Thursday, 18 October 2018
Weighing in on Early Years reading, competitive parents (ugh) and the pressures kids now face to be 'proper' readers - a ReadItTorial
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| "Hey, Teacher, Leave those kids to read what they want" (doesn't quite have the same ring to it) |
A Tweet from a mum inspired this mini rant. Basically she wanted some reassurance that her 7 year old was perfectly fine still preferring children's picture books over weightier stuff like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson etc..
Wait, what?
7?
At 7, this shouldn't really even be a question, it shouldn't even be a doubt. Again it felt like something that was partially prompted by two things I absolutely detest, but come across frequently in the course of blogging about books.
1) "Schools"* force kids to read stuff they may develop an absolute hatred of - and only allow them to become "Free Readers" (i.e. allowed to choose their own choice of books to read from the school's shelves / libraries ONCE they've jumped through all those Biff Chip and Kipper-shaped hoops).
* - Through no real choice of their own, mostly guided by the National Curriculum which seems to have been written sometime around 1854).
2) Some parents think the whole Early Years Literacy thing is yet another competition, a race to ensure their kids are reading fluent Mandarin and consuming weighty philosophy books by the time they're old enough to ride a bike without stabilisers.
We have had direct experience of both of these insidious things too. I distinctly remember laughing my head off at one teacher's suggestion that C might be a reluctant reader, purely because she wouldn't wade through all the tedious phonics books and dreadful educational titles that were being sent home.
Her attitude to those books mainly stemmed from the fact that by the age of 5 she was already reading a huge variety of other picture and chapter books (and having read to her - which of course we still continue with today even though she's a competent and confident reader).
Without meaning to sound smug here (we really don't want to sound like the parents in Point 2 above), our daughter was merely developing her own love of reading, of the language, and of the way books can stimulate your imagination and take you on journeys you wouldn't be able to experience in any other way - mostly driven by our own enthusiasm for books and stories, and a nurturing 'need' to show that, and share that with her ourselves.
I really don't like to drag schools or teachers through the mud on this because I know full well that a lot of the performance-measurement and testing stuff comes from the curriculum and is completely unpopular with teachers too - particularly teachers who have a love of books and reading. I can recognise why kids are being 'switched off' from reading for pleasure so early on, in some cases never regaining the ability to read for enjoyment later on (if indeed ever).
During the Twitter conversation it was great to see James Mayhew (Author of the "Katie" series and many, many other truly brilliant and inspirational picture books) weighing in on the subject, and agreeing that any type of book snobbery really can't possibly help a child's development in any way.
We talked about comics, and how they're still a 'dirty word' for a lot of teachers and adults, who don't understand that comics have changed so much in the last 10 years, particularly kids comics which are going through an amazing golden age of creativity, originality and quite often intelligent and blisteringly topical dialogue to stimulate kids into not only thinking about the stories and characters within, but about their own non-fictional world.
The conversation started around the thought of dropping picture books, or weaning a young reader off them.
Here's the thing though. "Picture Books" still seems to have the same effect on a lot of adults that the mere mention of comics has. They imagine that kids, by the age of 7, won't find much of any worth in picture book texts. Perhaps they believe that the illustrations are distracting, that the language is simplified to fit around those pictures. Perhaps they fail to grasp that the age range for picture books might well start at chewable cloth / cardboard books, but it goes on for YEARS - well into their teens, and beyond that. For example would you describe the works of Shaun Tan as a picture book? Yes? Would you then say that a 7 year old shouldn't bother with them because they're "babyish" ? Of course you wouldn't.
Pluck out of our reviews anything that's ended up in our "Book of the Week" slot, and you'll see picture books that defy categorisation, push the boundaries of the medium, and also work for a huge age range. In fact these days if a picture book makes our "Book of the Week" slot, it's been through the toughest test of all - passing muster from a very picky ten year old who is actually moving past the cliched and twee stuff, perhaps the very 'picture books' that some folk mean when they use that term.
Back to the subject of competitive parents, we could divide the parents at pick-up time at our school into two groups:
1) Those who are proud of their kids, but don't feel the need to trumpet their every achievement from the rooftops. They're happy with the way their kids are turning out. They don't feel the need to adopt the "Tiger Mum / Dad" mentality of pushing their kids to breaking point to achieve the highest results.
