TEA WITH A TIGER – Dianne Hofmeyr

A train trip to Newcastle-on-Tyne became more than a journey into uncharted territory but an unexpected chance to have Tea with a Tiger and a cuddle with a cat of slightly smaller proportions, called Mog. To prove it, here are Penny Dolan and I with our smiley tiger.

Where are we? Not at the zoo but in the wonderful building that houses Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books in Newcastle-on-Tyne... a  building that stretches over seven floors and whose attic houses the most marvellous installation of books about to be eaten by Henry – The Incredible Book Eating Boy, who might suffer a severe stomach ache if he ate all the books his creator, Oliver Jeffers, has strung from the rafters for him.

Oliver Jeffers who was resident storyteller at Seven Stories a while back can be seen working with a group of children putting together the installation on the U-tube link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6azoJrFVkY

But why were we having this exciting visit? It was part of a Society of Authors event, which coincided, with the current exhibitions of two major children’s authors – Judith Kerr, who has given her entire archive of work to Seven Stories, and Enid Blyton, whose collection was acquired at a nail-biting auction. Both are utterly marvellous.

The Enid Blyton display covers a multitude of facets in her life – not just the ideas behind Noddy Goes to Toyland, first published n 1949, but also the first artist’s roughs of what the characters might look like, down to her minute gardening diaries filled with miniscule writing and her original typewriter used when she lived at Green Hedges, and then of course all those covers both old and new of stories many of us knew so well. I was given a new Famous Five for every holiday train journey I went on, to what was then Southern Rhodesia, and passed the hours rocking up on my top bunk pretending I was George setting off on an adventure in my boat. Pirate coves and tiny islands in a rainy climate seemed far more exciting than any African landscape.

What immediately sprung to mind when I saw Judith Kerr’s display which spans 70 years, and includes childhood paintings, drawings from her student days, and finished artwork for most of her published books, including The Tiger Who Came to Tea, is that from her very earliest drawings done as a child, there is a strong sense of movement and body space, people drawn in profile busily involved in selling hotdogs and balloons, a girl diving off a diving board. In one of the rooms, for those of you small enough to fit into a tiny cat-suit, you can curl up in a basket and get some grown-up to read you a Mog story which is exactly what was happening on the day I went… a mum and her toddler were having a snug story-cuddle.

I’ve saved the best for last. Although the archive is housed in another building, on the day we went, an archivist brought material out for us to view… glorious and detailed Edward Ardizzone illustrations... (note the white gloves for handling) that we pored over, the detail of line and texture too amazing...

and Harold Jones – the Harold Jones illustrations so familiar that they, rather than the words, seemed to be the very essence of the stories I once read. 

The expressions on Helena Pielechatty and Nicola Morgan’s faces say it all. 

So Tea with a Tiger and a cuddle with Mog, what more are you waiting for? The Seven Stories in Newcastle-on-Tyne is the place to be. And there’s a jolly fine coffee shop and bookshop too. THANK YOU to all the staff for making our day there, wonderful!

All about Casualty - for kids. Miriam Halahmy

What happens when you put a playwright and a consultant paediatrician together and send them to Casualty? They come up with an idea for a booklet of course!
"Are you in the emergency department waiting room and wondering what might be about to happen?"This booklet was written by the children of Grafton Primary School who have become experts on going into Casualty and its nothing like on the telly!

Award winning playwright ( Kindertransport), Diane Samuels, on the left, who is writer in residence at Grafton school, North London, was approached by Heidi Edmundson, consultant at the Whittington Hospital, for this amazing creative project - to put together a fun and engaging booklet, with the pupils, which would help children faced with a trip to A and E.

The staff were tickled pink!

The kids thought it was a lot of fun too! They interviewed all the staff, asking them things like, "What do doctors do if they are sick?" and of course, the important one, "How much do you earn?"
But as you can imagine, with a playwright leading the project, they did loads of thrilling role play. They acted out having  dramatic accidents such as falling out of trees and slipping on ice. Then they went to A&E at the Whittington, went through triage, had a consultation with Heidi, did everything in fact as though they had had a real accident - except experiencing an amputation. Everyone managed to survive  - even with a smile.

The kids came up with lots of interesting things to put in the booklet such as questionnaires, poems and instructions on how to calm a patient down if you are a doctor, such as :
Lesson number 3 - Don't pretend that you have no idea what you're doing.
Lesson number 6 - Don't threaten the patient as it only makes matters worse.
They drew pictures, advised on layout and font and came up with 'Things to do while you're waiting.'

The booklet was launched, with readings by the children, at a lovely afternoon event at the hospital.

 Now the booklet will be available to all the children who come into Casualty at the hospital. An excellent outcome for a writer in residence. Have any of our SAS writers been involved in this kind of project for children?

www.miriamhalahmy.com

Book Packaging - Creative Collaboration or Artistic Cop-out? Meg Harper

New term at my youth theatre, new term at college and new term for the school where I’m working as writer in residence – hence the tardiness of this post! It’s one of those, ‘If I get to the end of next week and I’m sane it’ll be a bonus!’ phases! I’ve even had to take the plunge and do the supermarket shopping on-line! But more interestingly (I hope!), it’s made me think about collaboration – the creative sort.
My youth theatre is a devising company. Twice a year, each of the five groups performs a brand new piece of theatre which they have created in collaboration with each other and with me. When I opened the company and lacked confidence, we often used a story as a starting point. I would decide which scenes were essential and possible and the young people’s input was in creating each scene from the brief I gave. There is, however, a shortage of stories to suit casts of around 16 people, all needing maximum time on stage. Hence, I have broken out of my straitjacket and now we usually devise ‘from scratch’. Three plays are well and truly off the starting blocks already, one a complex but very funny (we hope!) who-dun-nit set in a mountain holiday resort, another a picaresque tale in which two girls are thrown off a train, have to find their way home and encounter real and surreal adventures on the way (there’s a sub-plot here about an escaped convict whose story keeps crossing theirs) and the third looks set to become a complicated twist on the Cinderella theme with Cinders a down-trodden barista in a city café – I just love that he’s going to be saved by his Hairy Godfather!
Meanwhile, as writer in residence, I spent a happy day of the holidays meshing together 25 variations on the opening of the class novel so that everyone has a contribution somewhere and far more of the children’s words are included than mine! Even happier was the time spent reading it back to them. They insisted on a second reading so that that they could stick up their hands when they recognised their bit! We have negotiated plots and settings and characters and are ready to roll.
All joyful, joyful stuff – and all collaborative.
Which makes me think about book packagers and the way I have tended to sneer at their process. Teams create the briefs and teams of authors write them up. And I have tended to think that this isn’t ‘proper’ in some way – that because the story doesn’t come from some sizzling inspiration burning out from some enlightened soul, it’s a kind of cheating. A sort of artistic cop-out. Well, shame on me. Actually, of course, it’s team work. And teams get results – as we can see in any and every context, including my own ‘other’ work. Obviously, some writers are zinging with wonderful stories and it is blissful that they want to share them with us. And, of course, some book packaged books are dire in the extreme. But it strikes me that the basic concept is a good one. I am stunned by the ideas that my young collaborators come up with and the process of jig-sawing them together is mind-bending fun for all of us. So surely this should hold true for book packagers’ creative teams too? But does it?
So….book packaging – creative collaboration or artistic cop-out? Your thoughts, please!