Young Scribblers -- Heroines who write by Sheena Wilkinson

Recently I read a review of a novel where the reviewer said she didn’t like books about writers because she always assumed they were autobiographical. This piqued my interest, partly because I’m almost at the end of a first draft where the main character is not only a writer, but a middle-aged writer suffering some of the vicissitudes in her career that I’ve been through myself, but mainly because I have always liked reading about writers. 

As a bookish child I didn’t often see myself in books – fictional characters were too busy solving mysteries, galloping their ponies, falling into adventure or playing tricks on Mam’zelle to bother much with sitting quietly with a book, my own favourite pastime. So when I did encounter heroines who liked not only to read but also to write, they had a special resonance for me. And now that I think about it, it makes sense that writers might identify with, and therefore write, characters who also wrote. 

So before this all gets a bit meta, here are some of my favourite young fictional writers.

Elizabeth Farrell, in House-at-the-Corner by Enid Blyton. Lizzie is plain and bespectacled, overshadowed by more obviously attractive siblings. But she has a talent for telling stories, and is delighted when she is published in a local newspaper -- though sorry that they don't print her name. Blyton  explores the sensitive Lizzie's pride as well disappointments and rejections, and of course, when the family fortunes falter, it is Lizzie's piggy bank, full of her writerly earnings, which help to make things right.

Of course one must include Jo March! Like Lizzie, Jo has grand ambitions, but like Lizzie (and also her creator, Louisa May Alcott) she has to content herself with writing what will sell, even if her sensationalist stories are disparaged by her friend and mentor, and eventual lover, Professor Bhaer.  I was never a fan of the gothic or sensationalist myself, much preferring cosier stories (like Little Women) so I don't know that I would have been a fan of Jo's stories, but Jo herself, inky-fingered and apt to lose herself in her stories, was a definite kindred spirit. As for Amy burning her manuscript -- I couldn't have forgiven that! 

And talking of kindred spirits, we must have Anne Shirley! Though a lot of Anne's storytelling happens inside her head, we do see her show promise as a writer. The most memorable scene is when she wins first prize in a short story competition -- much to her shock, since she doesn't remember entering it. But bosom friend Diana, not herself gifted with much imagination, has entered on her behalf, adding the important detail that the heroine's cake was so successful because she used Rollings Reliable Baking Powder -- Anne feels she will disgraced for life, but it's not the last time someone has had to compromise the purity of their artistic vision.

Montgomery's Emily of New Moon is the real writer in her oeuvre. I discovered Emily as an adult but I'd have loved her as a child reader, because she takes her writing so seriously.  

As does Harriet the Spy, in Louise Fitzhugh's book of that name.  On the very first page Harriet is frustrated with her friend Sport because he doesn't have 'get' how to play her imaginary game which involves making up a fictional town. I LOVED Harriet. I identified with her frustration -- I could never get other kids to join in with my made-up games and when they did they DIDN'T DO IT THE WAY I WANTED. I wasn't so sure about walking round the neighbourhood spying on people but I certainly understood her need to have her notebook with her at all times. Even today, on the rare occasions when I decide to have a break from writing, I usually end up buying a new notebook and I think of Harriet, the spy unmasked, her notebook confiscated, buying a new one on the way to school.

And there are others. There is Arthur Ransome's Dorothea, with her stories of the mysterious outlaw; Darrell Rivers, who writes a pantomime in In the Fifth at Malory Towers and is thrilled at its success; Jo Bettany who not only writes a school story but has it successfully published by the end of the term (like Françoise Sagan and S. E. Hinton she is still in her teens), the precursor to a long career as a novelist (as well as having eleven children). 

But perhaps my favourite young writer is one you may not know by name, but she deserves to be better known. Alison, the heroine of Joanna Cannan's I Wrote a Pony Book. Alison is fattish  and bookish and hates games. When her horrid English teacher goads her into her writing a book herself 'since you know so much about it', her friends Harry and Hop try to get in on the action. They are fundamentally unsuited to collaborating and Harry and Hop are argumentative and have the imaginations of cheeses, so it doesn't amount to anything (apart from one of the funniest scenes in children's literature). Undeterred, Alison, believing the edict to 'write what you know' writes a pony book, The Price of a Pony which is eventually published. You might call it fanciful but of course Joanna Cannan was the mother of the Pullein-Thompson sisters, who were also published in their teens, and it's also one of the funniest books I have ever read. 

