A Love letter to Reading

Since everybody reading this blog will be an avid reader themselves, I thought my little review of this book would fit right in. I loved this book.

Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm, about the joys of children’s literature, was a little overwhelming. That’s not a criticism; rather, she wrote in such detail about all the books she’d read as a child that my mind reeled at the detail she dived into. She seemed to have read every book written for children – in English – ever! And while I’d read a lot of them, I hadn’t read nearly as many as her – probably about a quarter actually - so had no frame of reference for most of her comments. 

(It did introduce me to Gwen Grant’s Private – Keep Out though, and for that I’ll be grateful for the rest of my days.)

Bookish: A Love Letter to Reading is – well, for me at least – far more accessible. Mainly because I’ve read just about all the books she writes about and so can involve myself more deeply in her thoughts and judgements. 

And it’s pure pleasure to discover them. She takes in everything from early YA, to set texts at school, to an English Lit degree at Cambridge, bonkbusters and bestsellers… Lucy Mangan likes to read! And her enthusiasm makes me want A) to run right out and ransack my nearest bookshop and B) take another crack at The Da Vinci Code. (Which I think is probably the worst-written book ever published, but which she continued reading, even when a snotty colleague at the Guardian wondered out loud why she was wasting her time on such rubbish. Because, she says, she was enjoying the story, and if that isn’t the definition of a good time with a book, what is?)

Lucy Mangan just likes to read, and Bookish is a loving, wonderfully entertaining tribute to doing just that.

Letters - a treasure trove. By Sue Purkiss

 Far back in the distant past, O Best Beloveds, there was a time before emails, before WhatsApp, before Messenger - before any of these things which we now rely on. And in that time, if you wanted to communicate with someone far away, you wrote a letter. If you were in the same country, that letter might arrive very quickly - the post then was very efficient. It had to be, because apart from telegrams and the telephone (land lines only, of course, no mobiles), it was pretty much the only means of communication. If the letter had to go abroad, of course, it took much longer.

Many people kept the letters which were most important to them - indeed, some people kept the vast majority of the letters they received, but they were more likely to be people in the public eye, who had an eye towards future memoirs and biographies.

In the later years of his life, my father knew that I was interested in his stories about his childhood and family and about his experiences during the war. So he gave me this old chocolate box, which contained a few old photographs, his army record book and that of my Uncle George, who was a rear gunner in the RAF and was shot down just before the end of the war - a tragedy, one among so very many. 

It also contained a number of letters from Dad's mother and some of his five sisters. The reason these letter survived is that they never reached him. This was because at the end of May 1940, he was part of the British Expeditionary Force to France, about 400,000 men, which was retreating with all possible speed towards Dunkirk, where they were hoping to be picked up by the navy and taken back to Britain. This was the famous effort, involving hundreds of small boats, which did indeed rescue the majority of the men. But not all. Many were killed, and others were captured before they ever got there. Dad was one of these, and he spent the rest of the war in prison camps in Poland.

But back at home, my grandmother and Dad's sisters had no idea of this. So they kept on writing letters, chatty in the case of his sisters, increasingly anxious in the case of Granny Course. And eventually - extraordinarily - these letters were not just chucked into the nearest bin: someone examined them, investigated, and some months later, returned them to their senders, stamped 'Addressee reported Prisoner of War'. Granny kept them, and years later, gave them to Dad, their intended recipient.

Dad with his company at the beginning of the war - he is sitting on the front row on the far right. He was in the RASC, the Royal Army Service Corps. I don't know how many of these survived the war. 

There's a little side story to this. For months, in the chaos of war, no-one knew what had happened to Dad. At some point a telegram arrived back at home, saying that he was missing in action. My Aunt Connie intercepted it, and decided that Granny wasn't to be told: they would wait until they knew for certain whether he was alive or dead.

It's so moving to read these letters now, in the knowledge of what was happening in France. This is from a letter Granny wrote on the 15th of May, when Dad still had about ten days of freedom left. She is hoping that he will have leave before long.

...I have cleaned the house ready waiting to hear that quick step. I often fancy I hear you coming home early (in the) morning, so I do hope things won't be so long. It seems hard and furious now...

And then this one, written on the 25th, around the time that he was captured. She is obviously desperately worried, beginning:

Dear Bernard

    Do just let me know how you are as soon as possible, I know I am impatient... I am only wanting to know if you are well, and are quite alright...

And ending:

...if you are too tired I am sending you some ready addressed envelopes if you can only just say I am alright mam, that will suffice for your loving Mother/too anxious.

