Tuesday 31 January 2017

Love and War - by Lydia Syson

Love and war - opposites or inextricably tangled? I’d say the latter.

I don’t know how long love and war have been linked in my own mind. Maybe since reading Eric Newby’s evocative memoir of his years as a prisoner-of-war in Italy: Love and War in the Apennines. Maybe forever.

It makes perfect sense to me that one extreme state should lead to another. As the stakes get ever higher, people really do fall in love more quickly.Anyone who condemns fictional ‘Insta-Love’ should probably read Flickerbook, the fragmented autobiography of pioneering children’s author Leila Berg. In London during the Spanish Civil War, she fends off one marriage proposal after another from International Brigade volunteers about to depart for battle. (Two of her lovers died.) Even the most hard-boiled 1930s communist activists could be surprisingly conventional when it came to wartime romance.

Neither war nor love are exactly the height of fashion in the YA world just now. Although historical fiction could hardly be more popular in adult markets, it’s another story altogether when it comes to teens. (Come to Past Imperfect? at the Society of Authors on March 16th if you want to discuss this further - it's sold out, but audio tickets are still available.) The backlash against romance is perhaps more understandable and in some ways even welcome: in its most traditional form, the genre can fit uncomfortably with contemporary gender politics. Of course it doesn't have to, and romance set in the past can offer valuable historical perspective on precisely that topic.

Happily, YA publishers haven’t given up on historical romance. Its appeal remains enormous. The best stories borrow the genre’s tropes, and redefine them, not necessarily in particularly dramatic ways.

Lively, independent and thoughtful heroines combined with well-researched, convincing settings make all the difference. In two new historical romances set in World War Two, A Time to Live and Wait for Me, both Sue Purkiss and Caroline Leech use excellent characterisation and a strong sense of family relationships to stay away from cliché. Though written for very different readerships, the two novels have a lot in common. Both explore young women’s lives on the rural home front. Both address the transformative powers of love and war. Both are deceptively sweet and simple, but are haunted by horrific events happening ‘off-stage’.

A Time to Live is one of a number of books by SASSIES in ‘Promises’, Ransom Publishing’s new
series for teenagers who struggle with reading. A hi-lo novel –– high interest, low reading age – it’s a hugely engaging love story set in occupied France, told with deft economy of plot and language. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie finds an injured British pilot and, with the help of her brother Pierre, shelters him on her family farm. Jack is a rear-gunner – a ‘tail-end Charlie’ - the most dangerous
position in a bomber crew. Sylvie and Pierre know that they are putting the whole family at risk by protecting him. Their father just wants to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. If he discovers Jack, he will hand him in without a qualm.

Everything changes when a letter arrives from a relative in Paris. The reality of what's happening on their doorstep, to friends of relatives, is brought home in a few short lines. ‘”They rounded up Jews from all over Paris. The children were separated from their parents and kept in a sports stadium for days – with no food, no water. Thousands of them…’” Sylvie’s mother reports. ‘Can you imagine - can you imagine how afraid they must have been? And now…they’ve all been taken away. No one knows where.’ In a few short lines, we have learnt of the infamous ‘Veld’Hiv Roundup’ of July 1942, when over 1300 Jews, nearly a third of these children, were held in appalling conditions in a velodrome before being shipped in cattletrucks to Auschwitz. The news encourages Sylvie to confide in her mother about Jack, and Papa, shamed by his previous efforts to hide his head in the sand, is suddenly determined to play his part. Together, the family hides Jack ‘in plain sight’, transforming him into Jacques Moulin, farmworker. Soon Sylvie has fallen for him. But to save him, she’ll have to help him escape.

A Time to Live’s concise diary format keeps events gripping and immediate, filtering the big ideas – life under occupation, the day-to-day work of the Resistance, emotional sacrifice– through the voice of a hugely likeable, resourceful heroine. It’s a wonderfully accessible way into the many pleasures of historical fiction. Appetite-whetting stuff indeed.

Caroline Leech takes forbidden love in another direction, inspired by one of the many prisoner-of-war camps in Britain whose German or Italian inmates were sent to work on local farms. I was immediately reminded of an unforgettable film I saw when I was a teenager myself, Another Time, Another Place, starring a young Phyllis Logan, and I steeled myself for heartbreak. Happily, Wait for Me is neither so bleak nor so tragic.