As a young writer myself I loved meeting these scribbling heroines, and now that I call them to mind, there are more of them than I thought. So I must disagree with that reviewer who doesn't like books about writers. I love them! 

Between the Trees by Claire Fayers

Hello, and I hope you all had a good Bank Holiday weekend. I spent part of it at Between the Trees - a lovely festival in Merthyr Mawr, South Wales. Merthyr comes from the Latin for martyr, by the way, and Mawr means big or great. The area is thought to be named after the Welsh saint Myfor who may be buried there. However, one of the talks I went to was on the invention of tradition, given by the historian Graham Loveluck-Evans and so I am taking everything with a pinch of salt. 

The main stage - bring your own chair!

The festival includes music, craft demonstrations, an eclectic mix of talks, and of course folklore. Because in this setting it's easy to imagine the fairy folk peering at you from behind a tree. I do a regular folklore session and usually get a handful of kids. This year, the audience was mainly adult and it filled the space to overflowing. More proof, if needed, that traditional tales are enduringly popular. 

Welsh Giants, Ghosts and Goblins

In terms of inspiration, I find there is something very special about being among trees. The calming shades of green, the shifting mix of cool shadow and patches of bright sunlight. Add in music wafting in from various directions, friendly chatter, the smells of cooking and it's the perfect atmosphere for creating stories. Unfortunately the festival is over for another year, but, while the dry weather lasts, I'm going to be taking my notebook outdoors to write.

www.clairefayers.com

Inspiration?

Something's puzzled me ever since I started writing stories.

How come, when I’m trying to work out the plot for the story I’m currently writing, I always get ideas for the story I’m not working on?

But if I decide to switch to that second story, then I get ideas for the first, only to find if I go back to the first, the ideas for that dry up.

It’s like trying to trap a blob of mercury with a pin.

Somerset Rural Life Museum - Sue Purkiss

 I love museums, and I'm fascinated by the innovative and creative ways they find to tell their stories. I've been to several these holidays with grandchildren - I wrote here about the really rather luscious chocolate museum in Antwerp, and in July we went to the Bristol Aerospace Museum, which I'll write about next month.

But this post will be about the Somerset Rural Life Museum at Glastonbury, which we visited just the other day with our two youngest grandchildren (8 and 6). The main, stone-built building was once Abbey Farm, and in the grounds is the beautiful 14th century tithe barn, which used to belong to Glastonbury Abbey. So the setting is perfect for a museum focusing on rural life.

Laundry corner

Downstairs there is a gallery, with changing exhibitions. There is also a rebuilt outside toilet - a sort of family affair, with differently sized wooden seats. (Authentic, except that it's squeaky clean and it doesn't smell.) This has been an object of great fascination to all our grandchildren. (Note to museum designers: if you want to interest children, you can't go wrong with a toilet. See also the talking toilet at the SS Great Britain, and the loo-with-a-view - and a long drop - in the ruins of Goodrich Castle.)

Then you go into the farmhouse kitchen, where on the day we went a very friendly lady was sitting spinning. The table is set, and the more mature among us will be fascinated to see utensils exactly like the ones Mum - or Grandma - used to use. Then it's up the stairs to the (very pleasant) cafe, and the Working Village, where there are displays of all sorts of tools, implements and objects which were once in everyday use, but now seem like quaint echoes of another way of life. It's a good place to go for grandparents and grandchildren - there's a lot of reminiscing and hilarity.

From this level, you can go outside to the farmyard, where there's a horse, rather beautifully made from pieces of rusty metal, and a cow which you can actually milk. (Well, sort of.) There are also activities for children here. Then it's into the glorious Tithe Barn, which at the moment has interesting exhibitions on. I particularly liked a film that interpreted the artist's walk from his home to Glastonbury - not in a linear, obvious sort of way: I admired the creativity and ingenuity on display. 