These letters were one of the many strands that fed into my book, An Ordinary War, which is very loosely based on Dad's experiences. I found, and still find, that image of my grandmother writing to her son, pausing and listening for his 'quick step', not knowing that she wouldn't see him again for five years, just so moving. If you'd like to read more, the book is available here.

Hunting the Generated Subject - by Rowena House

It’s the last lap, the final six weeks of a six-and-a-half year creative writing PhD, which, terrifyingly, has taken up (or, at least, often took over) one-tenth of my lifetime.

I’m line-editing and proof-reading at the moment, ten pages a day of an 80K manuscript, cut down from 87K at its longest. It’s mad to try to do both at the same time, but that’s how it’s turned out and by this stage I’m not questioning my process, just getting on with it.

Hopefully, I’ll have time to read it through again on the iPad in a different format as reformatting always seems to throw up those glaringly obvious typos that have slipped past me, oh, probably hundreds of times.

I’m getting all sorts of deja-vu with the comparable stage of editing The Goose Road, my debut for young readers. Like asking, where did I put that sentence I liked so much, and really worked? And, for goodness sake, what on earth were you on about there?

There’s also been a nice moment of circularity or closure this month. 

Right at the start of this project, when Arvon began online masterclasses during Covid lockdowns, I listened to author Hisham Matar recommending that we stay open creatively during our first drafts (which I’ve taken to mean over multiple drafts) so that we don’t get trapped by our original idea and fail to access our deeper level of intuitive invention.

That became a kind of mantra for this novel: stay open to whatever comes along. 

 

 

Then, on August 7th, an email came in from Writers.com, an American organisation which I often find useful and thank very much for all their inspiration. This email offered up a notion from poetry which struck a chord. The article is by Sean Glatch, whom I’ve quoted here before, and is titled, Writing Titles of Poetry: How to Title a Poem, which has a lovely internal rhythm, which I guess is the point.

Mr. Glatch quoted Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town, which he called ‘a great grounding in the craft and mindset of poetry writing’. To quote him quoting Mr. Hugo:

To Hugo, all poems have two subjects:

· The Initiating Subject: the topic, idea, or thing that led you into writing a poem.

· The Generated Subject: the subject that the poem discovers or was actually, secretly, about the whole time.

I really like this idea. It makes a whole lot of sense. For the work-in-progress, a seventeenth-century witch trial was the initiating subject, and the importance of writing to critical thinking is the generated subject.

Looking back, I realise I spent a lot of time in the early years trying to think up a generated subject, to plan it, to plot it, to do exactly what Hisham Matar said you shouldn’t do. It’s the theme thing, innit. We’re supposed to know it, but if it’s the storytelling that generates it, how can one plan it?

They say that writing a novel is new each time around. If there is another one in me, I’ll try very hard to remember this lesson and stop hunting for a theme and let it wade out of the story sea in its own good time.

All the best, everyone. Nearly there. 

 

A small step for me, potentially a giant leap for humanity - by Lu Hersey

Do you remember a time before Google and smart phones?  When people had typewriters or word processors to write with, and if you wanted to speak to someone at a distance, you had to call them on a landline? Research was done in libraries, which held so many books, there wasn't even room for a student cafe. People still respected creativity and the arts and no one used AI to write, produce art or music, or had GoogleMaps telling them where to go.

It honestly wasn't that long ago. The last twenty-five years has seen such a massive expansion of AI, we've all become accustomed to it. No one reading this would use it to write their books for them (hopefully!), but we live in a world where if you wanted to produce a readable manuscript from your idea in under ten minutes, you probably could. All thanks to AI's pirating of everything ever written by us. 

There's a rumour going around that AI centres burn books to stop us going back to print copies. Scary shades of Fahrenheit 451, and though it might sound like an urban myth, there's actually some truth to this rumour. Anthropic, a mega AI company with an 'AI assistant' they've named Claude (presumably to make him sound more user-friendly), is known to have sourced thousands of books, removed the spines to enable easy scanning, then pulped (I believe they call it 'recycled') all the pages. 

This has been public knowledge for over a year, but people only started getting seriously worried when another massive company called ISBNdb began ordering books in bulk, including rare books, from booksellers - and apparently destroying the originals. ISBNdb's website is really something - they manage to make it sound like they're doing you a huge favour by allowing you to access any book you want to read (at a price, obviously) instantly, online, from your desktop. 

Not long ago you could order a hard copy of any book you needed from a library (and up to a point you still can). Although it might take longer to source, the point of libraries is to conserve the original books, rather than destroying them. 

