thank you for encouraging young people to use libraries.

Thank you for persisting in times when public attention is pulled so many ways.

Thank you for keeping at it, though libraries are always among the first targets for cuts.

Thanks for the smell of your libraries…the smell of books that are alive.

Thanks for the noise in your libraries. They were never silent. And a library at work is one of the loveliest human sounds.

Thank you for the excitement of arriving at the library and seeing the possibilities spread out, waiting.

Thank you for the spells of daydreaming you enable.

Thank you for living with the stereotype of the bespectacled, softly-spoken librarian, even though you know the truth: that a good librarian is a kind of magician!

Thank you for putting the books back at the end of the day.

Thank you for the good things your work creates which cannot be measured, or proven by statistics, or even put into words.

 

I’ve spent some of my life living in Brazil. I first went there back in 1994, and it didn’t take long for me to discover the poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

‘Drummond’, as he is known to Brazilians, lived from 1902 until 1987. And though he was a famously shy man who wrote poetry (rarely a bestseller), he is known, until today, right across Brazil.

In fact, there is a statue of Carlos Drummond de Andrade now…sitting by the Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, near to which he lived for many years.

Not much of Drummond’s writing has been translated into English. So, some while ago, I translated 18 of my favourite poems of his from Portuguese into English.

These translated poems got put to one side because I’ve been concentrating on writing books for young people. But I thought about one of them this afternoon. In Portuguese it is called O Elefante. You’ll find my English version below.

Drummond wrote in challenging ways, but he nearly always used language that is down to earth. And he wrote with a sense of humour. The poem below is from a brilliant, heart-warming, funny collection of poems called A Rosa do Povo, published in 1945.

THE ELEPHANT

I make an elephant

from the little that I have.

Bits of wood

salvaged from old furniture

should just hold him up.

Then I fill him with cotton,

cheap stuffing, sweetness.

Glue holds his

drooping ears in place.

His trunk rolls up.

It is the happiest part

of his architecture.

But that still leaves the tusks,

made from this pure material

I cannot figure out.

A precious stuff so white

that it is rolled in the circus dust

and still comes up clean, intact.

Then the last touch, the eyes,

where the most fluid

and permanent part

of the elephant is kept,

oblivious to the scam.

So here he is, my modest elephant

ready to go out

looking for friends

in a bored world

which no longer believes in animals,

which lives in suspicion of things.

There he goes, all majestic, fragile

weight, fanning himself

and slowly shifting

his sewn hide

on which there are cloth flowers

and clouds hinting at

a more poetic world

where love brings back together

the forms of nature.

My elephant walks off

down the busy street

but no one bothers to look.

They do not even laugh

at the tail threatening to

abandon the rest of the body.

He is all grace, in spite of

legs which get in the way

and a bulging belly

which might collapse

at the slightest push.

There is elegance in the way

he shows the scant life he has,

and not a soul

in this city allows itself

to take in the fugitive image

of his tender body,

clumsy-footed

but hungry and touching.

Hungry for heart-rending lives

and incidents,

for meetings by moonlight

in the deepest ocean,

under tree roots,

or in the hearts of shells,

for lights which won’t blind

but which shine through

the thickest tree trunks,

his walk, which takes him onward

without crushing the plants

on the battlefield,

in search of places,

secrets, happenings

untold in any book,

leaves a trail which

only the wind,

the leaves, the ants

recognize.

Men ignore it.

They only dare show themselves

in the peace behind curtains

eyelids closed.

And late at night

my elephant returns.

But he returns worn out.

His hesitant feet

fall to pieces in the dust.

He didn’t find

what he needed,

what we needed,

my elephant and I

in whom I love to disguise myself.

Weary of inquiry,

the whole contraption falls apart

as if it were nothing but paper.

The glue dissolves.

Everything inside him,

the forgiveness, the caresses,

the feathers, the cotton,

spill out over the carpet

like a dismantled myth.

Tomorrow I start again.

by Carlos Drummond de Andrade

translation Sean Taylor

‘Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.’

From HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU (1959) by Theodor Seuss Geisel…Dr. Seuss.

 

Last week I went to the beautiful animated film SONG OF THE SEA. I raise my hat to director and writer Tomm Moore for heading off in opposite directions to most of the feature films being made for young people today. There is poetry in his hand-drawn images. There is a fresh sort of music to the storytelling. And (in an interview which originally appeared on Cartoonbrew) it is good to hear him say this about working for young audiences:

People have been asking me if I want to make movies for adults. I don’t see why not, but I also don’t see making movies for adults as more important. In fact, I actually think making movies for kids is more important because they shape you. I watch so many movies as an adult and forget about most them instantly, but those I saw as a kid left a deep impression. So we have a huge responsibility when we make movies aimed at kids to say something they need to know, instead of just distracting them…

Philosopher of ancient China, Lao-Tse: “A frog in a well cannot imagine the ocean.”

American writer, Mark Twain: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

American actress, Cameron Diaz: “I’d kiss a frog even if there was no promise of a Prince Charming popping out of it. I love frogs.”

A quotation from the Roman philosopher and orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) “Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.”

Writing poetry since I was a teenager and, more recently, picture book stories, has taught me something about the importance of leaving words out.

You could say that in both poems and picture books you try to get across as much as you can with as few words as possible.

Writers work at filling pages with words. But getting a bit better, over the years, at leaving words out, might be the most important thing I’ve learned about writing, so far!

Here are three quotations which express something about what I’m trying to say:

French storyteller, Abbi Patrix: “The thing I like most about storytelling is its silence.”

Argentine poet, Roberto Juarroz: “Silence is a temple that needs no god.”

From the ancient Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching (ascribed to Lao-Tse): “Shape clay into a vessel, but it’s the space within that makes it useful.”

 

Language might be the most powerful of all the tools that we (supposedly clever) human-beings have come up with. So it’s not much surprise that there’s a constant tug-o-war about how reading, writing and language-skills are passed on from one generation to the next.

What approach should we take when we teach children to read and write? How best do you help young people to become confident language users? Which rules of grammar should be preserved? As language changes in the hands of young people, is that damaging or refreshing?

We authors of books for children and teenagers are known for throwing ourselves into the tussles over these questions…often defending teaching that uses ‘real books’ (rather than meaningless, story-less, technical texts), often standing up for the importance of giving young people a taste for the pleasures of reading and writing…not just training in their functional and productive sides.

The British author Philip Pullman, speaks with clarity and passion on these issues. But he went a step beyond the usual debates in the comments he made in an interview in The Guardian last year, when talking around his book Grimm Tales: For Young and Old.

He got onto the subject of teachers, parents and stories for children. And he started to speak about the powerful stuff at the very heart of the debates…language itself:

“Our politicians talk about ‘the basics’ all the time, but what they mean are things that you can correct at the last minute on your word processor: spelling, punctuation, that kind of thing. But the most basic thing of all is your attitude to language.

If your attitude to language has been generated by a parent who enjoys it with you, who sits you on their lap and reads with you and tells stories to you and sings songs with you and talks about the story with you and asks you questions and answers your questions, then you will grow up with a basic sense that language is fun. Language is for talking and sharing things and enjoying rhymes and songs and riddles and things like that.

That’s so important. I can’t begin to express how important that is… A sense that language belongs to us, and we belong in it, and that it’s fun to be there and we can take risks with it and say silly things in it and it doesn’t matter and it’s funny. All of that. If your sense of language is that it’s something you’ve got to get correct and you mustn’t get it wrong and you’re going to get marked on it, judged on it, well … That’s a pretty poor show.”