Old Books

Today we sorted out the children’s bookcases. I hate throwing books away, but it was time to be ruthless. No-one wants to read board books, fabric books or waterproof books anymore; the children are too old and anyway, the books are falling to pieces. Neil and I filled a bin bag with well-loved, well-chewed, well-scribbled-in specimens and made some smaller piles that weren't so grubby to give away to friends with small children. The best part of the throwing away exercise was discovering books which we had forgotten we had.

‘Elbert’s bad word’ for instance: the story of a boy who says a very rude word (no, you never find out what it was!) and shocks everyone into silence at a party. He has to replace the rude word with several marvellous adjectives which he goes on to use next time he needs to express himself loudly. The story of the old lady who swallowed a fly; the same version that they had in my reception classroom in 1980, with a very fat woman gradually filling up with animals through circular holes in the pages. The ‘Pig’s Book of Manners’ in which a boy has such atrocious manners that it takes a pig to teach him to be polite. And some old classics like ‘Hairy Maclary’ and ‘Harry the Dirty Dog’, another classic from my childhood.

For the first time ever there is space on the bookcases in our house. In fact there is a whole empty shelf on one of them. Sad as it was to throw so many old friends in the recycling bin, I’m looking forward to filling the empty space with plenty of new ones in the coming months.

Bedtime Stories

My mum was a great one for bedtime stories. She always read to us when we were small. Sometimes she even fell asleep mid-sentence, slurring with tiredness as she dropped off, which made it all the more entertaining. I fell asleep like this for the first time myself about five years ago - it wasn’t quite so funny then.

I still read at night to three of my children. In the summer we often get through a couple of Famous Five books – I try and censor the sexism as I go: occasionally Anne makes speeches telling the boys to tidy up their own mess. Last summer I decided that we ought to get into the 1950s mood by drinking ginger beer and eating boiled sweets as I read the stories. This went down very well and continued for several weeks until I had some pity on the children’s teeth and brought the whole thing to an end while their smiles were still intact. We got quite carried away with the whole Famous Five thing, though. One of my boys started saying things were ‘jolly’ this and ‘jolly’ that and we even made a papier mache Kirrin Island which mysteriously found its way into the recycling bin when the children weren’t watching.

Bed time stories make me feel nostalgic for a time when my life was simpler, when tiredness was decades away and my only responsibility was to enjoy the book. Those days seem so far away now, but I recently discovered that the BBC has a book at bedtime series. Fantastic news for people like me who miss their mother’s stories.

Nobody Likes Me ~ Fay Weldon

Last night I read a story by Fay Weldon to one of my children before they went to sleep. I bought the book, Nobody Likes Me, several years ago when I was struggling with one of my boys: I wondered if he felt that nobody liked him. The book tells the story of a small boy who comes home from school in a bad mood, tearing up a party invitation and splashing his sister with mud along the way. When he gets home he goes to his room where he shouts and growls for a while before falling asleep under the bed. During his dreams you get an idea of what it might be that is bothering him. Weldon’s prose is simple and effective. She uses a lot of colour when describing things and the illustrations carefully reflect this.

It was only as I put the book away that I recalled that it was by Weldon, and as I squeezed it back onto the shelf, I had to smile. Fay Weldon was a Booker Prize judge in 1983. When it was time to decide the winner, she fatally joked that she couldn’t make a decision without her husband’s help. The men present believed her. One of the claimed afterwards, ‘Fay had to decide but couldn’t...she looked at me blankly [and said] “at home I never make decisions; my husband makes them all” ’ (Martyn Goff). Twenty-five years later, Weldon noted ‘one should never make jokes in the presence of the police, security or at a Booker prize judging.' As I jammed Weldon’s book between a couple of pristine, less loved specimens, I wondered what sort of men readily believe that an author of 21 novels is incapable of making decisions? And I wondered too if it might be rather hard work to like them.