Yes, AI has made fantastic advances in medicine possible, and solves difficult science problems in a fraction of a second that could otherwise take years. It's brought some huge benefits to us all, and obscene amounts of money to the billionaires behind it. 

But there's a costly, sinister pay-off. Look at the rising numbers of data centre buildings being constructed to support it - no need for proper planning permission because the people financing them promise the earth, while systematically destroying it. 

The wonderful Erin Brockovich (remember the film? She's a real person) is currently fighting the rise of data centres, which are springing up everywhere (including the UK) with no proper public consultation or planning consent, despite the fact they seriously contaminate land, make a constant, deafening noise and use vast quantities of water at the expense of the environment. If you're interested, you can read about Erin's campaign in an article published recently in the Guardian.

I'm now ranting about the potential destruction of the planet by AI, while intermittently using it to research this piece. The irony isn't lost on me. So could direct action be the only possible alternative route to save the planet from the rise of data centres? This week saw Wynd Kaufman, aged 69, jailed for chaining and locking the front doors of Open AI's HQ last year. She's a member of a protest movement called StopAI , whose website describes them as a 'grassroots movement of everyday people using democratic and non-violent methods to disrupt the reckless development of destructive artificial intelligence technology'. As the first person jailed for taking direct action against destructive AI, she's been hailed by some as akin to Rosa Parks. Of course others might view her as a modern day Luddite. (Though if you follow that thought through, the Luddites had a point. Technology isn't always a good thing...)

Maybe we need to use Gandhi's example, using his charkha (portable spinning wheel) to spin cotton into yarn, a form of passive resistance against British colonial textile imports. OK, I'm not giving up my laptop to write for the time being - and I freely admit I used Google to help research while writing this piece. 

So what's my first step towards independence from AI? 

I'm trying to get places without using GoogleMaps. It involves using actual paper maps and road atlases like everyone had to, only a few decades ago. Amazingly, it works just like it always did.

A small step for me, right? But if we all remember how to do basic things without using AI, it could be a giant leap for humanity. 

Lu Hersey

lu-hersey.com

Oh you silly things By Steve Way

 I’m sure, like me, several children – and a few adults – have asked you, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ I know some authors have said it’s the question they most expect and least know how to answer. I’d be interested to know if, as I do, you feel that one of several ways we snatch onto possible ideas is by watching out in our daily lives for interesting incidents, events and situations in our daily lives. One possible consequence of that might be that we notice much around us that doesn’t necessarily spark off an idea – at least straightaway – but which we maybe consider in more depth than others might do. In this case, I want to describe a few things I’ve observed which struck me as particularly silly.

It hadn’t occurred to me before until I began writing this, that all of what I’m going to describe were observed on, or by roadways. I’ve mentioned before that my wife and I currently live in a small rural town in France (though we’re seriously thinking of moving back to the north of England after this year’s unending sequence of heatwaves – we realise that moving to the south would be a living example of the adage about moving from the frying pan into the fire).

A windy road, barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other, stretches about five miles to the next town. Halfway along that road, just before two right-angled bends, is a sign indicating that lorries larger than a certain size should not use this road. There are no other signs like this anywhere along this road, i.e. at the beginning of the road at either end, offering said lorries the chance to re-route. Also, the sign only faces one way, so drivers coming the opposite way may only ever see the sign in their rear-view mirror. As I’ve intimated the road is so narrow and twisted that even if a driver considered honouring the restriction, it would be nigh on impossible for him or her to turn their vehicle around, leaving reversing their lorry nearly three miles backwards along a windy road as the only remaining option.

Ultimately this explains why we have to drive very carefully along this road, as regularly lorries patently far to large to drive on the road bear down on us and I have to drive as close to our edge as possible, while avoiding ending up in the deep drainage ditches dug alongside the road, only a foot or so away from each side. How we laugh at the ridiculousness of the sign at these stimulating moments…

But roadside stupidity isn’t confined to France. Years ago, I was driving on a hill road between Wakefield and Huddersfield and came to a small roundabout at what in the past had probably been a crossroads. The roundabout was grassed and rose gently towards the centre, like a small mound. Two signs had been placed near its peak. Both simply read, ‘Diversion’. One pointed to the right, the other to the left, creating a completely uninformative diversion lottery. There had been no signs about roadworks, or other obstructions coming up to this point – presumably there should have been two  - and as it happens none after as I continued on my way, in that sense ignoring the signs. I particularly couldn’t help wondering about the person who set up the second sign. The first was hardly helpful, or particularly informative but surely the person putting up the second one must have realised the implications of the conundrum they were setting up for me and my fellow drivers? Too much to explain to an unsympathetic supervisor perhaps…

