Memory Games - Tracy Darnton

I’ve been having fun lately playing memory games as part of the promotion of The Truth About Lies and thought I’d share some of them.

First up - the memory game, or Kim’s game.  

This gets its name from Kipling’s book when Kim is taught to quickly assess the precious stones on a tray. We played this at parties when I was little - just after hunt the thimble and before pin the tail on the donkey (all part of my wild, misspent youth). I use items which appear in the book such as a postcard and lipstick, give 10 seconds and then take one away.

Kids these days are more likely to have adrenaline-rush trampolining parties so when I used it at a school book camp with Year 10s I did have to explain it, but they really enjoyed playing it. We then used the items as the basis for their own stories in a mini-workshop where each of them picked one from the tray and answered a fun set of questions about who it belonged to before putting it into a short piece of writing.

So far the prize for speedily spotting what was missing goes to the ladies at my recent trip to the Bath WI book club who had played it in childhood and were much quicker than the teenagers.

My next activity is memory pairs using the blank cards (from Tiger) which the kids can illustrate to match books and characters as pairs.

While making the cards was fun it requires a bit too much time and space to play. Lesson learnt.

DIY MEMORY PAIRS

I’ve also been teaching quick techniques for remembering. I wrote an article for TEEN Breathe magazine called Picture the Memory and I’ve been using that and the fab illustrations to demonstrate how to remember names, PIN numbers and lists by assigning striking images. That went down well at the WI too.

The brain and I out and about

With the help of my trusty crocheted brain all these games serve as a warm-up for discussing memory. I’ve touched on how memories are formed and recalled and are dynamic rather than a true recollection of events, how we see things through a prism of our own ego and whether we are contracting out our memory to our phones and Google etc. There is so much to talk about and people can very much contribute with their own experiences of memory and what they themselves find easy or difficult to remember.

So what have I learnt so far with the broad range of 13 to 73 year old readers I’ve engaged with?

Mainly that an activity based around your book seems to appeal to everyone, young and old, and is a good ice-breaker, if nothing else. I’ve learnt that there’s plenty to discuss about memory which can easily be tailored for the age of the participants. I should probably develop a PowerPoint which would widen what I could talk about and the potential size of the audience, maybe exploring our memory for faces and images. But so far I’ve enjoyed the more hands-on playful approach with small groups.

So how did you do at the Memory Game? No looking back, but what’s missing?

Tracy Darnton's The Truth About Lies is a YA thriller about the nature of memory. Follow Tracy on Twitter @TracyDarnton