The sculpture exhibition is by Andre Wallace, and the film is by Tim Martin. But who knows who designed and built this beautiful building?

And then out into the orchard, with its piggery and various sheds, and a nice friendly cow that you can actually sit on.

There's still more to see on the top floor, incuding a representation of an old schoolroom (pointing to an inkwell: "What's that?") and a gorgeous doll's house.

It's a fascinating and relaxing place to spend a few hours. There weren't many people there when we went, even though it was the school holidays. Everyone was very friendly, and a ticket lasts for a year and allows entry to all the Somerset museums, which is, I think, extremely good value.

Here be Dragons - by Lu Hersey

No county has more dragon myths associated with it than Somerset (where I live), and I've recently been making a study of local folkore on the subject. In case you're interested, here are some useful bits of dragonlore I've come across so far.

I previously thought it was always the same story: dragon takes up residence somewhere, is very annoying to locals as it eats its way through surrounding livestock and people, until a brave dragon slayer goes forth and slays the beast. Order restored.

Turns out, it's not that simple. For a start, when is a dragon not a dragon but a wyrm, or a wyvern? Here's a brief explanation, in case you need one...

Dragons

The dragon, or firedrake, is the best known, and the one fiction writers are most fond of. This beast is a gigantic reptilian creature with four legs, big, bat-like wings, and a covering of armoured scales. Usually sporting horns or a crest, it has massive, pointed, sharp teeth to chomp you with, and huge claws to swipe at you. It can lay waste to vast areas of land and kill any number of people and animals - and that's the problem.  Worst of all, it breathes out enough fire to cook the unfortunate hero sent to slay it - though luckily (for the hero, not the dragon) there'll always be the one vulnerable spot that a trusty spear can penetrate, kill the poor beast and save the day. These creatures also sometimes have magical powers of invisibility and self healing, just to give the hero a bit more to contend with. Sometimes they guard treasure, which helps make them worthy targets.

Wyrms

Unlike dragons, wyrms don't have legs. They're more like massive snakes with bodies as thick as oak trunks. They don't breathe fire, preferring to spit venom - and their diet of choice is (weirdly) milk (either cow or human), livestock, and of course, people. 

One version of the legend of the Gurt Wyrm of Shervage Wood specifies it eating two gypsies and a shepherd. (Such detail adds a certain something to the story...) If chopped in pieces, the wyrm can reform, which makes it difficult to kill. Fortunately, when the Gurt Wyrm was chopped in half by a woodsman, the two halves went off in different directions, saving the woodsman from being eaten - and leading to the creature's sad demise.

Wyverns

Wyverns are like dragons, but with two legs instead of four - and are, apparently, a bit smaller. They also have a sting in their tail like a scorpion. Most wyverns can fly. They were thought to carry diseases, and were blamed for outbreaks of the plague as well as other illnesses, both of people and livestock. I've found it very hard to pin down a specific case of a wyvern, but they feature widely in heraldry and church carvings.

Basilisks

Specific cases of basilisks are even harder to track down. Legend has it that basilisks are born when cockerels lay eggs (which is probably why it's hard to find examples). They are only a few feet long, and unlike others in the dragon family, kill by stare alone. The only creature immune from the stare of the basilisk is a weasel.

Not all our dragon legends fit into one of the above categories, but most do. Some guard treasure, some don't. Some seem to symbolise the church's battle against paganism, and others are connected to features in the landscape. Dragons appeared over an extensive period of time, though a few in Somerset seem to date back specifically to the time of King Alfred - possibly with a link to his battles against the Danish Vikings, who arrived in boats with huge dragons carved on the prow. As in all myth, there are usually elements of truth bound up in the stories.

Or perhaps dragons actually exist in some parallel reality, appearing for a time and disappearing? Some reported dragon sightings are surprisingly recent. A French farmer encountered what appeared to be a dragon attacking one of his cows in a field one night in 1978. An Icelandic man saw one emerging from the volcano Eyjafjallajokull in 2010, and a dragon appeared to several witnesses in Wisconsin in 2007.