Meanwhile, back in France, a country famous for encouraging cycling, they have been setting aside a section of several roads, on both sides, for cyclists. These areas demarcated by thick broken white lines marked along the road, with regular images of cycles painted in the lanes themselves. All very good and righteous of course – at least in theory. The only problem is that the space left between them available for cars and other vehicles on some of the roads where this has been done, is far too narrow for them to pass without colliding virtually head-on.  Another windy road near us is an example. Drivers have to decide between avoiding the cycle lane areas and facing the danger of colliding with a vehicle doing the same thing coming the other way, as we both drive around a curve in the road, or drive in the cycle lane in which cyclists assume themselves free of danger from vehicles and where, by doing so, we might be penalised by the authorities. I also feel that the massive cost, time and effort it took to set out these impractical zones would have been better spent on setting up regular signs reminding drivers to watch out for cyclists. (Though arguably there should be also be signs reminding cyclists to wear bright clothing and helmets – I don’t know if it’s the same in the UK these days but it seems half the cyclists in France don’t consider a journey without wearing the dullest colour clothing on the dullest coloured bikes, usually without a helmet.)

I find the French word for pavement quite sweet – it’s ‘trottoir’ – making is sound as though you should trot along them! However, certainly in our neck of the woods, they only have a cursory relationship with pavements. In many cases they are too narrow to walk along except by experienced tightrope walkers. The ‘trottoir’ in our street, close to the centre of the town, is far too narrow in both directions for a wheelchair. Speaking of wheelchairs, our post office – ‘La Poste’ – is near the end of our street, the last in a series of buildings and with the entrance in the corner nearest the road. It faces along the street, rather than into the road. The entrance is above the level of the pavement and so for the benefit of customers it can be accessed from one direction by two steps and from the other by an adjoining ramp. Given that the two steps face the centre of the town, able-bodied customers predominantly use them. However as the ‘trottoir’ to the side of the ramp is so narrow, wheelchair users – for whom presumably the ramp was mainly constructed? – would either have to lean precariously, half on the pavement, half on the road, to get around it or dismount the pavement, move along the road (in the potential face of oncoming traffic) and then remount having done so, presumably at the same time swinging their chair around to face the beginning of the ramp.

Having finally made it to this point by the way, they would then find that the ramp is so steep they would either need to have the strength of a paralympian to haul themselves up it, or a fit and healthy companion to push them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

A series of stories, sketches and poems to support the NC requirements for learning spelling in a creative way. Also editions for KS1 and LKS2.

Two is a Crowd, by Cath Howe, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

Cath Howe writes absolutely wonderful middle-grade stories set in our real world and populated by ordinary children and families faced with extraordinary, relatable, challenges. Her sixth book of this kind published by Nosy Crow is Two is a Crowd, served-up in short chapters, with stylish bold illustrations by Miguel Bustos that really show the story's emotions being played out. 

    Hattie tells her own story, covering the end of her primary school time, summer holiday, and her start at secondary school. We first meet a Hattie who is loud, funny, confident, and sure of her long-term best friend, Amber. But then something very big happens. Hattie's family one ordinary evening suddenly face having to take in Mum's dead friend's daughter Seren for the foreseeable future. The room which was to become Hattie's is now Seren's, and family life focuses on the newcomer. Hattie had always thought she wanted a sister, but Seren is unrewarding to try and chat with. She's 'blank'. And she's allowed to have and do things that Hattie isn't. Everything is unfair, and that feeling of the world being against her escalates for Hattie when she and Seren begin secondary school. Shockingly, Amber no longer wants to be Hattie's friend. Hattie's behaviour is getting her labelled as 'a bad influence'. We feel her pain and her determination, even as we smile at her bhaviour, and oh, we long for her to regain her place in her family and in school! 

    All comes good in an exciting finale up on a roof when Seren finally shows herself (and her bedroom wall under a hanging) to be very far from blank.

    Brilliantly written, this is a fast-moving easy read that delivers at a profound level. Highly recommended. 

Unleash Your Creative Monster (AGAIN) by Andy Jones, illustrations by Olaf Falafel, review by Lynda Waterhouse

 

This post includes a review of a book that I first posted three years ago. I’m partly reposting it because I’m short of time but, mainly, I’m reposting it because of a recent encounter with some young writers, aged 9 and 8 years. They are daughters of our friends, very keen readers, and they love writing. They had both brought a story to read to us as part of their trip. I was put on the spot and asked to give them some writing tips.