It’s set in 1945 in East Lothian, rather than the Highlands, and its heroine is a feisty seventeen-year-old with two brothers away in the army. She’s horrified when a German prisoner arrives to work on the farm, all the more because his face is horribly disfigured – scarred by burns sustained during the
D-Day Landings, as it transpires. You’ve guessed it – Lorna slowly falls in love with Paul, who comes from Dresden: already there is a clue that the end of the war may prove bitter-sweet.

It’s a year of growing up for Lorna, who comes to understand that the world is far less black and white than she had imagined. The love story is satisfying, but not always centre-stage: for me, the beauty of Wait for Me lies in Leech’s delicate tracing of Lorna’s changing relationships with a whole cast of characters, including other women, young and old, such as lively land girl, Nellie - glamorous, risk-taking and a real survivor – and best friend Iris, engaged to marry the horribly controlling vicar’s son, William, who is almost too repulsive, but perfectly plausible. Questions of friendship, loyalty, sexual consent and the emotional damage caused by war are woven in with care: particularly memorable scenes take place a US army base dance hall and after the return of one of Lorna’s brother on leave. It’s easy to lose yourself in this engrossing book, which offers a convincing portrait of life in a Scottish coastal community during World War Two, while exploring themes that, unfortunately, will always be relevant.

Given World-War domination of historical fiction for the young, I can’t resist also recommending a couple of books I read last year, both of which deserve prizes, plaudits and wide recognition all round for their brilliant illuminations of two much more obscure twentieth-century conflicts: Ireland’s Easter Rising and Fascist Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.

In Name upon Name (the title is borrowed from Yeats) Sheena Wilkinson portrays a peculiarly complicated home front: in Belfast in 1916. Helen is the daughter of a Presbyterian father and a Catholic mother. She has a cousin on one side of the family who is an officer in the British Army and another on the other side who, despite his family’s ardent Irish nationalism, runs away to join up in – only to find himself sent to Dublin, instead of France, to put down the Rising. What’s more important? Family or country? Can you spend your whole life trying to believe two different things at once?

Identity, familial love – however you define family – politics and loyalty are also central to Elizabeth Wein’s extraordinary Black Dove, White Raven, which is also extraordinarily ambitious.Swooping from segregated 1930s America to Africa’s oldest independent country, Ethiopia, this is a complex, many-layered narrative, consisting of story fragments, flight logbooks, and journals, through which shine the alternating voices of young Theo and Em. They are the son and daughter of ‘Black Dove’ and ‘White Raven’, a pair of idealistic stunt pilots who defy race laws and convention as well as gravity in their barnstorming shows across the US. Until a freak accident kills Delia. Em’s mother Rhoda is initially struck down by grief, but eventually takes the children to live in Ethiopia, where they grow up in relative freedom on a coffee co-operative. The slow, steady build towards the war pays off in spades, allowing the landscape to come alive as much as the perfectly flawed and perfectly admirable characters who inhabit it: the last third of the book is impossible to put down. Heart in mouth, we fly above the country, in one daring mission after another, till we reach the utter horror of the Italian air attack on Addis – the too-often forgotten beginning of twentieth-century ‘total war’. I don’t suppose anybody would call this historical romance, but yes, this book too is about love and war, like no other.



Postscript: I just re-read the opening chapter of Eric Newby’s memoir. He is setting off by submarine on a mission to save Malta from capitulation ‘the worst possible kind of operation’. He says he ‘felt like one of those rather ludicrous, ill-briefed agents who had been landed by night on Romney Marsh in the summer of 1940, all of whom had been captured and shot.’ A reference which passed me by when I first read Love and War all those years ago, but one which will make perfect sense to readers of my own WW2 novel, That Burning Summer, published in the US by Sky Pony Press today.

www.lydiasyson.com

Monday 30 January 2017

The power of shared stories - Lari Don

I received an email from a teacher at the end of last week which took my breath away. The email itself was a fairly mundane reply to queries about the school timetable and class sizes - we’re organising an author visit – but the PS was astounding. Here it is:

 PS - We've just had a very interesting class discussion on the morality of Yann's possession spell in First Aid for Fairies. One of the children made a connection with Trump's new torture agenda (our news article of the week) - who knew a book written almost a decade ago could be so topical?

