Childly perceptions - 2 - Clémentine Beauvais

In last month's post I talked about those childly perceptions friends tell us about, and I got some lovely comments - thank you, Susan, Sue and Brenda! (Sue: I meant this by door closers!).

Sue also commented:

'I thought that when you grew up, there was automatically a World War, because My grandparents had one when they grew up, and so did my parents. Jolly, eh!'

Jolly indeed, and it reminded me of two more childly perceptions I hadn't mentioned:

The ineluctable kidnapping

When I was a child, I was convinced all children got kidnapped at some point in their lives. It was the 1990s, in France and Belgium a time marked by the terrifying, and enormously mediatised, abductions and subsequent deaths of a number of young girls by Belgian kidnapper Marc Dutroux. I was hardly ever allowed outside, we had endless stranger-danger type talks, short TV programmes, classroom discussions, etc. Clearly, I heard so much about the whole thing that I ended up thinking at the same time that it was an inevitable fact of life, yet that it was my duty to somehow avoid it when - rather than if - it happened.

The terror lasted well into my teens, and I wasn't the only one. In fact my closest friend was so scared of being kidnapped, too, that at the age of 14 or so, she confided in her psychologist about it (she was seeing a child psychologist for other, though not entirely disconnected, reasons). The dialogue, as she recounted it to me, went something like this:

Friend: When I walk down the pavement, I'm scared of walking on the curb side, because a car might pull in, open a door and take me. But I'm scared of walking too close to the buildings, because then a door might open there and take me.

Psychologist: I think you should walk bang in the middle.

We do find it funny today, but I remember that at the time we took that advice extremely seriously.

The Eternal German War

A friend of mine, as progressive and liberal left as anyone, was walking down the street with his then-5-year-old daughter, and suddenly the child said, pointing at a homeless lady: 'She should just go back to her country!' My friend, horrified to hear that, proceeded to tell his daughter that it was an extremely cruel and unfair thing to say; I don't know who's put that idea in your head, he said, but [cue long clumsy impromptu political lesson about economic inequalities more or less tailored for 5-year-olds].

'Plus', he added, 'not everyone's got a country to go back to even if they wanted to, you know! Maybe this lady comes from a country that is at war.'

Upon which, the five-year-old gravely nodded. 'Ah!...' she said, struck with sudden, empathetic understanding. 'Germany...'

I actually love those two childly perceptions because they interpelate us as children's authors too - where could they possibly have got the idea that Germany is permanently at war and that being kidnapped as a child is something like a fact of life?

Sue's comment also shows how much childly perceptions are generationally variable, and I wonder what childly perceptions are developing as we speak. What are today's tiny kids believing about the world, about themselves?

About door closers?

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Clémentine Beauvais is a writer and literary translator. Her YA novels in English are Piglettes (Pushkin, 2017) and In Paris with You (trans. Sam Taylor, Faber, 2018). She has also written a picturebook illustrated by Maisie Paradise Shearring, Hello, Monster! (Thames and Hudson, 2018).

Childly perceptions - Clémentine Beauvais

I love listening to friends telling me memories from their childhood, especially when those memories tell us something of the weird, uncanny, otherworldly perceptions that children have of the world.

I know neuroscience says we can have no reliable childhood memories, that everything is a reconstruction, filtered through romantic and adult-focused visions of childhood. I think it's BS, by the way, but even if it were true, then my friends' (and my) memories of childhood would still have poetic value. Either way, they have things to teach us, I think, about how to write about and for children.

Here's a little collection:

A friend told me she thought her mother was a witch every time she brushed her hair. Hair-brushing was so painful that there was no way her kind, sweet mother could possibly be the one inflicting that pain. Therefore, during that particular time of the day, a witch took her mother's place, or else maybe her mother became a witch - my friend wasn't too sure.

A friend told me she believed her mother could read her thoughts, but only when they were both touching the same object or piece of furniture. 

A friend told me she saw door closers as a species of insects, with just one leg, similar to that of a grasshopper.

A friend told me their relationship to their father was so distant that they saw him as a kind of domestic stranger, a quiet and polite man who was there every evening, had dinner, slept there, had no other clear connection to the place. One day their mother said, 'I'm going away this weekend, so Daddy's going to look after you'. My friend didn't quite understand why her mother had chosen this particular stranger for the task.