2) Those who are proud of their kids, and will absolutely cram their every achievement down their throat because they want to convince you that THEY are superior to you - even if it means making that kid sit through extra tutelage, perhaps even closing off normal kid-type stuff to them (I'm not joking, I remember one kid at one of C's birthday parties not joining in with others because she "didn't know how to play" - WHAT?!?!)
Some of this boils down to abject snobbery. Some of it almost feels like a compensatory measure, perhaps parents making up for their own academic failings - or even failings in other aspects of their lives.
Quite often if you do try to talk to their kids about the books they've read, they're hushed away quickly in case they drop a clanger or completely contradict something their mum / dad has told you about the things they love to read ("Oh yarse, classic Greek poetry all the way").
One thing is abundantly clear. Kids are individuals. Means-testing, metricisation, patterned 'one size fits all' early years education seems to completely miss this vital and important fact in a lot of schools.
When it comes to literary tastes, or the way kids approach reading, approach stories or non-fiction, written or illustrative, all kids are wildly different and there's no way any kind of pigeon-holing, age-rating or measurement can possibly account for all the variations you'll see in a typical class of EYFS kids.
So why does this continue to happen? What would change things? The current system of forcing children to break down, analyse and pattern-learn the language and reading BEFORE letting them loose on the books they'll develop a real love for feels horribly broken. If we're turning kids off reading so early, what hope have we got of developing a future nation of literate, interesting and imaginative folk who love books as much as we do?
"This Book Just Stole My Cat" by Richard Byrne (OUP / Oxford Children's Books)
Wednesday, 17 October 2018
"You're Snug with Me" by Chitra Soundar and Poonam Mistry (Lantana Publishing)
"A House for a Mouse" by Gabby Dawnay and Alex Barrow (Thames and Hudson)
"A House for a Mouse" by Gabby Dawnay and Alex Barrow is such a beautiful looking book right from the outset, with a gorgeous faux-Tolkein-esque cover (not to mention a rather splendid Middle-Earth-Like map inside too!)
It's the story of a little grey mouse who leaves his tiny hole in the forest to explore the wider world.
On his search for a new home he unwittingly encounters some of the biggest stars in the fairytale genre.
He discovers a house shaped like a shoe (belonging to Old Mother Hubbard); he takes tea with a little pig in a house made of straw (awfully breezy); is flummoxed by a tower with no door (Rapunzel’s); and dares to take a nibble from a most remarkable house made of gingerbread (narrowly missing Hansel and Gretel).
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| Hat tip and chef's kiss to Alex Barrow for this utterly gorgeous Tolkein-esque map |
The little grey mouse is about to give up his search for a new home when he comes face to face with the most spectacular house of all: a glorious, towering castle (Sleeping Beauty’s).
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| Does anyone have a carpet-sized odour eater? |
Its ballrooms, turrets and drawbridge win him over, and he moves in immediately. But the little grey mouse feels terribly alone in his roomy new digs – until there is a knock at the door. His friends from the forest, and all those he has met on his journey, descend on the castle. Their feasting and dancing are so happy and lively that they even wake Sleeping Beauty, leading the little grey mouse to conclude that it is family and friends that turn a house into a home.
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| Such an adorable central character! |
We love how the lesson in this book is folded neatly into such an engaging and appealing central story, utterly beautifully illustrated and full of charm.
"A House for a Mouse" by Gabby Dawnay and Alex Barrow is out now, published by Thames and Hudson (kindly supplied for review)
Tuesday, 16 October 2018
Joining the "Danny and the Dream Dog" Blog Tour with a guest post from author Fiona Barker
Today we're joining in a rather special blog tour celebration for two reasons. Firstly, this will be our last ever Blog Tour guest post so we wanted to go out on a high. Secondly though, this is a chance to celebrate a writer's journey for someone who we've known and admired for many years - a great chance for her to blow her own trumpet about her journey from enthusiastic writer, to self-published author - and then through to her first publishing deal for her official debut, "Danny and the Dream Dog" (illustrated by Howard Gray and published by Tiny Tree Books).
So without further ado, over to Fiona Barker with a three-act play describing the highs and lows of getting represented and published.
Publishing – a play in three acts
I’m a hammy exponent of amateur theatre so a huge thank you to Read It Daddy for letting me explore my publishing journey as a three-act play.
