The Willow Man, by Sue Purkiss

 It's interesting how sometimes, it turns out that a book you've written isn't really about quite what you thought it was. I thought for sure that I knew what The Willow Man (first published by Walker Books in 2006) was about. It was, first and foremost, about children who were stuck: one of the children in the book, Sophie, is quite literally stuck, because a sudden illness has paralysed her on one side. Another, Ash, is stuck because he's dyslexic and can't read. And Sophie's brother, Tom, is stuck because Sophie's illness has turned his family's world upside down, and he doesn't quite know how to cope with it. 

The Willow Man of the title was the great willow figure which used to stand proudly beside the M5 near Bridgwater in Somerset. (It's now, sadly, a shadow of its former self: much of the willow is missing, and it's hemmed in by a huge supermarket warehouse on one side and a housing estate on the other.) Like the children, it was stuck: Within him, woven with the living willow into his great frame, power lay coiled. But the power was captive. Strong as he was, he couldn't move. 

So I thought - I knew - that it was a cry for help for children who were stuck, in whatever way that might be.

But I realised as I was writing it that it was also about the way that children often aren't listened to, and indeed I dedicated it to my own children, but also to 'children anywhere who feel that no-one is listening'.

And now, writing about it here because I've just republished it, I realise that it's also about something that's subtly different. Before I explain, I should perhaps say that this is far and away the most personal book I've ever written. It draws on my own experiences in the years just before writing it. But I've only just realised that it also draws on an experience from many years before that.

When I was about eight, I realised I couldn't see properly. I suppose it must in fact have come on gradually, but the way I remember it is that I could see properly - and then I couldn't. I couldn't see what was written on the board at school, and had to enlist the help of the person next to me. I remember being on holiday, and we went to see an end-of-pier show, and I couldn't see what was happening on the stage. And I do remember being very upset by that, almost to the point of tears.

But I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell my parents that I couldn't see the show, and I didn't tell the teacher that I couldn't see the board. This went on for at least a year. Nobody noticed, and I didn't tell anyone, even though I was getting more and more upset about it. It wasn't that I was worried about wearing glasses - I quite liked the idea. I wasn't afraid that it was anything really serious. I simply didn't know how to tell an adult what was wrong.

In the end, I broke free when my sister mentioned at tea that in her class they'd had sight tests, and one of her friends turned out to need glasses. At last! "I think I need glasses too," I squeaked. Oh, the relief of getting it out in the open! (And, once I had glasses, of being able to see again.)

And that's the thing that I hadn't realised The Willow Man was about. It's not just about adults not listening: it's also about children not being able to put into words what's wrong - because sometimes, particularly when the problem is a big one, they just don't know how to do it.

Perhaps this all sounds rather heavy. It's certainly not a lovely, frothy, magical fantasy - though there is magic in it, quite definitely.

The Willow Man as it used to be.

But in the years after it first came out, I used to go into schools to talk about it. When you read something to an audience, you can soon tell if you've 'got' them. And when I read extracts from The Willow Man, that happened. Every time. Particularly with classes where there was very clearly a student who was having similsr problems to Ash. With the questions they asked, with the expressions on their faces, you could see that they were thinking, He's like me. He's just like me!

It wasn't the kind of book that easily becomes a bestseller, and it came out before Twitter and social media generally might have helped spread the word. So it didn't become a bestseller, and, eventually, it went out of print. 

But I think there are still children out there who might see themselves in this book. And so, just on the off-chance that it might find them, I've brought out a new edition. It's available from Amazon, and it would be just lovely if a few people would buy it. Go on - let's set the Willow Man free once more!

To my fellow bloggers

Hello.

My name is Val.

I am dyslexic.

                   

I struggle to spell simple words. At school, my teachers saw an articulate child who was possibly a little like Hermione Granger when it came to enthusiastically answering questions. It was clear I wasn't stupid and so my poor spelling was labelled 'careless'.

That demoralising word was scrawled over most of my written work, regularly appeared in school reports and was often spoken at parents’ evenings. It made me unhappy and ate away at my confidence because I did care, I cared very much, I simply could not work out the codes that helped others spell, and I failed to detect incorrectly spelt words. How I ever passed any exams is totally beyond me, but I did. I suppose it proves that hard work can overcome almost anything. Now, in the age of word processing, spellcheckers have removed some of the stress and changed my life for the better.