To clarify, this is a class of primary age children, reading one of my adventure novels (First Aid For Fairies And Other Fabled Beasts, published in 2008), then the pupils, and their clearly superb teacher, bounced off it to discuss morality, ethics and world affairs.

I didn’t write that scene with any huge political goal in mind. Actually, this was my first novel, so I wrote it with no idea of whether anyone would ever read it, let alone discuss it. Honestly, I wrote it to discover how dark I could go with a children’s story, how flawed I could make a character and still care about him, how far I could stretch the magic that I was just learning to play with.

I didn’t write it to prompt discussions about right wing conservatism, abuse of power and the ethics of information gathering.

I am astounded, amazed, impressed and humbled that these primary age children were prompted by my words to think, to discuss, to make connections, and to discover their own opinions…

But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. This is after all what books and stories are for. This is what shared reading, and discussing stories together, should be for. Not specifically for dissecting the flaws of Donald Trump’s presidency (though, please go ahead and do that…) but for giving us shared vocabulary, and shared experiences within the safe environment of a story, so we can explore other issues together.

Stories help us think. Shared stories help us think together.

At this point I should probably explain: Yann is a centaur. In the relevant scene, this half-horse half-human from Greek myth (who is also a fairly grumpy Scottish pre-teen) uses dark magic to compel a weasel to spy for him, causing the weasel obvious pain and distress. The scene is set in tunnels under Edinburgh, which are being used by a minotaur as his temporary Scottish labyrinth, and the centaur’s use of dark magic is witnessed by his own friends – a selkie, a fairy, a phoenix and a token human girl - causing them to question his use and abuse of power.

As you can probably tell, First Aid For Fairies is a fantasy. It’s not set in contemporary real-life America, or the Middle East, or Guantanamo Bay. It’s a fantasy. And the fact that this wonderful teacher used this scene to encourage her pupils to talk about ethics and link them to current global concerns, proves something that I’ve always believed. Fantasy and fairy tales – stories set in magical worlds safely distant from our day-to-day lives – are very strong tools to allow us to examine our real world.

So, the power of class novels to prompt discussion, the power of fantasy to give us a new way to look at reality - this PS gave me pause to think about both of those issues. But the main reason this PS took my breath away was because it reminded me of the awesome responsibility of writing for children.

I don’t write stories with messages, I write stories with ambushes, chases and magic spells. But I also choose to write about characters and situations that allow me to explore questions which fascinate and concern me. I write because I want readers to enjoy the stories I imagine, I don’t write with the intention of teaching moral lessons (never, ever!) But I am incredibly moved and impressed if my books prompt young readers to explore their own questions.

It’s a privilege, an honour and a huge responsibility writing for kids, and it’s important to be reminded of that regularly. It’s also a very heavy weight to carry. But I suspect if we didn’t recognise the size of the responsibility, and occasionally stagger under its weight, we shouldn’t be doing it…

So, having almost recovered from this email, I’m now very much looking forward to meeting this thoughtful and wonderful class, and their amazing teacher, in a few weeks’ time.

But first, I’m off to explore questions of identity and choice, lightly disguised as a trilogy about shapeshifters… 



Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales, a teen thriller and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Sunday 29 January 2017

But where do your ideas come from? By Hilary Hawkes

If you're a children's author sooner or later you are going to be asked THE question.

You'll be sitting with a group of children. It might be a school visit - or maybe a bookshop visit. You'll have finished inspiring everyone with your stunning talk about your book. The children, or possibly the grown-ups, will be waving their arms at you: because it's time to ask questions.

You'll have been fine with:
How old were you when you started writing?
What were your favourite stories when you were seven?
What are you going to write next?
or even:
Do you like X-Factor?

No problem with those questions is there? But then here it comes - without any warning, so you'd better be ready:

But where do your ideas come from?
credit:pixabay.com


Aghhhhh!  The first time I was asked that question I didn't speak for a full thirty seconds. And a class full of little seven year old faces stared at me in expectation.
Obviously they were expecting a stunner of an answer.  There was surely a magical land where authors went to get ideas for books. And I was about the reveal the secret, right?