PHEW! This book sprang to mind and I raced to my bookshelf and brought it out.

The book is packed full of advice, tips and writing prompts FOR EVERYONE. As the blurb states ‘this book contains essential skills for storytellers, the secret weapons of successful authors, and over 50 prompts and exercises to inspire not only young writers but old and gnarled ones like me too’.

There are four sections: Training your creative monster, Monster mistakes, When your monster gets stuck, and Feeding your creative monster. You don’t have to follow it from section to section, it’s designed for dipping into.

The first exercise invites you to create your own creative monster and give it a name. It suggests keeping your name secret because the mystery – that secret bond between writer and monster - is part of its power. Some monsters do reveal their names as Olaf’s illustrations point out and that is OK too.

On every page, Olaf Falafel’s illustrations make you smile, illuminate the concepts, and at times reassure you. For instance, the scary wind–up monkey says, ‘I wouldn’t say I’m evil but I do eat beans straight from the tin’.

It is not patronising or dull. The muses are mentioned, rich vocabulary is used, and grammar and literary concepts are explained with clarity and warmth. You will find an explanation of Chekhov’s gun and quotes from Stephen King. It shows you how to create FSPs (Fantastic Story Possibilities) and to play with metaphors but to mix them at your peril! It encourages you to make mistakes, because at least you are making something, and to write fearlessly. There is advice on how to start and run your own writers’ group and support on drafting and editing your work. The editing checklist is brilliant. The pages of advice on adding rhythm and variety to your sentences are the best!

The book emphasises the importance of developing your own style and reminds us that, ‘There are a lot of so-called “rules” for writing, but rules are like eggs. Not everyone likes them, some are bad, and all of them were made to be broken’.

A creative monster should visit every school in the land and deliver a copy to each classroom, but only after making the head teacher say ‘bum glue’ three times in morning assembly.

ISBN 978-1-4063-9662-1

www.walker.co.uk

WHY SCARY STORIES ARE GOOD FOR KIDS by Sharon Tregenza

As I kid I loved to read them as an adult I love to write them - scary stories. Give me ghosts and witches, throw in the odd zombie or vampire and a haunted house - the thrill is always there.

I think they build resilience in children. Young readers watch as people their age overcome fear and survive danger in the best possible way. Most kid's horror will also add a strong dose of humour to release tension. The laugh after the scare shows kids that "that was frightening - but I'm all right" giving them a sense of achievement.  

Three good scary books that I think accomplish all this and more are...

"Coraline" by Neil Gaimen.

A girl confronts a sinister family and learns to trust her own resourcefulness.

Roald Dahl's "The Witches".

This book turns a frightening threat into an adventure filled with dark comedy and courage.

And, Goosebumps "Welcome to Dead House" by R.L.Stine

Ordinary children conquer their fears in a series of eerie events.

The best scary books respect their young readers. They give the fear shape and bounderies and usually, a victorious ending. Perhaps, by facing monsters and ghouls on the page children will be better prepared to face real concerns and worries. 

www.sharontregenza.com

sharontregenza.co.uk

Members' News August

 August is a month for holidays and heatwaves and new books. 

First off, two new books from Jonathan Emmett

Thursday 6 August: GREAT DINOSAUR MISTAKES, a factual picture book co-written by palaeontologist Adam Smith, illustrated by Stieven Van der Poorten and published by Fox & Ink Books, explores some of the most extraordinary errors early palaeontologists made, and brings past and present versions of each prehistoric creature face to face in a fantastical time-travelling adventure full of fascinating facts.

More information and to buy

Also from Jonathan, coming Thursday 13 August: ONE DOG, TWO DOGS is a count to 20 book full of flaps to lift and pop-up surprises, illustrated by Rob Hodgson and published by Nosy Crow.

 

More information and to buy

Pippa Goodhart's You Choose series of pictures books has sold over two and a half million copies over almost two and a half decades. The sixth in the series, YOU CHOOSE, PARTY TIME, illustrated by Nick Sharratt, published by Puffin, will be released on August 20th. It has lots of choosing to do. Which party theme and invitation? Which games, music, entertainments? Which face paint pattern? Who will be your guests? Which delicious cake to choose? It’s all up to you. There is much to talk about, spot, ponder, and laugh about.

More information and to buy

Next, a non-fiction book for older children. REVOLUTION, by Joan Lennon, illustrated by Teo Georgiev, is published by Templar Books, due out on 27th August.

