Too quick for the camera! Charlotte and her new friends loving Discover Story's 'Noisy room'

The Venue: 

Discover Story

The Awesome Bloggers: 

Zoe and her children from "Playing By The Book"

Helen and her children from "CApptivated Kids"

Polly and her children from "The Little Wooden Horse"

The awesome Elli from "Taking Words for a Stroll"

Oh and us, ReadItDaddy and "The Strolling Mum"

With superstar guest Alex T Smith!

After a crack-o-dawn start, team ReadItDaddy bumped on a very bumpy bus to That There London and to Stratford to meet the others. Amazingly, with good fortune (and some rather good spotting from Ali, the strolling mum) we all met up as intended and after a spot of lunch, headed off to Discover Story.

At the moment, this imaginative booktastic venue is space themed, but first we thought we'd explore upstairs and check out the various cool areas to play and run around in (and boy, can those kids run around - faster than my camera could track them anyway!)

Soon we headed downstairs into Discover's fabulous "Space Zone" for a journey to the stars. The kids loved donning their special space jackets, and exploring the alien planets and craters of the zone before taking part in a more interactive 'workshop' (with lots of blasting off and counting down!)

Charlotte discovers a groovy little robot chum in the Space Zone.

We were also at Discover on a special mission, to see a living legend in children's books in action.

Alex T Smith, creator of the fabulous "Claude" series of children's books gave a special talk and also let us into a few rather brilliant secrets (in particular, a sneaky peek at Claude 6 - "Claude Hits the Slopes" which NO ONE ELSE had seen before the day, not even Alex's own nephews!)

Alex T Smith showing us how to spot a sneaky ghost!

It was a brilliant talk, with Alex showing the gathered children how to draw Claude and become illustrators themselves (adults were also invited to take part, and I sneakily drew my Claude with a Tardis on his head as I'm sure this is what his Beret really is!)

Alex also signed our copy of "Claude in the Spotlight" and we even got to meet the REAL Sir Bobblysocks (sadly, missing his fabulous glasses alas).

It was absolutely lovely to meet the other bloggers (I was so nervous I think I babbled and mumbled a lot), and it was really brilliant that all our children had a ton of fun, and got on wonderfully together (listening to their conversations and hearing their fantastic imaginations at play was truly awesome).

So watch out world, we'll definitely be doing it again soon!

The Olympic Park - Just a stone's throw away from Discover Story

Best rhyme ever!

When Rhyme is a Crime

"Shut that book! I’ve not got time

To read your bloody awful rhyme"


There are too many picture books written in rhyme. There, I’ve said it. A strange thing to say, you might think, coming from someone who writes almost exclusively in verse. But

that doesn’t mean that every book

that’s set in verse is worth a...second glance.
‘What?’ you might cry. ‘But, but, but…’ And you think of Dr Seuss, of Julia Donaldson – authors who have become famous for their rhyming styles. The problem is that for every Seuss or Donaldson there are several authors who can’t write in verse at all.

Partly this is down to metre. Lots of children’s books are, inexplicably, written in tetrameter (don’t worry, I had to Google that too), and

There is nothing that will bore me more

Than words all set in groups of four.

Fine for a while, and fine if done well, but so often done badly. And so the book simply plods. And plods. And plods. And…Sorry, nodded off there. Where was I? Plodding.

What a book needs isn’t rhyme, but rhythm. This can be done within a metre, or by varying a metre. Someone like Julia Donaldson is brilliant at it. ‘A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood. A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good’. Sheer genius. Julia Donaldson’s books work (on the whole) because of their bounce. The rhythm lifts them to a whole new level.

And then...

Lots of books go down the pan

Because they really really don’t scan

To be fair, some of the worst examples of this are those books produced in-house, often exploiting a particular character (think Thomas the Tank Engine or Angelina Ballerina). Editors, who are often rather wary of verse for all the reasons I am mentioning, know a cash cow when it’s mooing loudly in their faces. But some writers who really should know better manage to publish books that don’t scan properly. And the problem with bad scansion is that it’s difficult to read – a bit like going down a path and constantly having to stumble over stones.

The most important question for an author to ask is why a book should be written in rhyme. There is absolutely no point in writing in verse just for the sake of it. Yes, children love rhyme, and verse done well is sure to become a favourite. But bad rhyme is worse than no rhyme at all.

Of course that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be poetry in children’s books. But conflating ‘verse’ with ‘poetry’ is a huge mistake. Take a book like Helen Cooper’s ‘Pumpkin Soup’ (and if you don’t know it, go out and borrow or buy it now – even steal it if you have to – and devour it). Although it’s written in prose, it’s pure poetry: ‘Made by the duck who scoops up a pipkin of salt and tips in just enough’. And of course books in verse by the likes of Donaldson, Caryl Hart and Peter Bentley are, generally, brilliant.

But there really isn’t much that’s worse

Than a book written in crap verse

Someone please take note.

We're very lucky to have some amazing people backing the #readitmummiesanddaddies2013 campaign. Elli Woollard, ace poet and all round Twitter Goddess penned us a poem for the campaign.

How brilliant is this!