The Snowman

It wouldn't be Christmas without seeing the film of The Snowman at least once. When it snowed heavily last week, Neil and I made a snowman. It was nearly midnight and the air was crowded with enormous floating flakes. The children had been trying to build a snowman all week. They had managed to produce several small, scrappy specimens, but nothing resembling the kind of snowman you might want to come to life. When Neil and I realised how much snow was falling, we pulled on coats and gloves and dashed outside to the front garden. We started to build. We thought that we would just keep going until the snowman reached a decent height - slightly bigger than the children's previous efforts. But once we started, it was hard to stop. The snowman got bigger and bigger. Neighbours, looking out of their windows at the snow before going to bed, noticed us in the garden and waved enthusiastically. We waved back and carried on building. Eventually our snowman was big enough. We found him a hat and a scarf. We found him some eyes, a nose and a smile and he was finally complete. He was the first proper snowman I have ever made and I was so pleased that I ran upstairs to wake the children. It was still snowing heavily.

'Who wants to come outside and play in the snow?' I asked them, thinking that they would undoubtedly jump at the opportunity to fling on their wellies and cavort in the garden in the middle of the night.

Four, very cross, sleepy children refused my offer and stumbled back to bed. Two of them deigned to look out of the window at the snowman before burying themselves under their duvets. 'Look,' I said. 'He looks just like The Snowman. Do you think he might come to life?' The snowman stood expectantly, smiling up at us, a lone figure in the unfamiliar, white landscape. The children stared at me for a moment and then exchanged a she's-completely-bonkers-let's-go-back-to-sleep look. I went back downstairs feeling disappointed. I sat in the study and watched the snowman for a while. He really looked to me as if he might come to life - well, if we had made him some legs it might have helped, but his arms and face had possibilities, it seemed. One of the wonderful things about childhood was imagining inanimate objects coming to life: imagining how fabulous it would be to be surprised. The surprises of adulthood tend not to be so fabulous - 'there's how much in my bank account?' - 'there's biro all over the new sofa?' - 'traffic wardens are about on bank holidays?' 

The Snowman contains the best of childhood fantasies: parents who don't wake up - no matter how much noise you make, an inanimate object coming to life, a personal party with Father Christmas and, most wonderful of all, flying. But perhaps the reason why we enjoy these fantasies so much is because they are just that. It's cold in the snow and most children, as I discovered, don't want to get up in the middle of the night to have adventures. They would rather dream about them instead.

Pop goes the book

There’s something magical about pop-up books, particularly Christmas ones. There’s something about intricate, paper staircases that draws your fingers to tiptoe to the top and down again. There’s something about doorways and windows that encourages you to push your face into the folds and admire the layered view. My favourite is the story of The Nutcracker.

You open the pages and out pops another world, it really is like magic. The book was flat and all of a sudden it’s a fan of colour and textures. Sometimes a book like this needs to be read at eye level – suddenly you aren’t spectating , you’re there, in the book meeting the characters and running up their staircases. It's like being in a fairy tale as Tom Thumb or the later Thumbelina, and getting to see life in miniature.

For eleven months of the year my copy of The Nutcracker lives in the loft with the other Christmas books. When it is finally December, a place is cleared on a bookcase and the Christmas books are greeted like old friends. Occasionally there are squabbles over The Nutcracker, occasionally I get hoarse from reading it to each child individually on the same night, occasionally the paper gets damaged and Clara and the others are rescued by fine strands of sticky tape. The book must say something to the children about the magic of Christmas, perhaps something along the lines of: if paper staircases can pop out of books, surely Father Christmas can pop down the chimney?

The story of The Nutcracker doesn't need pop-up pictures in order to captivate an audience: it has adventure, magic, romance, fighting, snow and dancing sweets! I don't write stories about any of these things and I don't use illustrations, which means that the words have to pop off the pages and fold themselves into tiny pictures of life instead: it's just a matter of working out how to do it.