I've always thought there ought to be a magical land of story ideas. Perhaps hanging from the trees would be Plot Nuggets. Just pick one and inside would be an intriguing idea, complete with characters, conflicts and resolutions. 


credit:pixabay.com


Or maybe there would be a kind of supermarket for stories there too. There would be character aisles, theme aisles, rug pulling moment aisles, protagonist aisles and happy ending aisles. We could just stroll along with our shopping baskets (trolleys for longer length novels) and pluck our ingredients from the shelves.

Or perhaps the magical land of story ideas would have a giant pond. Just cast your net and see what interesting characters and plots you catch.

A writer friend of mine swears that her story ideas start with dreams. Luckily she has extra entertaining and publishable dreams then.  So far mine would be too crazy loopy to turn into books I think.

Another friend shared the Card Method idea with me once. "Make yourself a set of blank cards and divide them into three groups," she enthused. "On Set One cards write short descriptions of different characters. On Set Two cards write 'problems' or something the characters must overcome or defeat. On Set Three cards create the final endings. The idea is to take one card from each set and think up a story based on these choices." That hasn't worked for me either.

The truth is ideas don't really come from anywhere consistently do they? For me the idea for a book can come when I see something funny or when someone says something and I think: "That would make a great title!" Or a situation or a scene can inspire the seed of a story. 

But sometimes I think an idea can come from a place deep inside a writer's heart and soul - as though it was always there just waiting patiently for the right time for you to find it and be ready to write it.

credit:pixabay.com

The only thing I know really is that ideas all begin very small: like an acorn waiting to grow. And these little acorns can be anywhere. There seems to be a limitless supply and they can turn up in the most unlikeliest of places.  Once you have one little 'acorn' you know it has the potential to grow into one whole story - as long as you give it a lot of care, attention, hard work and time.

But what did I say to that group of waiting seven year olds several years ago now? My acorn of an idea for that book had come when my then ten year old had come home from school looking glum, cross and fed up. His school football team had just lost a match. The score was twenty nil and apparently this was all a disaster. Obviously, I was all soothing and sympathetic, but then rushed to my note book. A year later, after a lot of thinking, character and plot invention, tweaking and more thinking, Twenty Nil and Other Disasters emerged.

So no magical land of ideas for authors. But always oodles of magical moments writing, reading and sharing stories with children.

What about you? Where do say ideas come from?

Hilary Hawkes



Twenty Nil and Other Disasters!


Saturday 28 January 2017

Reprints, or the Art of Changing your Mind - Clémentine Beauvais

My little Sesame Seade series is soon coming out in French for the first time. The first book came out in 2013, and was written a year and a half before that. It feels like I wrote it an eternity and a half ago, and of course Things Have Happened since then.

Principally, I, erm, am no longer in the relationship I was when the book was first published, so the Acknowledgements page duly translated into French (I didn't do the translation), which sees The Previous Boyfriend passionately thanked, is today a bit awkward.

No big deal, I'll just ask the publisher to remove that last paragraph. But it made me think of the changes authors do when books are reprinted, especially decades after the first run.

Sometimes a novel will be reprinted with an author's note at the beginning, explaining the changes. I've seen some that are basically like, "I hate that book now, but apparently it's become a classic, because you're all stupid; so go ahead and read it, but I've written better things since then".

Sometimes, however, there'll be subtle changes inside the book that are not necessarily openly acknowledged. Some are simply for the purposes of updating the book, even within just fifteen years: references to VHS deemed ridiculous or incomprehensible to children today, street names that have changed, names of presidents that are no longer in office or of TV shows now quite forgotten.

Other changes may be ethical. Some of my author friends have told me they've changed jokes that were once acceptable but are no longer so. Others, having become vegetarian, have deleted references to roast chicken and legs of lamb.

I love how much that complicates the (sempiternal/ boring/ awful) question 'How long does it take you to write a book?'

'I don't know. How many reprints do I get?'

Have you changed anything (other than spelling mistakes) from one print to the next?

Friday 27 January 2017

The Felties are Coming! Lynn Huggins-Cooper

One of the first things people ask when they are introduced to someone new is what they 'do.' I know they mean 'What do you do for money?' but wouldn't it be more interesting if we asked 'What do you like to do?'

I like to write, and I like to create textile art.

Now, I have done lots of jobs in the past. I have liked all of them - and I know that's an amazingly privileged thing to be able to say. Some have been more challenging than others. I have been a teacher, wildlife warden, bail hostel worker, barmaid, lecturer and more, but for the last 20 years, I've been an author. The thing is, I'd write even if nobody ever paid me to. I often do, in fact, because many of the books we write are not commissioned, but written 'on spec' - and then comes the task of selling them.