I still struggle with what I call ‘too-many-words’. Dense writing is daunting and, very often, incomprehensible. I can read the words individually, but put them together and the meaning is unclear unless – and this is the weird bit – the jumble of words fires my imagination. Factual writing baffles me and most fiction is a chore.

As a writer of fiction for children and YA, I am often asked for my favourite childhood book. I never had one. I hardly ever read for pleasure. I know I missed out, and still do. I am constantly looking for a book that will enthral me, but rarely find one.

This blog is my confession to fellow bloggers. I seldom read their blogs and this bothers me. It feels discourteous.

Please forgive me.

My name is Val.

I am dyslexic.

Don't stop children reading facty books - by Nicola Morgan

Two notes first:
It's National Non-fiction November, hence this topic. I've also blogged on the lack of respect in some quarters for non-fiction and on the importance of facty books for dyslexic readers, all in support of #NNFN.

You'll notice I use different words to describe "non-fiction". I don't really mind which we use. I rather like facty. "Fiction" can have facts in, too, and "non-fiction" can have imagination, narrative and drama. But what we tend to call non-fiction majors on its factual truths, so I like facty.

------------------------------

Anyway.

Recently, a parent told me that "non-fiction" had been removed from (or banned - I'm not quite sure) her son's school. Even though I've heard of this on another occasion, I find it hard to believe so let's say at least that there was a teacher who thought boys would be better not reading fact-based books for pleasure.

Why? Apparently, among other things, because non-fiction doesn't boost empathy.

Oh gosh.

I know where this comes from. It comes from some research - many small studies - which does suggest that fiction has an important role to play in developing empathy. (Read Such Stuff as Dreams for some detail.) Although there's lots of interesting and thought-provoking content to that book and this research, and although I believe that yes, fiction does have a role to play in empathy-building, and that the act of "narrative transportation" into the minds of other people is important for developing one's own mind and Theory of Mind, I urge caution before you wrap yourself in the blanket of some of the conclusions.

For example, it's not surprising that, when a beautifully-written piece of fiction (a Chekov short story is a specific example) is turned into a dull piece of non-fiction (a courtroom transcript, in this case), the people reading the short story might increase in empathy (on certain measures) more than the others.

This doesn't prove anything other than, perhaps, that people reading beautiful writing by a master writer can engage on a more personal level than people reading a piece of dud dullness. It fails to acknowledge the potential of the best words in the best order. It fails to acknowledge (because it wasn't looking at that) whether other things promote empathy, such as having a loving parent or carer to both show empathy and give insights into how other people feel.

However, imagine for a moment that it had been proven that fiction boosts empathy and that non-fiction (any of it, from a dictionary to the most elegant narrative non-fiction) doesn't. 

Even in that case, telling people that they shouldn't read any non-fiction because it doesn't increase empathy is like telling people they shouldn't eat fruit because it doesn't contain protein and therefore won't help their cells regenerate. Or not to eat asparagus because it doesn't contain iron or not to drink milk because milk doesn't contain vitamin C.

I hope you get my point.

My other point is that by telling half the school population (boys, in the example given) that their first choice (often) of reading material is not worth their time both undermines them quite horribly and risks turning them off reading forever. It is misguided and counter-productive. It doesn't make sense. 

Parents, please don't listen to anyone who tells your sons or your daughters not to read non-fiction, information books, facty books, whatever you want to call them. What you want is your sons and daughters first to read and then to read more. Isn't it hard enough to get young people (often especially boys) to read, without making it a load less attractive and judging them negatively for it? Reading for pleasure, anyone? The clue is in the word "pleasure".

SO, people, tell me: what are your recommended facty reads? Tell me the title, writer+illustrator, and what sort of reader you think would love it. And maybe some lucky young readers will receive something really inspiring this Christmas! 

Btw, if you'd like to give one to a child in difficult circumstances, then DO check out the annual Blackwells book tree.

Off he goes again... by Sue Purkiss

First, many thanks to Joan Lennon for letting me have her slot. I've just managed to publish a book on Kindle, and am feeling ridiculously proud of myself, so wanted to jump up and down and shout about it - just a little bit!

Admitted, I had it pretty easy really, because I still had the original Word document, which makes it much easier to create an ebook. And those nice people at Walker let me use the original cover, so I didn't have to make a new one. All in all, then, it's really pretty ridiculous that it's taken me well over a year to get round to what was actually a pretty painless and very interesting procedure.