Perhaps strangest of all, a group of ten Surrey ghost hunters witnessed the appearance of at least two dragons at Waverley Abbey in December 2023. It might sound unlikely, but the witnesses swear the strange creatures appeared really close to them, and they found the experience far more terrifying than any ghostly encounter. So if you desperately want to see a dragon, perhaps be careful what you wish for...

Lu Hersey

Website: Lu Hersey

Patreon: Writing the Magic

Can you find what you're looking for? By Steve Way

 

There are several things we men aren’t good at and women aren’t supposed to be able to read maps, though it turns out my twelve-year-old granddaughter is brilliant at doing so: so, so much for the science, or whatever it is. (I seemed to manage to legitimately use the word ‘so’ three times in sequence just then – is that allowed?*)

I only know that when it comes to helping me find things, my beloved wife has been known to be conservative in her use of adjectives. I particularly remember one occasion when I was in our kitchen and called upstairs to her to ask where something was. She shouted down, in her resigned, how-can-he-possibly-not-know-this voice, “It’s in the drawer!”

Yes… I admit it, I’m a pedant. I temporarily abandoned my search and counted the number of drawers in the kitchen. Now admittedly a few of them were those tiny drawers that only small dead batteries live in and couldn’t have possibly contained whatever it was I was looking for, but I did get to about nineteen in my tally. I then, as it turned out, looked in around six or seven drawers-that-were-drawers-but-not-THE-drawer before finally finding what I was looking for in THE-drawer-that-isn’t-one-of-the-other-drawers-you-idiot. It was clear, when I light-heartedly as a pedant can, remonstrated about this with my wife later on, she still couldn’t understand how I failed to understand which out of so many drawers was THE drawer.

I will confess, as I did a few blogs ago, to a habit of looking twice somewhere when I’m looking for something, as though by magic it will suddenly appear where it isn’t. I’ve wondered whether this is because psychologically it’s more comforting searching somewhere familiar rather than exploring new ground, even though this is far more likely to prove fruitful. Oddly, once in a blue moon this technique does work, possibly based on another layer of psychological complexity based on the fact that I didn’t expect to find what I was looking for in said locality and didn’t look properly the first time. How much easier life would be, for me at least, if I knew where things were in the first place!

Now where did I last have my mobile? …

*Answers on a postcard please, or at least in the comments section!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Just published, Spell Binding Stories UKS2. The third in a series of books using stories, poems and sketches to support the teaching of spelling at primary level. Supported by lesson ideas for each requirement of the primary National Curriculum in England. The pieces could also support second language learners attempting to master the idiosyncrasies of the English language! In this edition for example, Hercules Paintpot and his collaborators attempt to unravel a spelling mystery, we visit a school on a planet where words are not just worth their weight in gold - they are actually made of gold. We also experience the excitement and tension of the final in the series of the 'Set in for a Spell' quiz!

Paperback ISBN: 9798297102361

Kindle ASIN: B0FMNZ8BKT  (0 is a number)

DRACULA, retold by Tanya Landman, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

    

I'm somebody who has been aware of Dracula, book and character, most of my life, but never actually read the original by Bram Stoker. I know what a brilliant children's novelist Tanya Landman is, trusting her to give me the essential atmosphere and story without having to wade through the much longer original. So, I was delighted to open the blood-dripping cover of this Barrington Stoke abridged version, and find out what I'd been missing.

Aimed at children in KS3, so early years of secondary school, I can imagine this book grabbing readers from the off. Told in the first person, eventually from more than one viewpoint in protagonist's journal entries, this horror story is delivered in small chunks that give a 'just one more sweetie' feeling to tempt us to read on; perfect for those who have struggled to read longer books. The opening has innocent Jonathan Harker looking forward to meeting Count Dracula, unaware of what child readers will surely already know will be BIG trouble ahead!

We're soon into entrapment, a host with pointy teeth, no reflection or shadow, hairy palms, and a penchant for leaving his castle by scuttling like a lizard, head down, straight down the wall of his castle. Weird beautiful women want to be kissed. Coffins arrive. Then live children in a sack to feed those vampiric beauties (the origin of the Child Catcher?). We move from Transylvannia to Whitby, and now it is heroine Min who tells everything as her innocent lady friend is punctured and blood-sucked, becomes a vampire herself, and has to have a stake hammered through her heart before her head is cut off and mouth stuffed with garlic. The horror escalates with a chase over sea and land to try and kill Count Dracula before Min now a vampire herself, is totally lost. 