I write because I love to write - and can't really stop myself from writing. It just happens. Writing leaks out of me into notebooks, post-it notes, scraps of paper and even sometimes receipts scrabbled about for at the bottom of handbags. It's the same with felting. My head suddenly fills up with creatures that demand to be let out of the wool by my needle.


A tiny fox crept out this week, and curled up under a toadstool. 



Now, the really exciting thing that has started to happen is that my two worlds are meeting in 'The In-between.' Felties are turning up with stories to tell, and of course I am happy to write them. This fusion of my worlds is an exciting one for me, as I haven't been an illustrator before. Watch this space! The felties are coming...

(You can find out more about these little  creatures here)




Thursday 26 January 2017

Postcards from Pembrokeshire – Eloise Williams


My first book (I can say that now that my second is being launched in April – whoop!) ‘Elen’s Island’ is very much influenced by where I live.
 

It’s not difficult to see why.

The county simply evokes a need for storytelling – in me, at least. I love it here. It’s a modern-day Blyton-shire with a culture of people who still greet each other in the street. It has Honesty Boxes for eggs and veg, and Ploughing Matches on special occasions.  
 

My second book ‘Gaslight’ (Firefly Press, coming in April, did I mention that?) is full of loads of the other things I love. It’s set in Cardiff, where I was born, and in the Victorian era which I am obsessed with. It’s dark and mysterious, eerie and sad, adventurous and more than a little bit murderous. Eek!

For my third and fourth books – which I am still working on – I’ve returned to Pembrokeshire as my setting. I have brought the dark, mysterious, danger back here with me! I may create villains but I'll still pay for my eggs! 

Every day, when I step outside my door, I see something that I want to write about. I thought I’d let my husband’s paintings show you some of those things.  
 

He is almost halfway through a project called ‘Postcards from Pembrokeshire’ in which he challenged himself to paint a postcard-sized picture of Pembrokeshire every day FOR A YEAR.
 

Apart from being hugely impressed with his skill as an artist, his perseverance, commitment, and his ability to live with me, I am also hugely in love with his depiction of this part of West Wales.
 

I do wish he would stop drying paintings on radiators and in the oven though. Small price to pay to the Art God I suppose.

Guy Manning – husband - has a daily blog where you can follow his progress if you are interested www.postcardsfrompembrokeshire.com

He says a bit about painting and a lot about Watson Jones, our dog.



 

Wednesday 25 January 2017

The Joy of Audiobooks by Tamsyn Murray

I am frequently late to parties.

I am not one of those keenies who arrives at the very beginning of a shindig, with a bottle of something extremely drinkable in one hand and a gift for their host in the other. No, I am more likely to have forgotten the invitation almost as soon as I opened it, only remembering that there is something I should be doing when I see others shouting about what a great (or terrible) time they are having at the party. And then I will hurriedly pull on some glad rags - if I can find any - and join in late with proceedings, probably asking any number of annoying questions of my fellow party-goers as we dance.

See? I know how to arrive late.

My most recent 'late to the party' thing is audiobooks. And I'm not so much late this time, more revisiting an all-night rave that I once attended but left around midnight (before it got good), and I've now found it has been going on without me all this time. I used to listen to books on CDs in the car - my daughter and I worked our way through the Harry Potter series (read by Stephen Fry) during long journeys. I even listened to a couple of my own stories on CD, which made a refreshing change, But I didn't consider audiobooks as a replacement for actual books until a few weeks ago.

I blame Carrie Fisher. When she died, I suddenly wanted to read her books. Except that I wanted more than that; I wanted Carrie Fisher to read me her books. So I used one of my many unused Audible credits and downloaded Wishful Drinking, so I could listen to it while I walked my dog.

I loved it. I enjoyed Carrie's dry humour and eccentricities. Feeling bold, I tried The Princess Diarist, also by Carrie Fisher. Before I knew it, I was listening to The Girl With All the Gifts, by M R Carey. And I was hooked - I stayed up until 2am, absorbing the story in the same way I would if I was reading it. Now I'm onto The Cuckoo's Calling, by Robert Galbraith, and I love that too. A lot depends on the voice of the reader but I am careful to check out the sample before I buy. I listen as I walk the dog, in the car, while walking home. One of the things I like best is that it's harder to skip ahead, to find our what happens next faster. I simply listen and enjoy. And maybe dance a bit, if no one is watching, because audiobooks are a great party. I'm glad I got there eventually.