The book concerned is called The Willow Man. It was the first 'serious' book I wrote, and it was very close to my heart. I felt unbelievably proud when I held the new book in my hand, it garnered some very nice reviews, and it was taken up by Hodder for use in a reading scheme. All of this was very satisfactory - but unfortunately, it didn't sell shed loads of copies - or even wheelbarrow loads - and so it went out of print. But now, thanks to the glories of the digital revolution (or is it the electronic revolution? Whatever!), The Willow Man is on the move again!

So what's the book about? Well, interesting you should ask. Because when I came to edit the original Word document before converting it for Kindle, I realised that it wasn't about quite what I'd thought it was.

The Willow Man, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Willow Man is a real figure - that's him in the picture. A lot of those of you who live in the UK will have seen him as you've driven down to the south-west. He stands beside the M5, and was created by willow sculptor Serena de la Hey in the year 2000, to celebrate the millenium. He used to be unmissable: now not quite so much, because a massive Morrison's depot is encroaching on one side and a housing estate on the other. But he's still there, tall and proud. I used to drive past him on the way to work, and I was fascinated by him. There he stood, poised ready to stride forward: and yet he never would.

So there he was, waiting to be written about. Other ideas gathered round him. One was what had happened to my daughter some years before, when she was seven. She had a stroke. One minute she was bouncing about all over the place, the next she was paralysed on her right side and couldn't speak. Should I have written about something so close to home? Well, I'm a writer. Writers write about things that matter to them, and nothing had mattered more.

Then there was the work I had just started doing, with young offenders - not locked up, but in the community. Here were young people who were almost always out of school. Few of them could read very well - John Dougherty wrote an excellent post about prisoners and literacy a couple of days ago which will provide you with some of the figures. Most of them had an absent father, and a mother who was struggling desperately to survive. The pattern seemed always to be the same - they struggled in school, they got into trouble, they truanted and/or were excluded, they got in with older youths and began to drink, they got into fights and damaged things, they went before the courts, and then they came to us.

So the book was to be about children who were stuck in one way or another. After it was published, I went into schools and talked to lots of children about it, and it was always so rewarding to hear the boy at the back - the one with that look about him that tells you he's teetering on the brink - say that he'd enjoyed it, because Ash was like he was. Someone else would always ask, rather shyly, about my daughter: had she got better, as Sophie does in the book? (The answer was yes: she did and she's wonderful!)

Reading it through before uploading it to Kindle, I saw that it was indeed about all these things. But it was about something else, too. It was about communication - or the lack of it. At the beginning, Sophie can't speak. She has to struggle to regain her words. Her brother Tom doesn't know how to cope with his feelings about what's happened: he certainly can't express them. Ash can't tell the teachers not only that he can't read, but also that the reason he keeps being late is that he has to drop his little brother off at school so his mum can get to work on time. His mother has never told him why his father isn't around. Perhaps, Sophie thinks, the Willow Man can help - but then something terrible happens...

When I was nearing the end of writing the book, I went to see Serena de la Hey. I wanted to explain to her that I had, in a way, hi-jacked her creation, and I wanted to know more about the way she worked, in order to write the final scene. The Willow Man - her figure, not my book - has had a huge impact. His image has been used in advertising for Somerset and the County Council, and people who are interested in the arcanery  attached to willow/whicker figures used as a kind of sacrifice are drawn to him. She shrugged. She'd made him, she said. That was her job, done. What he went on to do after that wasn't up to her: he took on a life of his own.

Her figure wasn't meant to last; it was made of willow, not stone or bronze. Yet there it still is, and, thanks to Amazon Kindle, there my book still is - whatever it's about!

Incidentally, Lucy Coats wrote on this blog a month or two ago about Pinterest, and how she's begun to use it to create her characters. Emma Darwin has written elsewhere about how she's also used it to gather images to do with her books. I decided to have a play myself, and I've done a couple of boards, one about the landscapes inThe Willow Man. It's a work in progress - I haven't done Bridgwater yet - but if you'd like to take a look, it's here. The photo is taken from Brean Down, one of the key locations in the book - it's not on the board yet, but it will be!

www.suepurkiss.com

Yes, we are all individuals - Nicola Morgan

This week is Dyslexia Awareness Week. Dyslexia and I have some history. Several bits.

When I was an English teacher, I found myself in a school with an exceptionally high proportion of pupils with various reasons for finding reading and writing difficult. In a sense they were all dyslexic, though only some of them had Dyslexia. Later, I did an RSA Diploma in teaching children and adults with "specific learning difficulties" (SpLD), which was the then phrase for Dyslexia in all its forms. I then spent the next 16 years teaching such children and adults.

