On Writing and Small Children - by Ruth Hatfield

Every month I watch the 12^th day creeping towards me with a sense of increasingly desperate panic. What on earth am I going to write a blog post about? Every month I swear to myself that I’ll give up writing this blog, and every month I realised I’ve left it too late to quit and I’ll have to write at least one more blog post anyway, so I might as well get on with it. And then I have to climb right inside the barrel, get down on my knees and begin scraping around for absolutely anything.

The trouble is that with two very small children, I really don’t do much writing at the moment. I do a lot of thinking about why I’m not writing, and planning times to write (i.e. when the children are in bed, and asleep), and then finding that when those times come all I want to do is curl up with a book, and my brain’s full of fluff anyway. I do a lot of reading children’s books, so I really ought to find some inspiration there. But re-reading Mog and the Granny for the ninetieth time doesn’t spark off that many original thoughts about writing. I also do spend a lot of time wondering when I’ll ever get time to properly write again – by ‘properly’ write, I mean what I used to do, which was bury myself in it for hours and days on end without having to once consider whether I ought to break of at some point and scrape the dried sardine from the front room carpet.

Well, I guess the answer to that is – not for a long time. And what I’m left with is the reality of what writing means to someone with two tiny demanding dependents. I’ve definitely learnt some lessons about books: I’ve discovered that quite a few modern picture books have texts with self-referential humour that’s clearly more aimed at adults than children, and that the kids, far from being happy just to look at the lovely pictures, actually get bored when there’s all this arch stuff in the text they don’t understand. Obviously many of the books I find grindingly repetitive and annoying (a thousand apologies to Judith Kerr, but I’m looking at you, Mog) are the ones my daughter loves best. But there are some that we both love love love. Oh, Julia Donaldson! – she writes texts that sound great, and that remind me of what a living, laughing joy language can be. They make me think about how I sat down from the earliest age and began to try to paint my own pictures with the language I knew, just because it seemed like such an exciting and beautiful thing to do.

My Naughty Little Sister

Then in the past month or so I’ve been reading longer stories at bed time, and on the recommendation of my own mum, I first went through the entire five volumes of My Naughty Little Sister stories by Dorothy Edwards, and am now working my way through the collected works of Milly Molly Mandy. My daughter loves them so much that she lies listening in silence, not interrupting for the whole story (which given that she normally doesn’t stop to draw breath  is an absolute miracle). I didn’t get them at first – I remembered loving them myself as a kid, and I quite liked reading them, but it took a while for the charm to really grab me, and then I started to see what my daughter saw. They’re stories in which often absolutely nothing happens. A tiny, very domestic incident is described in great detail, from the point of view of a child. Of course it’s exactly how my daughter sees the world – things she can understand completely, written as intensely as she herself notices them. Swinging on a swing is a really interesting, thrilling and relatively new experience to a small child. (Actually, it was a relatively forgotten experience to me until a short while ago, as I hadn’t been on a playground swing since I was a teenager). You can make an entire short story out of it that a child will love. Watching your friend get a haircut. Being frightened by a vacuum cleaner. It’s all there.

Milly-Molly-Mandy

I’ve tried stories with more adventure in them, but it’s clearly not what a child of my daughter’s age wants. Which is the real thing I’ve learnt recently – the best way to find out what children like to read is to read with them. Then not only do you remind yourself of how they see the world, what matters to them and how they want to be entertained, but if you’re lucky and they like the books you liked, you might get to experience again the real pleasure of reading children’s book through the eyes of the child you once were.

So after all, it turns out that my small children are both a hindrance and an inspiration when it comes to writing. Must hold on to that. Must hold on to that…

Let’s hear it for My Naughty Little Sister! - by Emma Barnes

I’m always surprised when people compare my books to those by other authors. Not because I think I’m so dazzlingly original (in fact, when I go into schools, my answer to that question “But how do you get ideas?” is usually “I get ideas because over the years I’ve read a lot of books!”) but because the comparisons aren’t usually the authors or books I would have thought of. So when somebody mentioned to me that Wild Thing reminded them of Dorothy Hughes’s classic My Naughty Little Sister stories, first I was surprised, then I thought it was time to dig out a copy and see for myself. 

My Naughty Little Sister was first written for BBC Radio’s Children Hour. Perhaps this is why they are such wonderful read-alouds. I’ve heard some adults claim that the strong narrative voice is rather too cosy ("And what do you think My Naughty Little Sister did next...") and therefore annoying. Personally, I think this is what makes the stories so perfect for young children, guiding them through the stories (I’d recommend My Naughty Little Sister as a first read-aloud when moving onto chapter books). But then I do like a strong narrative voice (the Narnia books are another example where some find the narrator intrusive, but I find it confiding, and entertaining). 

There is a lovely nostalgia about My Naughty Little Sister, too. I think this is because not only do the stories now seem very quaint and long-ago, but even when Dorothy Edwards was writing them she was remembering a past time (her own childhood, and her own naughty little sister). So such details as washing day are lovingly portrayed, in a way they maybe wouldn’t be if they were contemporary to the reader, and therefore taken for granted. (In this way they remind me a little of Laura Ingall’s Wilder’s Little House books, in capturing the domestic details of a distant time.) 

I’m also envious, not only of the apparent safety of that long ago time, but also the freedom it gives a writer to give her child character adventures. My Naughty Little Sister is only four, but she can go on a train ride all by herself (with only the guard to keep an occasional eye on her). She can also travel from home under her own steam, and at one point is sent spontaneously to spend a day with her older sister at school. How much harder to construct real-life adventures now that young children always have to be supervised! 

Most all, though, the charm of the stories is in the character of My Naughty Little Sister herself. The stories may feel old fashioned, but they are never preachy or moralistic. My Naughty Little Sister thinks for herself. If the family has to look after a baby for the day, she really doesn’t see why she should pretend to like babies, just because it’s the done thing. And she makes friends with all kinds of unlikely people, grown up or child, because she responds to them honestly and directly. 

Her character, I think, is brilliantly portrayed in the illustrations by Shirley Hughes. 

So, even if I still don’t get the comparison with my own books, I certainly feel the compliment! And if you’re looking to escape into a young child’s world, in a gentler, cosier time, I’d recommend My Naughty Little Sister.
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Emma's new series for 8+ Wild Thing about the naughtiest little sister ever (and her bottom-biting ways) is out now from Scholastic. 
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is published by Strident.   Sometimes a Girl’s Best Friend is…a Wolf. 
"A real cracker of a book" Armadillo 
"Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended" Books for Keeps


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