What does it take to change the world? Sometimes it’s toppling unfair systems and finding new ways to govern that give people a better chance. Sometimes it’s challenging long-held beliefs and finding the courage to think differently.

Sometimes it’s coming up with masterful inventions that transform our everyday lives.

The world we know today has been shaped by exceptional events, ideas and inventions. These are the stories of ordinary people who made the extraordinary happen.

‘Perfect for 8-12-year-olds, this outstanding hardback encourages interested KS2 readers to look beyond dates and leaders and consider why revolutions begin, how they spread, and what they leave behind. Highly recommended.’ (School Reading List)

REVOLUTION is a School reading list title for August. Check out the link.

Finally, not a book, but a fun writing project which was organised with advice from the Scattered Authors. If you find yourself in Cardiff in the last two weeks of August, pop into St David's Centre for the story trail written by myself, Claire Fayers. Details haven't yet been released but the story is based on a Welsh legend of the quest for the oldest creature, and I'll be running some free workshops to go with it, situated in the shopping centre, which will be an interesting experience!

Congratulations to everyone with a book out this month. As always, please give these a shout-out on your social media channels and please send me your news items for the September round-up. 

Manolito and William by Paul May

This week I met Manolito Gafotas for the first time. Manolito is an 8-year-old boy invented by the writer, Elvira Lindo, for a radio show in Spain in the early 1990s. The first book about Manolito, Manolito Gafotas, was published in 1994 and six more followed. The last of these was published in 2002 and then there was a ten year gap before Mejor Manolo arrived in 2012. In those 20 years Manolito grew from 8 to 12 years old, so he managed to grow considerably faster than William Brown, with whom he shares certain characteristics. William grew not at all in 50 years despite the many birthdays he celebrated. 

Both William Brown and Manolito Gafotas have broken out of the world of children's literature to become part of popular culture. Elvira Lindo says in an interview that 'her creation has escaped her control, and even surpassed her.  . . . Manolito is popular culture. It's something collective. The readers already know him better than I do.' The same could be said of William, who just like Manolito has been translated into more than 20 languages and made into films, TV series and radio broadcasts, most notably, in William's case, those BBC adaptations performed by Martin Jarvis. William lives on, still 11 years old, long after the death of his creator. Happily, Manolito's creator is still very much alive.

William Brown's character was enhanced by the illustrations of Thomas Henry, just as was Manolito's by the illustrations of Emilio Urberuaga. Both characters are instantly recognisable from these illustrations but I'm sure that in both cases it's the writing that has made them so famous. William and Manolito are both well-intentioned boys who inadvertently end up in trouble and both are essentially comic creations, but the books have a sharp underlying vein of social commentary which is best appreciated by adults, and this cross-generational appeal must be a huge part of their success.

There are, however, just as many differences as similarities between the William stories and those about Manolito. William's world was an invention of its author. Richmal Crompton's niece, Richmal Ashbee, says: 'William's house was not like anywhere Richmal Crompton had ever lived . . . The greenhouse, stable, morning-room and all the rest were conjured up to meet the passing needs of the Brown family . . . The host of servants in the house, too, came from outside her own experience.' It may be that in these books Richmal Crompton caught something of the essence of a certain kind of English village life as it was between the two world wars, but she was never interested in precise details, or accuracy. The sense that the world of these books never really existed, together with the fact that William never grows old, makes the books seem timeless. That, along with the way that Crompton manages to catch something in William's character that adults recognise in their children and children recognise in themselves - a universal quality of childhood.

It is precisely this that readers all over the world recognise in Manolito Gafotas. I say all over the world, but it seems that Manolito hasn't been as successful in English. Four of the books have been translated, with Manolito becoming Manolito Four-eyes, but from the sample I've read I'm not sure that the slang of a poor barrio in Madrid translates that well into (American) English. The William books have been translated into Spanish and are very popular in Spain, but were heavily censored in the Franco era. 

Unlike William, Manolito comes from a real place, the barrio of Carabanchel in the south of Madrid. In their depiction of a working-class neighbourhood the books have something in common with Eve Garnett's The Family at One-End Street, though this is a very different world. The scene includes drug-addicts, muggers and fights. The kids do stupid things, they are a little wild, they play on the streets, but when their parents call them in for their sausages every evening they quickly head for home. Some of the reviews of the English-language versions (from the USA) were appalled by the bad example they thought the books set for children. The kids argue with their parents and teachers, they cheat (or try to) on school tests, they fight and play games of chicken. They are in fact real kids. And at the heart of the books is a tender description of family life in a tiny apartment on the third floor. 'We don't have cockroaches in our flat,' says Manolito's mother to a neighbour. 'We'd like some, but there's no room for them.'