Act 1. Young Fiona. Lover of a poetic turn of phrase and word collector.
A child who loves writing and whose proudest moment is when Mrs Collins, her English teacher, notes ‘I wish I could write like this’ on her homework when she is eleven. Fiona carries on writing for her own personal consumption, specialising in poems full of teenage angst. She never properly fulfils or explores the early promise that Mrs Collins could see.
Off she goes instead to have a career as a clinical scientist, helping people who are dizzy. She loves it but maybe somewhere within there is a bit of her striving to make Mrs Collins happy again and that’s what this is all about.
Act 2. Fiona gets married and has a baby. She, her husband and baby discover a whole new world of picture books. Some are amazing, inspiring, beautiful. Some are awful. Fiona thinks, like so many people before her, ‘I could do better than that’.
In the time-honoured tradition of these things, Fiona makes up a story, asks a friend to do some illustrations and sends it round to a few agents and publishers. Unsurprisingly, they say no. Fiona shelves the idea and scratches her writing itch with a PhD instead.
Four years and 85,000 words later, Fiona is once again at a bit of a loose end. She digs out her story and a neighbour suggests sending it to their relative who works in children’s books. The relative says ‘This is pretty awful. Get an editor!’ (only much more politely and tactfully than that). This time Fiona does some proper research and with the help of a book designer and editor, knocks the text into some sort of recognisable shape and commissions a professional illustrator, Rosie Brooks.
The book, Amelie and the Great Outdoors, is self-published in April 2016 just after her baby’s eleventh birthday.
Self-publishing is expensive, especially for a picture book and the self-promotion is physically and psychologically punishing but Fiona learns a lot and experiences the joy of holding your story in book form.
Act 3. By now, Fiona has become comfortable in the padded cell of the 12-spread format. She also nurtures a fascination with the synergy between words and pictures in the best picture books. She starts Picture Book Club...
...to bring grown-ups who love picture books together and gets tragically addicted to Twitter.
She joins SCBWI and finds her tribe in an awesome critique group. Fiona takes a new story to the SCBWI conference in November 2016 where she meets Howard Gray, a scientist like herself who loves writing but who can also make magic with pictures. She shows him her new story and asks (begs) him to illustrate it if she can save up enough to self-publish again. He says yes. Whoohoo! Through SCBWI, Fiona learns more about the industry and decides to have one last shot at getting published traditionally. She sends the new story, with a pencil sketch of a single spread from Howard, round to many, many agents and publishers. Lots of ‘no’s again but some glimmers of encouragement this time. Then, pretty much on the last roll of the dice, a ‘yes’! from Tiny Tree Children’s Books. They like Howard’s sketch...
...they like the fact that Fiona has experience of promoting her own work through Amelie, they like the story. They candidly admit that it was in that order. Fiona feels it is fabulous to have someone on her side, excited about her story. That one ‘yes’ really does make the twelve years of ‘no’s feel like part of something. Contracts are signed, Danny and the Dream Dog becomes a reality, rapturous applause, happy ending, curtain.
So that’s it. Only hopefully it isn’t the end. There’s a lot of promotional work to be done for Danny with library visits, bookshop events and school visits.
So that’s it. Only hopefully it isn’t the end. There’s a lot of promotional work to be done for Danny with library visits, bookshop events and school visits.
Six months after signing the contract with Tiny Tree, I signed another contract, this time with my dream agent, Alice Williams. She has moved my writing on so much and is getting my work seen by editors I could only have dreamed of previously.
Fingers crossed for a sequel!
A huge thanks to Fiona for such an interesting guest post full of a lot of very useful info on the ins and outs of publishing!
"Danny and the Dream Dog" by Fiona Barker and Howard Gray is out now, published by Tiny Tree Books. Look out for our full review soon!
"Danny and the Dream Dog" by Fiona Barker and Howard Gray (Tiny Tree Publishing)
"A Book of Bears: At Home With Bears Around the World" by Katie Viggers (Laurence King Publishing)
"The Element in the Room: Investigating the Atomic Ingredients that make up your home" by Mike Barfield and Lauren Humphrey (Laurence King Publishing).
Monday, 15 October 2018
"A Cat's Guide to the Night Sky" by Stuart Atkinson and Brendan Kearney (Laurence King Publishing)
"The Ultimate Spell-Caster" by Mike Barfield (Laurence King Publishing)
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