How about you? Do you prefer print books or audiobooks? Are you even later to the party than me?

Tuesday 24 January 2017

Hanging up my boots. Getting back to my roots - Liz Kessler

If you picture a writer from centuries ago, what do you see?

I bet a fair proportion of you see a similar image to mine: a solitary author, hunched over a desk, working by candlelight with a quill pen and inky fingers.

Perhaps this is a slightly over-romanticised view. But what we do know for certain is that up until the last decade or two, the process of writing books was probably mostly confined to the job of, well, writing books.

Nowadays, any published author will tell you it is about so much more than that. Yes of course, at its heart, the one bit of the job that is essential is still the writing of the book. But we live in times that demand a lot more of authors if we want to be successful. It’s a crowded marketplace out there, and there is more and more pressure to find creative and effective ways to help our books to be seen and noticed.

We do this in all sorts of ways.
  • Writing blogs;
  • Setting up Facebook author pages;
  • Creating a website and keeping it up to date;
  • Doing school visits;
  • Posting on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram etc etc etc.

I do all of these things, and for the most part, I REALLY enjoy all of them. But sometimes, I get to the end of my working day and I realise that I’ve spent the majority of it doing the work that supports my books, and only a tiny proportion of it on the actual writing. And much as I enjoy the rest of it, the writing is still my favourite bit.

This year, my publisher has asked me to start writing two books a year instead of one. The request is a compliment, and I’m keen to give it a go. But I’ve made a deal with myself: in order to do it, I have to stop doing a lot of the other stuff that fills my days.

And so, after five and a bit years, I’ve decided it is time to hang up my ABBA boots and give someone else a chance to join this fantastic blog whilst I get back to my quill pen and candlelight and attempt to put as much creative energy as I can into the writing.

At around the same time that I made this decision, I received an email that was one of the most heart-warming emails I’ve ever received. It was one of those that takes my breath away at the thought of having such a special role in a young person’s life, and it reminded me that the beating heart at the centre of my job is not the sales or the twitter followers or the marketing plans or the blogs. It is the readers.

And so, I would like to end my ABBA journey by getting right back to basics, and share the email that reminded what an absolute privilege my job is.

With thanks to Isabelle for writing it (and giving me permission to share it), this is why I’m a writer. And with huge thanks to everyone involved in running this wonderful ABBA blog and letting me be part of it (especially Sue and Penny) this is me signing off.

Dear Miss Kessler and Miss Windsnap,

“I’m ugly and this scar is the grossest thing ever!” I told that to myself whenever older students such as 8th graders would look at me and grimace or snicker when I passed them with my big, bulky, powder pink cast or my raindrop-print, Oh-my-God-I’m-freaking-deformed brace. I was like Quasimodo from Notre Dame – too different to be happy – that is, until I read The Tail of Emily Windsnap. Your book changed my whole view of my body for the better.

I remember when my own friends would occasionally tease me about my scar and call me “Bad Back Girl,” “Cripple,” or even “Scar,” like from The Lion King, and it hurt to hear them say that. I knew they were joking, but they knew how I felt about my surgeries and my messed up spine. I always laughed along, but I had wanted to curl up in the fetal position and feel sorry for myself. Reading about Emily and her being insecure about her own body made me realize that I’m not alone. It made me feel like there was someone that, even though she wasn’t truly real, I could talk to about being
worried or feeling ugly. I would sometimes write small notes to Emily and then imagine my own version of her response. It may sound weird, but it was a lot like having an imaginary friend; it made me feel better.

When I got your book as a gift from my mom, I immediately fell in love, because at the time, I was obsessed with mermaids and had always thought they were beautiful girls with sparkling tails who had no imperfections whatsoever. You and Emily proved that thought wrong. Reading Emily’s story showed me that anyone could turn into something even a tiny bit beautiful, even a lanky girl with chicken legs such as herself. Not long after reading your book for probably the third time did I realize what kind of an impact it had on me and on my feelings. When Emily said, “I’m not a freak,” it reminded me of my own feelings of being called a freak and helped me to truly connect to her as a person and not as an imaginary character.