Manolito's dad is a truck-driver who arrives home late each night. Manolito has a small brother he calls 'El Imbécil'. His mother doesn't think this is funny, and neither do those US reviewers on Amazon even though 'imbécil' has been softened in translation to 'bozo'. Elvira Lindo has strong views on the rewriting of children's books to conform to modern sensibilities. Of 'El Imbécil' she says: 'What the children tell me is that 'El Imbécil' is 'la bomba.' What for some adults was something inexplicable, for children becomes something absolutely natural; they know how to discern very well. They know that it has nothing to do with the intelligence of the character. They understand that it is an insult that has become something else. They have understood everything very well."

Manolito's mother, Catalina, is sharp-tongued, long-suffering and quick-witted. His grandfather, 79 years old in the first book, has prostate trouble and often gets Manolito out of bother. The words with which Manolito introduces him, 'Mi abuelo mola, mola mucho, mola un pegote.' I suspect would be recognised by most Spaniards. They mean, very roughly, 'My grandfather is cool, very cool, incredibly cool.' All of these characters help to make the books entertaining, but it is the character of Manolito himself that has turned him into a cultural icon.

Manolito is a complex character. He is vulnerable. He gets beaten up but he bounces back. He says that before he got the nickname Manolito Gafotas he used to cry a lot. He'd get bullied in the playground by people calling him 'gafotas' (four-eyes) but once he was Manolito Gafotas insulting him was a waste of time. Manolito talks all the time (luckily for the reader). He talks so much he gets sent to the school psychologist. She tells him he can tell her all his problems. He asks if that means everything, from the day he was born, and she foolishly says yes. He fills three exercise books and is very happy to read what he's written. The psychologist tells his mother he doesn't have any trauma, he just talks a lot. They need to listen to him more at home. 'MORE!!!???' says his mother.

Manolito has some crazy ideas and he is very easily led. When his friends suggest playing chicken with approaching cars on the street Manolito stands in front of a truck and thinks he's making it stop with the force of his mind. One day he suddenly decides it would be a great idea to use some coloured marker pens to draw three parallel lines above the bannisters in his apartment block. I know this boy. Elvira Lindo grew up in this barrio and she knows this place and these kids. I admire the way she understands that it isn't the job of children's literature to provide models of good behaviour in the manner of those books presented as Victorian Sunday School prizes. Anyone who spends time on a primary school playground will soon realise that what children actually do and say is very different from what their teachers and parents might want. It's a kind of parallel world that hasn't changed that much since I was a child myself.

When I was teaching there were several moments when well-meaning teachers attempted to introduce 'playground games' on the grounds that children weren't playing them any more. Children are always playing games, it's just that adults seldom recognise them for what they are. It's the children's world and it's often a private one. In Manolito Gafotas the kids know very well that you don't say 'ni puñetera idea' (no bloody idea) in front of the teachers. They say NPI instead, and there are a million other things that children say and do that are hidden from the adults around them. 

The Manolito books are not currently available in English, though you can get second-hand copies and you can read the first book on the Internet Archive if you sign up. But unfortunately the translation is so Americanised that I find it almost impossible to read. Using slang in a children's book is always going to run the risk of making the text sound dated in the future. It seems as if Elvira Lindo avoids this by using a kind of generalised slang rather than the 'slang of the moment' and by adding in very idiosyncratic  'Manolito-isms'. Certainly the books have remained in print in Spain and have been incredibly popular for more than 30 years. The US translation just doesn't really work, and that's a shame. That line about Manolito's grandfather, 'Mi abuelo mola . . .' is translated: 'My grandpa's cool; he's so cool, he's a whole lotta cool.' Manolito often refers to men and women as 'tío' or 'tía', words which, although they really mean 'uncle' and 'aunt' are used extremely commonly in Spain, maybe a bit like we use 'guy', but there is no direct equivalent in English. What certainly doesn't work is to replace them with 'dude' and 'broad'. This all just shows how tricky translation is. But I suspect that the real reason there haven't been further attempts to translate Manolito is just that difficulty of coping with the sensitive issues of the kind that led to the rewriting of Roald Dahl and the Enid Blyton.