Plenty to thrill young readers, but will they 'get' why holding a communion wafer would be a weapon of choice? I'm not sure I understand quite what's going on here as 'the body of Christ' who 'rose from the dead' is used against 'the undead'. 

I'm glad to have read this, and its retold beautifully, but I would perhaps point child readers towards much better horror stories written by brilliant contemporary writers such as Chris Priestley, Tom Palmer, Cathy MacPhail, Chris Wooding, and more.  

Dinosaur in a tutu? Anne Rooney

Spinosaurus by Adobe stock, 2025

I've been wondering again if I will have to give up this job of writing children's books and do something entirely different (and AI-proof). Having just got used to the idea that my job now consists of writing in a way as unlike AI as possible so that I can't be easily replaced by publishers cutting corners, I've stumbled into the next challenge. And I'm not sure there's a way around this one. 

Spinosaurus by Nobu Tamura, 2024

 

  See that dinosaur above? It's supposed to be a Spinosaurus. Spinosaurus, as any 6-year-old can tell you, had a sail along its back. Along, not across, like a skirt.  This is what a Spinosaurus looks like (see right). Adobe have the audacity to label their rendering 'Realistic portrayal of a Spinosaurus'. Not realistic, not even biologically possible.

A significant part of my work involves finding reference images from which an illustrator can work to produce the art we need in the book. The reference images are important, as otherwise the illustrator or picture researcher (who might not know much about the subject) is likely to go online and find pictures that are out of date, wrong, or — a new threat — ridiculous AI slop. So my job is to provide them with pictures that are NOT like the 'realistic' Spinosaurus Adobe will dish up. Adobe, once upon a time, would have been considered a reasonably reliable source. 

Nothing like a Stegosaurus

Here's another. I needed a picture of a Stegosaurus skeleton. This, or something like it, is offered all over the place. I hope I don't have to tell you it is nothing like a Stegosaurus skeleton. Stegosaurus is the one with plates all along its back, a herbvivore with a small head, and no fierce, meat-eating teeth. There's a proper Stegosaurus skeleton for comparison below this travesty.

Fortunately, I know what a Stegosaurus looks like, so I can tell this is rubbish. But there are now more ridiculously wrong images than there are correct images, so it's taking me much longer to find good reference images. 

Actual Stegosaurus skeleton

And I don't only write about dinosaurs. I've been preparing the first bits of a book on machinery, and although I know broadly what the workings of the machines look like, I don't know in sufficient detail to be able to spot errors in an AI rendering of the inside of an engine. I've found a few that I know are wrong. But there are others that could certainly slip through. Now, I recognise some of the sites or picture agencies that are mostly or entirely using AI and I don't go near them. But it's cutting down the options and slowing down the process. The AI generated slop is proliferating so quickly that I have to scroll through screens of it looking for something that might be correct. 

For textual material, I can go back to books. But some of the things I need images for aren't in any books that I know of. Even if they are it's much slower to find an image in a book and scan/photograph it and record its provenance than to grab an image from a web page and its URL. The time consideration aside, though, if I can't provide reference images, the books won't happen. Some books will still happen, but a lot won't be possible. And how long will it be before people en masse begin to think that Spinosaurus had a skirt or Stegosaurus looked like the demon child of Edmontosaurus and T rex?

Anne Rooney

Out now (Jan 2025) from Arcturus, illustrated by Ro Ledesma: Weird and Wonderful Dinosaur Facts
 

 

 

A Few Rules for Predicting the Future by Octavia E. Butler, Art by Manzel Bowman review by Lynda Waterhouse

 

Don’t be deceived by this slight volume. It is packed with wonderful words, Manzel Bowman’s stunning artwork and sage advice from the legendary science fiction writer and Afro futurist pioneer, Octavia E Butler (1947-2006). She was the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship “genius” grant in 1995 and the first African American woman to win widespread recognition and receive awards. Her gripping novels reflect on racial injustice, women’s rights and climate collapse.