A friend told me the washing-machine at home would repeat the same name on loop when it was on: Caroline, Caroline (pronounced the French way, Caroleen), like a desperate lover, slowlier and slowlier as it drew to an end.

A friend told me they always struggled at church to find sins to confess, so they asked a kid in the class, who always had good ideas for sins. Each sin idea cost a little bit of money or a marble. 

A friend told me that on the first day of school, her teacher asked her to draw herself on an A3 sheet of paper and she drew herself in a corner, as a tiny, tiny figure. Her teacher showed the drawing to her parents and they all concluded it was clear that she was shy. Thus she knew she was shy.

A friend told me he thought every child at some point in their life got kidnapped by someone.

A friend told me they refused to stop believing in Father Christmas, even though they knew full well he didn't exist, because then he would stop existing.

Any of yours to add?

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Clémentine Beauvais is a writer and literary translator. Her YA novels in English are Piglettes (Pushkin, 2017) and In Paris with You (trans. Sam Taylor, Faber, 2018).

A Journey In Seven Books by Steve Gladwin

Reading this I can hear you thinking, 'Ah, it's another of those posts where people list their favourite books and talk about why they like them.' But there, gentle reader, you would be wrong, for this is something completely different - an opportunity for you, the reader, to take yourself back into your own favourite books in the form of a hopefully both therapeutic and relaxing journey. So gather round, draw closer and join me on the magic carpet in the middle of the old library and let's see what we can remember. Let's see what we can find. Let's see if we remember who you truly - ARE!

So if you're sitting in the requisite comfortable attitude, we're going to begin in this library itself and the first of our books.

To begin with take about three quiet gentle breaths in and out to settle yourself and calm your mind.

A single bell sounds. Once. Twice. Three times!

The Book of your Childhood

It's entirely up to you if you choose to shut your eyes and give your imagination full reign, or get up and try and flesh out the bones of the place you're in by filling the library with books and members of staff and old maps and prints - anything to conjure up the atmosphere that suits you best.

So let's find the first of our books. Of all books it should be the easiest to find, but you never know, because doing so involves the furthest search of memory. But it is on one of the shelves in the library and - as you'l find - is actually the gateway to the next place and the next location. When you've found the book however, you'll know and recognise it straight away because it will have the smell and feel of your childhood about it, the ability to take you back to that time, that place, that space and that sacred book memory. Maybe the book has remained a favourite, which you've read many times since, still precious and dog-eared on your shelf or even ever handy on your desk, or maybe you keep several copies so that every so often you can give one to friends.

Now you've found your book, smelt its smell of dust and polish, sea and stair, earth and forest, castle keep and kitchen, enjoy for a brief while what it is and why you loved it so.

And when you're good and ready, find your favourite part - the very page you remember best and

enter into the time of your ancestors.

The Book of your Ancestors


Not everyone can recall the time of their ancestors, or even the time of their grandparents. It's usually either history books, or films, family diaries and journals, maps, stories or guesswork, or more often than not all at once.

But there are people who made us who we are and they of course go back a long, long way. So in order to find your ancestors I'd like you to pick an ancestor you'd like to meet, a time and place you'd like to see them. Right now you're standing on the brow of a hill and down there in the mist is the place where you will find your ancestor(s), experience what they experience, smell and hear what they smelt and heard, feel the cloth and sacking, the worsted and linen, the armour and chain mail they wore and felt. So go down to them now, to the place that you have chosen and into the world that is theirs.

When you've spent this precious time with your ancestor, you'll know instinctively and you'll want to remember it all as much as you can. So imagine that everything you can remember, all that is so precious, you have written, scrawled and scribbled, or painstakingly quilled in the form of an old book, stuffed with pages, with illustrations and maps, bound or loose in a bundle, or even carried in a satchel, rough and full of notes and crossings out, but loved and cherished above all else.