Reading your books gave me a reason to care about my body and not to hide. Instead of wearing bathing suits that would cover my back, I would wear ones that would tie in the back and show off my battle scar. I wouldn’t back down when people would ask about it, and I’d respond in a cool manner. Your books have also given me the want to read more about Emily, and to read more books that involve kids being different, because they give me more of a feeling of fitting in, and they help me to remember that no one’s perfect and we all have imperfections. I truly want to thank you for your books and for giving me a new hope of fitting in. Never stop writing!!

Eternally Grateful,

Isabelle

Monday 23 January 2017

'And the knights are no more, and the dragons are dead' by Steve Gladwin





Sometimes I can’t sleep. This has been going on for seven years. I wouldn’t call it insomnia exactly, because I wouldn’t want to insult real insomniacs who I’m sure suffer a lot more than I do. If I can’t get off to sleep it’s usually because I’m trying too hard, or something has happened earlier or recently that I can’t get out of my mind. My real problems however come with getting back to sleep. It’s then that my chattering mind starts to misbehave and refuses to be put on the naughty step.

So what keeps me awake? Is it plot because I’m a writer, or seeking to solve the human condition in the nearly Trump era, (a sentence that isn’t half as funny as it sounds!). No, for the most part I’m kept awake by the trivial, the pointless and the peripheral, and especially with poems and song lyrics running forever through my mind, like a Dr Beeching branch line that no-one has told had been dismantled.  

I used to love Gilbert and Sullivan when I was a teenager, got all the records out of the library and sung happily along to the Lord Chancellor’s Nightmare Song from 'Iolanthe'. I can still recite this and I know Neil Gaiman can too! Not anymore! I still quite like G and S and I actually bought ‘The Yeoman of the Guard’ last Christmas, but I can’t play it because the lyrics run through in my head and keep me awake. The same goes for my favourite musical, ‘Kiss me Kate’. Rosie and I have a system whereby we agree never to watch the film after a certain time of day, because otherwise ‘I’ve Come To Wife It Wealthily In Padua’ will go through our heads and we’ll hate men all night, (see what I did there?)

And yet, do you know, I’m happy that my brain can retain even the most obscure lines and facts, and that I can remember all of Oberon’s lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, even though I’ll probably never need them again. I’m even more happy that I was one of a generation of children who learnt stories and poems in the 1960’s and retained them, and that my parents read me stories and introduced me to new ones, taught me nursery rhymes and all kinds of songs they’d learnt themselves. I’m happy that we gathered round the piano every Christmas and sung carols together - including 'Oh Come All Ye Faithful' with the descant for Sing Choirs of Angels - and our family party piece of 'The Shepherd’s Farewell' by Berlioz. I’m happy to be a rememberer and a rote learner, for all the bad press the enforcing of such methods quite rightly gets.

In my blog several months ago, I explored some of the ideas I learnt on the future learn course Mental Health in Literature, and related how one of the interviews was about using poetry with Alzheimer’s patients, and the wonderful results that have come from it, where patients who have formerly only been distressed or aggressive, have calmed down within a few lines of Wordsworth’s daffodils and said ‘more, more.’

These elderly patients have the wonderful advantage of being of the generation just before mine when children still learnt poems and stories and rhymes in school. I remember sadly reflecting at the time how , when the current children of this generation become old, if there are still such conditions as Alzheimer’s and dementia, there will be no rote-learnt poems to call on in their memory bank, no magical moment like this one.



It was Christmas Day sometime in the 1970’s. We were gathered in the ‘front room’ with my auntie and uncle and three surviving grandparents, when my grandma Gladwin began to recite poetry she remembered from school. Now there is nothing that unusual about this, but in her case one poem led to another and another and another, before twenty minutes must have gone by and everyone sat there gasping in amazement. When she’d finished her impromptu recital, my Grandma gave a typical chuckle and said that most of them she hadn’t spoken since school.

On a later date my dad got her to recite all of the poems she could remember into a tape recorder and she filled a whole side of a C90. My Granddad said there were some even he’d never heard. My parents still have the recording. Here is the poem I remember best and I wonder if anyone else recognises or had to learn it.