Her archive is kept at The Huntington Library in California. Find out more about her here;

https://www.octaviabutler.com/

In her dystopian novel Parable of the Talents, (published in 1998), a dictatorial presidential candidate, Andrew Steele Jarret, accuses whole groups of people, without grounds, of being drug dealers and rapists. He uses the slogan. ‘Make America great again, ’and storms to victory in 2032.   

A Few Rules for Predicting the Future was originally published as an essay in Essence magazine in 2000. This edition contains art work by American artist, Manzel Bowman aka artxman. He is a digital collagist and painter who uses digital media to create Afro- Futurist art. His art ,matched with Octavia’s wise words, make this a book to collect and keep and re-read on a regular basis.

This powerful essay was inspired by a student misquoting her response to his question, “So do you really believe that in the future we’re going to have the kind of trouble you write about in your books?”

Octavia states,

‘..the one thing that I and my main characters never do when contemplating the future is give up hope. In fact, the very act of trying to look ahead to discern possibilities and offer warnings is itself an act of hope.’

The essay is divide into four sections;

Learn from the past

Respect the law of consequences

Be aware of your perspective

Count on the surprises

Sage advice for life as well as for writers.

The essay begs with the question, ‘Why try to predict the future at all if it’s so difficult, so nearly impossible?’

 

‘Because, most of all, our tomorrow is the child of our today. Through thought and deed, we exert a great deal of influence over this child, even though we can’t control it absolutely. Best to think about it, though. Best to try and shape it into something good. Best to do that for any child.’

This edition would be a great gift for someone who has just finished school, or who is anxious about the world and wants to shape the future into something good.

ISBN 978-1-035 427604

Headline –www. Headline.co.uk

USING COLOUR IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS -- YELLOW. by Sharon Tregenza

 

YELLOW

Yellow is the colour of sunshine and is often used to depict happiness and energy in children's books. Bright yellow covers will catch a child's eye and in illustrations, yellow can make the story feel warm and exciting. 

It's an attention-grabber. A pop of yellow will stand out on a crowded book shelf. Because of the joyful feel it evokes it can set a happy tone to reading a story.  It can highlight too - bringing attention to important words or ideas and guiding a young reader's eyes to to key points.

And it can stimulate imagination. Its brightness energising the brain and inspiring creativity. Here are three authors who have used yellow to great effect in their children's books:

Anna Lienas: "The Colour Monster". Yellow is used to represent happiness and to help children identify different emotions.

Herve Tullet: "The Yellow Book". This interactive book uses a vibrant yellow to stimulate imagination and encourage children to explore and create.

Carin Berger: "The Little Yellow Leaf". A little yellow leaf falling from a tree explores themes of change and letting, using yellow to highlight the leaf's unique identity.

www.sharontregenza.com

sharontregenza@gmail.com

 

Members' News

 Hello and welcome to the news round-up of Scattered Authors members. It's a picture book month this month, with some great new publications - and a birthday celebration.

Tracy Darnton has a new picture book MY SISTER IS A TREASURE, illustrated by Yasmeen Ismail, out with Simon & Schuster on 28th August. It's a humorous look at the effect of a new baby on a sibling. 

https://tracydarntonauthor.wordpress.com/

One Cat, Two Cats, a lift-the-flap pop-up counting book, written and paper-engineered by Jonathan Emmett, illustrated by Rob Hodgson and published by Nosy Crow, is out Thursday 14 August. 

Where most counting books stop at ten, this one goes to twenty, with each number represented by a characterful cat. The book has already been shortlisted in the Best Preschool Book category of this year’s Junior Design Awards. 

https://jonathanemmett.com/

Moira Butterfield has two books out in August.

One is intended to make geography fun, with the help of Builderbot characters, illustrated by Clare Elsom. The other, illustrated by Ro Ledesma, was written to get Moria's 6/7 year old great-nephew interested in books!

https://moirabutterfield.co.uk

Finally, not book related, but please join me in wishing a very happy birthday to Anita Loughrey who hits one of the biggies this month.

Next news round-up will be September 7th. Send your items to me, Claire Fayers, by the end of August for inclusion.