So loved and cherished is it that you are hardly ever aware that you are carrying it with you.
However, when you have seen enough of your ancestor and their life and recorded it all, you will find something waiting for you - an object to give you entrance through the next gateway. It may be a simple key with a door to go with it, but it might be anything; a ball of yarn, a banana, a magic carpet. As ever, you decide. But taking your object and finding your entrance you use one to fit the other, until you are ready to find the next book, which is --

The Book of your Heart

This book may be the smallest, perhaps not even visible, but the more you think about it and try to conjure it the more apparent and obvious it will become. It begins with you settling in your favourite chair, relaxed and warm in the sun, or snuggled up before a winter fire. Or maybe curl up by the fire, sit on a mat, lie down - anywhere you're most comfortable.

The book of your heart is the book that for you represents the most important thing or things in your life. It's quite literally your singing and beating heart, the place from where sheer joy springs and laughter echoes, the thing you want to embrace anew every time you see and feel it.

Of course, you may find it difficult to find it in the form of a book, so the best way is to find the book which most represents it and that particular feeling. You may have to dig deep in your memory, or it might just land on your chest with the light, soundless spring of a cat. Whether it happens that way or not, a cat or suitable furry animal is a good example, for when the book of your heart comes you will know it and snuggle it to you until it becomes part of you, filling all of the space you have left empty.

All good things have to come to an end however, and after a while the memory of the book leaves you and with its departure you decide it is time for you to rise. In the chair or mat or place you have just left, you see another book. This is -

The Book of your Wisdom

OK, you might never have even read a bible story, thumbed a myth or tried to internalise a koan, But sure as I cant say Upanishads when I've taken drink, there will have been something in your life which might have qualified as a 'wisdom' book. Quite possibly you'll have to dredge the memory a bit, or overcome a few prejudices, but trust me, there will be one there. It might not be the obvious thing either, no glowing lights or halos or visual speaking in tongues. It might take the form of a childhood autograph book, or an instruction man for Meccano or Scalextric or a copy of Smash Hits, but you will have that corner of religion somewhere, trust me!

So when you've found it in your memory, you can allow the wisdom of your particular take on life to fill the empty pages, just as it will refill your own consciousness, reminding yourself- just in case you've forgotten - of the something you may have lost or forgotten. Maybe the background fills in with song or music or a certain kind of silence.

When you have gazed on your forgotten wisdom for long enough, it is time to close the- now full - book, but you have a surprise in store.

The Book of your Life

And what a surprise, for you hardly have time to shut the book before you are lifted from the ground . As it falls from your fingers, you reach out and a single piece is ripped from the book with you hanging on to it in a terrifying plummet.

But the road of your life often becomes rockier the older you become and more often than not you need to steady it in order not to suffer from constant motion sickness. So much to your surprise, you discover that the moment you grab for the sheet, it slows and quickly steadies your descent, enabling you to come down gently until you are on an unlit path in a darkness which has suddenly descended. But just before the lights go out, you have chance to see the single thing that is written on the piece of paper - the words 'The Book of your Life.' 

As you worry about the darkness around you, you hold up the piece of paper. To your surprise it bursts into flame and you can see the path ahead of you. And as you do so you realise that there is one book which has always helped you to see ahead of you and put your life in perspective, something that reflects the uniqueness of you. 

As you walk the path now illuminated by the book, you see that book in front of you and you walk towards it until its pages seem to embrace the whole landscape. You stand facing it for a while and then watch as it reduces gradually to the size and familiar shape of the original book. You pick this up, thumb through its familiar pages, smile and - let it go. Perhaps you don't need it any more, but it's nice to be reminded of it.

Perhaps you're expecting another book to make itself known - but you're probably going to be surprised by the way it appears. You see, this book is on the ground, for this one is --

The Book of your Journey

The path of our life and journey is forever laid out in front of us. Of course it all may have already happened, or all be happening consecutively, as many religions preach. But one thing is certain and that's that marring fire, flood, illness or accident, it will go on. All lives however have at least one thing in common and that's how they start at the beginning.

So in front of you now, the book of your life is facing you, and you have the choice of how much of it to walk. You can do this now, or simply find a book you've read which reflects your life. But if you do this, rather than take the longer, more reflective road, then you must make a promise to go back to that book and read it again. It might be anything from 'Winnie the Pooh' or the Ladybird book of 'What to look for in Winter', 'The Lord of the Rings' or' Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' Just go back and read it again and you can guarantee you'll find something.

