A short blog this week reflecting on why some books leave a lasting impression on the family lexicon...
I'm assuming that everyone has adopted certain lines from favourite books? We have plenty of 'in' phrases in our household. They're subsumed into the club of our family and sometimes I forget that not everyone understands what we're talking about.
"Not now, Bernard!" I'll exclaim to a friend (not called Bernard), who looks bewildered. Or I'll pick up a dropped credit card muttering "Precious, my precious" in a Gollum-like voice. It's not just books; I can't help using famous film lines like "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope". It just pops out when I want help with something as mundane as the washing up. And Charlie Bucket's "I've got a golden ticket" comes in surprisingly handy as does Dorothy's "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto". They have family meme status. No doubt they are memes on Twitter.
But families also choose less obvious 'memes' when something about a book captures the imagination of that particular family. One of our all-time favourite shared reads is the brilliant Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce. For those who haven't read it (and you should immediately because it's a masterpiece!) one of the terrible pushy parents, Monsieur Martinet, tells his child at one stage "You. Are. A Winner!" Not a big line from a major character, not a constantly repeated refrain, but something about it made us laugh and it stuck. My kids knew people like that (not us; no, no, no) and the way it was read on the audio book which we took on holiday was absolutely spot-on and so funny. It will always remind me of sitting in beach car parks with none of us wanting to get out of the car until the chapter finished. We read it so much our copy fell to bits and one of my kids bought me the special edition shiny cover version for Mothers Day. The perfect gift for me.
And whenever anything breaks in our house, the loveably hapless duck created by Jez Alborough springs to mind and we use the line: "This is a job for Fix-It Duck" and as we're fairly useless on the DIY front, it just seems to fit.
So what makes something like that stick within a family?
Firstly, because Jez Alborough's story works so well. The reader is led to that repeating line by fantastic rhyme and rhythm. It fixes in your head, it becomes a natural conclusion to what has gone before. Secondly, repetition. I must have read Fix-It Duck to my kids about eighty trillion times - and we all still loved it.
And now I have a new reason to use those phrases: nostalgia and empty nest syndrome. Those phrases remind me of a time when they were cute and not taller than me and we shared books and stories. I shall pack them off again in the next few weeks with a Fix-It Duck screwdriver and roll of Duck tape, and the heavily accented "You are a winner!". And they'll know exactly what I mean.
And that's all part of the wonder of writing for children and parents. The language and characters of a book take on a life of their own. Once the book's out there, in some wonderful ways it doesn't belong to the author anymore. Readers react in their esoteric way, adopting parts they love, sharing phrases. "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."
Tracy Darnton writes YA thrillers. Her latest The Rules is about a girl on the run from her prepper dad.
You can follow Tracy on Twitter @TracyDarnton
4 comments:
Yes! Thanks for this, Tracy! And 'family lexicon' is a new phrase for me and very useful, so thanks for that too!
Lovely post! I have a Shakespeare one that my teenage son told me drove him nuts - "Once more unto the breach!" From kid's books we sometimes declare "We're not scared!" (Bear hunt). In fact we have so many from different TV shows, films etc, now I come to think of it. We're all walking culture reference libraries!
Like Moira, if you got me started, our 'family lexicon' would be a book-- and I don't even have kids!
Here's an ancient one, which my mother was taught in her primary school. We learned from her that whenever we felt insufferably smug about how good and clever we were, we should recite (as smugly as possible):
When I'm asked to a party,
I shall be sure to take
A slice of bread and butter
Before a slice of cake.
My mother, the 6th and youngest child of a widow, raised during WW2, rarely saw a slice of cake. And certainly would never have passed it over for a slice of bread and marg. There would have been no cake left for the polite.
What a delightful post to find on ABBA right now! Now idly searching the memories.
Thank you, Tracy.
Post a Comment