Oats by Paul May

Some time during last winter I had an idea. I have an allotment in North London where I grow vegetables and fruit and flowers. There's a wild flower meadow and a pond in an old bath that was once in the former mental hospital in Friern Barnet, but the bath is a story for another day. I say I had an idea, but it was almost a vision. I had a bit of space and I pictured it in my head as a field of oats.

Why oats? I don't know, but once the idea was there I had to run with it. I would buy some seed, plant it and watch it grow. How hard could it be?

Well . . . the first thing I discovered was that there were two main varieties I could grow, Avena Sativa, the normal, everyday oat, and Avena Nuda, also known as naked oats and mainly found in health food shops. The difference is this: Avena Sativa has an outer husk, and then a hard inner husk which surrounds the grain and is not that easy to remove. More of this later. Avena Nuda doesn't have this inner husk, making it much easier to process. So, naturally, I set out to find some Avena Nuda seed.

Avena Nuda is not widely grown in the UK. I found a seed merchant who had it. The minimum order was 500 kilos. I needed about 500 grams. I found people who could supply the seed, but they were in Ireland and couldn't supply the seed to the UK. So I bought a pack from a health food shop and tried sprouting those seeds to see if they would be useable. The germination rate was very poor. I tried several times with different conditions but in the end I gave up and went looking for seed of Avena Sativa. Lots of places sold small amounts of this for sprouting and making oat grass, to juice or put in salads, but I checked with the suppliers and it was suitable for sowing outside.

Oats are a cold weather cereal, which is why they're grown in the north, so I wasn't sure how they'd do in London where summer temperatures are high and getting higher. I planted them on March 5th, having first made a tool of which I was quite proud to enable me to space the seeds in rows three inches apart. They germinated quickly and I was soon fielding regular enquiries about what I was growing. I'd discovered during my initial research that oats are supposed to secrete something from their roots that suppresses weed growth. According to the books this effect is so strong that you shouldn't plant anything else where the oats have been until three weeks have passed. 

I am not convinced. Maybe the weeds grew less fast than they would have done, and they didn't grow as fast as the oats, but grow they did. And I'm glad about that because the poppies grew too and for a week or two looked fantastic. And the field of oats looked just as I'd imagined it, first green, then golden.

I started to worry about when to harvest. The tops of the plants seemed ripe, but there were greenish heads lower down. I cut a small amount before going away on holiday in July and left them to dry in the greenhouse. Then, when I got back, I tried to process them. It's not that hard to separate the outer husks and the straw from the grains, but those inner husks are really tricky. I tried various things, including putting the grain in a plastic bag and hitting it with a lump hammer, using a rolling pin, and grinding them in a blender. I managed to extract a small amount of oatmeal but it hardly seemed with the effort, except . . .

When I tried separating the grain in the oats that I hadn't yet harvested I noticed that they  popped out of their husks far more easily. And I had another thought. People were growing and harvesting oats for centuries before they ever had mills and modern machinery. I wondered how they did it and discovered via an interesting website that oats used to be widely grown by small farmers in Wales where they were processed in small local mills that have almost all now vanished. 

Anyway, I persisted, and arrived at the following process—I've done it with a small batch and I'll see how it goes with the rest. 

First I separated the chaff. On this small scale I simply removed the grain from the stalks, then rubbed it hard then blew off the husks. This left me with the grain with the inner husk attached. I put this in the blender and ground it for about 30 seconds, then put it into a tray and picked the individual grains out by hand. I can imagine that this process might have been carried out by children in the past. I think light grinding between stones would separate the grains in a similar way, but at this stage if you blow on the mixture to try to get rid of the husks you risk blowing the lot away, as the grains themselves are not heavy, so you really need to pick them out carefully.

I rolled the grains with a rolling pin, made some porridge, and ate it. It tasted just like porridge.

Whether all this has anything to do with writing children's books, I leave you to decide.

Sad news that Alan Ahlberg has died. When I was teaching 6 year olds we made a joke book for the Ahlbergs and sent it to them. Alan wrote a lovely letter back, saying he'd keep the book on a shelf and take it down to read a joke or two if he needed cheering up. I hope it worked.