NB The books of Wisdom and the Journey may seem a bit similar, so here's the difference; the book of wisdom is about one or a few things you've learnt, whereas the book of the journey is about the entire path you've taken, not anything specific. But as in all the best things, everything is as you need it to be.

Which brings us to the final book, which brings us back full circle to the old library and  --

The Book of the Mind

This time we're in the library but sitting in one of the many comfortable chairs. We're sitting with our heads back. We can't remember how we made it back from the path of the journey, but it doesn't seem to matter. Because, having undertaken a journey both creative and spiritual, we've come back to the place we started, to the land of books.

Because there's just one book at the moment that we want to grab and read, one that always stimulates our minds, gets us asking and questioning, takes us deep into its narrative or wisdom. You might call it a favourite book, or just one you turn to regularly. But it's usually not just for entertainment. This book means something to you and when you read it there is some kind of meeting of minds.

And as you think about the book, the power of your mind forms its shape and gives it to you. You pick it up, intending to either begin again or resume. Much to your surprise there is a bookmark in there which you don't remember placing there.

But at that place in the book, on that page, paragraph and line you will find the sum total of all this journey's wisdom. You look at the place and the line. You only need to read it once.

You allow the book to dematerialise. You sit back in the comfortable chair, take some gentle deep breaths in and out.

A bell sounds. Once. Twice. Three times!

You're back!

But the journey will always continues.

Hope you enjoyed this. Would love to hear more about your book choices.

Mine were as follows:

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, The Gladwin family photo album, The Summer Tree, The Storyteller,my book 'The Seven', The Lord of the Rings, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I've also thrown in Mr Norrell's library for good measure!

​Steve Gladwin

'Tales From The Realm' - Story and Screen Dream

Connecting Myth, Faerie and Magic

Author of 'The Seven' - Shortlisted for Welsh Books Prize, 2014

The Day The Music Died: 13 Years Of Silence

The Brownies are practising for the carol service. I am eight and I am in heaven. I LOVE singing. I sing with my granny in the choir. I sing for anyone who will ask me. I sing to my dolls. When I’m not reading or writing, I’m singing. I sing confidently and loudly, as I speak. Today it’s the carol that goes We will rock you, rock you, rock you… which I consider exquisite. I am giving it everything in the back row. Little Jesus sweetly…Brown Owl comes along to listen; I can feel her behind me and I sing even more strongly. I’m not one of those wimpy Brownies who mumbles and blushes and has to be told to sing up! Brown Owl places her hand on my shoulder. ‘Just you stop singing and mouth the words for now,’ she says.

…sleep

The words scramble in my throat. Tears well behind my eyes and I tilt my chin up so they can’t fall. I don’t mouth the words. I keep my lips tight shut. 

 For thirteen years.

Oh, I talk. I’m a leading light of the school debating society and often told off for chatting in class. But don’t ask me to sing. Don’t ask me to humiliate myself. In P5, aged nine, in singing class, we all have to sing a phrase alone. I remember the phrase now: Hop-sa-la-tra-la-la-la-la. Mrs Reid is very strict. She can’t believe it when I seal my lips and refuse to sing. I have to write fifty lines: When I am told to sing, I will sing. But she can’t make me sing.

In Form One at grammar school, we have choral singing classes. Mrs O’Callaghan is merry and enthusiastic and there are many of us, so I let myself sing, just quietly, so she won’t notice me. She goes around the class listening, as Brown Owl did. She stops behind me. ‘Would you like to join the Junior Choir?’ she asks.

chatty but not singy 

I shudder. She can’t have been listening! She must be so desperate for choir members that she is prepared to overlook the fact that I can’t sing. I shake my head. ‘I’m not really interested,’ I say.

This is a Lie. I would LOVE to be in the choir. But how can I take the risk?

I am always chosen to read one of the Nine Lessons at the school carol services. I am proud of this, but jealous of the girls in the choir. 