The Little Doll
~Charles Kingsley


I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world;
Her cheeks were so red and so white; dears,
And her hair was so charmingly curled.
But I lost my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day;
And I cried for her more than a week, dears;
But I never could find where she lay.
I found my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day:
Folks say she is terrible changed, dears,
For her paint is all washed away,
And her arm trodden off by the cows, dears,
And her hair not the least bit curled:
Yet for old sakes' sake she is still, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world.

I asked my father if he could remember the first poem he ever had to recite and he came up with this one. He recalls how my grandma being at pains to coach him to make the words ‘soft as silk’ sound just that.

A little fly was looking round for something good to eat,
A lump of sugar he did spy, he thought it quite a treat,
He saw a jug and off he flew on wings as soft as silk,
But when he tried to peep inside, he tumbled in the milk.

Oh dear, or dear!


As for me, well I learnt many things by rote both at school and play, but I’ll always remember us chanting this little hymn as we trooped into assembly – whether it was junior or secondary I can’t remember.

Glad that I live am I;
That the sky is blue;
Glad for the country lanes,
And the fall of dew.

After the sun, the rain;
After the rain the sun;
This is the way of life,
Til the work be done.

All that we need to do;
Be we low or high;
Is to see that we grow,
Nearer to god on high.


By Lizette W Reese (1856-1935



Now there’s an odd thing, because I remember the last verse ending ‘nearer the sky’, so did we learn it that way, or is it my memory that’s had it wrong all these years?

But this whole thing started because of two entirely separate incidents. The first was that – quite by chance - the words of a song from  childhood came into my head, and I remembered how much I’d loved it. Anyone remember this one.

When a knight won his spurs, in the stories of old,
He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold
With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand,
For God and for valour he rode through the land.

No charger have I, and no sword by my side,
Yet still to adventure and battle I ride,
Though back into storyland giants have fled,
And the knights are no more and the dragons are dead.

Let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed
'Gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed;
And let me set free with the sword of my youth,
From the castle of darkness, the power of the truth.






I later learnt that these lyrics were used as the basis of Alan Ahlberg’s ‘Headmaster’s Hymn’ where the children are trying to recite it while several insist on misbehaving. The poem combines the two. I also learnt that the version we sung was to a setting by Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose footsteps, regular readers might recount, I seem to be constantly stepping in.

The other morning I was reading Ruth’s recent abba blog on Monica Edwards, where she asked if there were any modern children’s stories which might be considered unputdownable. Instead I found myself reflecting on what I used to read, as I do increasingly nowadays. My thoughts led me to Malcolm Saville and the Lone Pine Mysteries, which for a long time I’ve wanted to read again. Looking at the list of twenty Lone Pine books, I noticed that one was called ‘Seven White Gates’. My thoughts immediately went back to another song I learnt from my parents which I surely haven’t thought of since, and we were off again.

Seven locks upon the red gate, 
Seven gates about the red town. 
In the town there lives a butcher 
And his name is Handsome John Brown.
In the town there lives a butcher 
And his name is Handsome John Brown. 

John Browns's boots are polished so fine,
John Brown's spurs they jingle and shine.
On his coat a crimson flower,
In his hand a glass of red wine.
On his coat a crimson flower,
In his hand a glass of red wine.

In the night. the golden spurs ring,
In the dark, the leather boots shine.
Don't come tapping at the window,
Now your heart no longer is mine.
Don't come tapping at the window,
Now your heart no longer is mine.

‘The Handsome Butcher was set to music by Matyas Gyorgy Seiber and it was clearly this version which my sister and I were taught by my parents.
Apart from indulging in a bit of nostalgia for myself and hopefully for a few others, what am I saying in this blog? I guess it’s partly a lament for that which has been lost, but thankfully not irretrievably. However I hope it’s also a celebration of the memories so many of us have been gifted with, whether from the positive rote learning of their schools, or the actions, nurture and love of forward thinking parents who also thought backwards to provide for their children those things which had been best in their own childhood. For all the technology which now impacts on my life and yours, a wonderful shining part of me will remain in the time of living knights and unslain dragons, where the butcher’s spurs will always ring and his boots shine as he taps ever hopefully at the window.



Steve Gladwin - 'Grove of Seven'
Writer, Performer and Teacher
Author of 'The Seven' and 'The Raven's Call'