While doing that Diploma, I discovered that I am, on many assessment criteria, dyslexic. Quite patently, I'm not dyslexic, as my spelling, reading, writing, comprehension etc are far from problematic. However, I measure as dyslexic (and somewhat dyspraxic) because: I am inexorably hopeless at left/right tasks; I am strongly crossed-lateral (right-handed but left-eyed); I cannot remember or perform sequences of various sorts; absolutely cannot recite my times tables beyond 5x; my coordination is poor - I am very bad coming down stairs, my typing is riddled with reversals, I cannot learn the simplest dance routines, and my attempts to learn musical instruments have been dismally hampered by my inability to become automatic and coordinated. I also recognise that my hilarious (to others) inability to talk while doing anything with my hands, such as make a cup of coffee, is a function of how my brain works (or doesn't work).

Despite being a so-called SpLD specialist, I failed to realise that my younger daughter had a specific difficulty until she took herself to the learning support teacher in her final year of school. (The guilt!) She turned out to have a "dyslexic-type" deficit, though she has different manifestations from me - for a start she is a brilliant musician and very well-coordinated. Her problem was essentially an information processing one, which had few outward symptoms, and which she disguised brilliantly and now has strategies for. She had been going around thinking she was "thick", despite the fact that I told her over and over again that she very obviously wasn't, pointing out that there were clever things she could do far better than other people.

During my training, one of the things I started to investigate was the human brain, the ways in which our brains are the same and the ways in which they are different, how weaknesses are often mirrored by strengths. I ended up writing two books on the brain, both for young people and families. The better known one is Blame My Brain - the Amazing Teenage Brain Revealed. But it's the other one that's relevant here: Know Your Brain. It seeks to show young people that there are many types of intelligence, that the ones most valued at school (literacy and numeracy) are not necessarily the best and are not necessarily the ones that determine your later success.

And that is what informs my thinking on this subject and why, although I'm proud to be one of Sir Jackie Stewart's Ambassadors for Dyslexia Scotland, I want people to understand that Dyslexia is only one set of conditions. There are many other people struggling to succeed on specific tasks and being laughed at or disrespected for their inability to do whatever it is.

Dyslexia is a useful word. Even if you don't know the definition, you kind of know sufficiently what it denotes. Going through school with undiagnosed or unmediated dyslexia is horrendous - and I've had many pupils whose self-esteem I've somehow had to try to rebuild. It's a scandal that there's no compulsory part of the teacher training curriculum in Scotland (I don't know about England and Wales) to make sure new teachers know how to identify and deal with the pupils they will inevitably come across.

There isn't a word for the things I (and many others) can't do, and the fact that on assessment criteria I'm dyslexic is irrelevant because I can't go around saying I am, as it would be ridiculous and unfair to those genuinely afflicted. What I have just feels like clumsiness; it feels like a brain failure; it sometimes makes me feel thick.

It also makes me fascinated by the human brain. One thing I believe is that it can't be brilliant at everything. The maths genius will lack something, perhaps artistic talent or leadership qualities; or the musical prodigy will lack something else, perhaps sporting skill or the ability to understand people and work well in a team; the lateral thinker may lack logic and the logician be too rigid to be creative. Even an apparent polymath will have some area of weakness. Show me someone who is genuinely brilliant at every one of the many intelligences.

Many dyslexic people have great creative or other skills - but many don't, and we should not assume that one thing produces the other. The differences between human brains are enormous and to be marvelled at, investigated and, most of all, celebrated. I wrote Know Your Brain because I wanted children and young people to understand their own strengths and to value them equally, artistic, creative, logical, literary, musical, spatial, courageous, whatever. I wanted children (and adults) to value different areas of cleverness properly and not set highest store by coming top in school tests and "academic" exams.

So, I can't walk down stairs smoothly, or make you coffee while talking; I am likely to give you the wrong directions (or, in fact, no directions) for getting to my house; I can't tell you a story in the right order; and you really wouldn't like to listen to me play the oboe. But I can write passably well and I can understand something about people's brains.

I'll cope with that.

I want all dyslexic people to value their own talents in Dyslexia Awareness Week. Actually, I want everyone to understand what their brains find difficult and what they find easier. Please share!

Important info: If your child's teacher would like a free, online, simple assessment for dyslexia, please send them towards Dyslexia Scotland's fabulous Addressing Dyslexia Toolkit. Available for all teachers everywhere, not just Scotland! FREEEEEEEEE!