I go to university. I audition for a part in Oh! What A Lovely War! The director reassures me I’ll never have to sing alone. One rehearsal we get to the solo ‘Keep The Home Fires Burning’. I love this song; I sing it in the bath when I am sure nobody is listening. Nobody at the rehearsal is quite sure of it. ‘I’ll show you,’ I say. I’m 21 now, and feeling brave. I open my mouth and sing. All the notes fall into place, even the high ones. Nobody laughs or winces. ‘Would you mind taking that solo?’ the director asks. Like this is not a Big Deal.

‘Me? I can’t really sing!’

the play that changed it 

 ‘Says who?’

‘Um – Brown Owl? When I was eight?’

‘Well, you can certainly sing now.’

And I can. I learn some folk songs. Actually, I don’t need to learn them – I have always loved these songs. But I start to think of actually singing them. Out loud. In front of people. I go to the folk club. I sing. People clap. I go to other folk clubs. I learn more songs. People always clap.

Performing with Melanie

I come home. I enter singing competitions. Sometimes I win. I sing in bands, in folk clubs and bars. I find a friend, Melanie, whose voice blends well with mine, and we do a lot of singing together. I sing at weddings and funerals. I sing the solo in the choir at Midnight Mass. Singing is My Thing. It was always meant to be.

I stopped singing for thirteen years, but I’ve been making up for it ever since. And now, for the first time, I’ve written about singing in my new novel Street Song. It’s dedicated to ‘everyone I’ve sung and made music with over the years, but especially Melanie Stone, who still remembers all the harmonies.’

What did Brown Owl hear, that day in 1976? Was I out of tune? It seems unlikely now. Maybe I was just a bit loud, a bit over-confident, and she wanted to hear the quieter girls. I wish she’d said that. As for Little Jesus, sweetly sleep, it’s now my least favourite carol.

Friendships between Children and Animals - by Jess Butterworth

As a child, like many others, I adored animals. I still do. I’m grateful that I grew up around them: whether it was our family pet dog, Tiny (he came with the name), a dachshund corgi mix with the smallest legs ever; the horses and sheep in the fields around the village; or the goats and cows wandering outside our house when we lived in India.

I remember forming incredibly close bonds with animals, especially during our time in India, where the remoteness of the mountain we lived on meant that there wasn't always other children around. The other profession I dreamed of (along with writer and explorer) was vet.

For some children, animals lead to their first encounters of life and death. When I was six and in India, one of our dogs got taken and eaten by a leopard at dusk. I was devastated and my Grandma tried to explain to me about wild animals and food chains. A few years later in England, I went to feed our chickens in the morning and found only feathers and some orange fur stuck to the wire of the hatch.

I’ll never forget the look of horror on my sister’s face when she got home from school one day to discover one of her hamsters eating the other.

Months later, my other sister thought she’d unearthed alien worms in the rabbit cage. It turned out the rabbit had mated with a wild rabbit on one of her escapes from the garden run, and the wriggling pink things were, in fact, baby rabbits.

This part of my childhood is reflected in my writing and my books are filled with animals and the friendships that can happen between children and animals.  

Here are some of my favourite stories that also explore this friendship.

Northern Lights by Philip Pullman 

In this world, every human has a daemon, an animal companion that is also their soul. A child’s daemon is free to change form, from creature to creature, whereas an adult’s daemon remains the same.

Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne 

Christopher Robin explores the Hundred Acre Wood, going on adventures with its inhabitants, Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore the donkey, Piglet, Kanga and Roo, Tigger, Rabbit and Owl.

The Last Wild by Piers Torday 

This story begins in a sterile world where animals no longer exist, until a cockroach asks Kester for help and he’s flung into an adventure to save the last of the animals and the wild.

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl 

In a bid to escape his wicked aunts, James befriends oversized insects inside a giant peach.  

The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo 

Bertie rescues a white lion cub in Africa but when he’s sent to boarding school he’s forced to give the cub away and the lion ends up in a circus. Bertie promises to find the lion one day.  

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling 

Mowgli the boy is raised by wolves in the jungle and has many animal friends including Bagheera the black panther and Baloo the bear.

There are so many wonderful books out there and I’m certain I’ve missed a bunch. What are your favourite books that explore friendships between animals and children?

Jess Butterworth