Although there is one William story, William and the Nasties, that hasn't been included in collections since 1986, and about which Crompton herself was said to have been uncomfortable, in general the William stories don't seem to have been subject to pressure to rewrite for a modern audience. The censorship of the stories during Franco's rule is interesting though, and I shall find out more about that. Otherwise, publishers here don't seem too bothered about, for instance, William and his mates kidnapping babies and their prams from outside shops. But perhaps that's because babies don't get left outside shops in their prams any more.

The interview with Elvira Lindo is from La Marea 20/11/2024

Richmal Ashbee wrote the introduction to Mary Cadogan's Just William Through the Ages

Revolution! by Joan Lennon

"So, what are you writing these days?" they ask.

"A book for 8 to 12 year-olds about revolutions," I answer.

"STILL?!?!?" they reply.

Yup, it took a while. But now, after all this time, it's finally here.

I was introduced to non-fiction writing for this age group a few years back when I co-wrote two books with Joan Haig: Talking History (150 Years of Speakers and Speeches) pub. 2022, and Great Minds (2500 Years of Thinkers and Philosophy) pub. 2023. 

I was smitten. Revolution! followed. (Eventually.)

Here's a bit of a blurb:

What does it take to change the world?

Sometimes it’s toppling systems and finding new ways to govern that give people a better chance.

Sometimes it’s challenging long-held beliefs and finding the courage to think differently.

Sometimes it’s coming up with ingenious inventions that transform our everyday lives.

The world we know today has been shaped by exceptional events, ideas and inventions. Revolution! tells the stories of ordinary people who made the extraordinary happen.

Different kinds of revolutions. Different stories about change.

One of the things I love about this kind of non-fiction writing is getting to be a sort of serial monogamist. Each chapter looks at a different revolution, so with each chapter, I'd plunge in head-first, have a blast splashing about, send a tidal wave over the paper. This is FASCINATING! I'd like to write a whole book about this! Did you know...? But of course I only have four pages + illustrations + leaving enough space for translations. Oh well. 

Cutting words. Cutting words. Cutting words...

And then, I got to do it all over again with a completely different chapter and a completely different revolution. Yahoo! Sploosh! WOW! I could spend a lifetime studying this!

Twelve chapters, looking at three different sorts of revolution. That's twelve times I got to immerse myself, not counting twelve more in the Other Revolutions pages (a kind of 'if you liked those, how about these?' spread for each section).

One of the parts I particularly enjoyed writing were the slightly sideways questions at the end of each chapter. Questions like:

What use is music in a revolution?

Computers are here to stay. As long as mine works, why think about it?

Might India, Pakistan and Bangladesh reunite some day?

What makes something truly green?

I would try to answer in a way that might lead the reader to think again, and to ask MORE questions. 

And that was always the take home message.

Revolution! written by Joan Lennon, illustrated by Teo Georgiev, published by Templar Books, due out 27 August 2026.

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

Our parents before we knew them - by Sue Purkiss

 By now, my new book, An Ordinary War, should be available on Amazon, and fear not, I'll be writing all about it in a post later this month. It is inspired by my father's experiences as a prisoner of war for five years, after being captured on the way to Dunkirk.

But today, I'm writing not about him, but about my mother.

We've recently had a room refurbished. It's in the oldest part of the house, and dates from several hundred years ago, when this was a one-up one-down cottage or farmhouse. Since we moved in, over forty years ago, this room has had very little done to it. The walls were covered with ancient woodchip, which had been patched up and was now, in places, unattached to the crumbling plaster. The not-so-old chipboard floor was crumbling into large holes in places, so you had to be careful not to turn your ankle - only the carpet was holding it together.

So, finally, its day has come. It's been replastered and refloored, it's got smart new skirting boards and lights - even fancy new sockets with USB points. we've painted it in pretty colours, and once the carpet's down, it'll be ready to go. 

At the moment it's an empty space. But soon, other furniture will go into it, including a carved oak chest from another bedroom. I was explaining this a couple of weeks ago to my daughter and son-in-law, and we went to look at the chest. As we discussed this and various other furniture moves, Katie noticed an old embroidered fire screen which came from my parents' house. We hadn't used it for its original purpose because we had a mesh and wrought iron one from my parents-in-laws' house, which was really more practical.

Katie was admiring the embroidered screen - as you can see, it is very pretty. Then she had a brilliant idea. Why not make it into a picture, she said, and hang it in the 'new' room? So she and Chris took it away, and brought it back a week later, all ready to hang. He'd cut off the legs, and sanded and oiled the frame. And as he'd done so, he'd noticed an inscription, scartched into the frame. It said, CPL L Clarke 1943. This was my mother, Lily Clarke. During the war, she was a nurse with the WAAF, the Women's Auxiliary Air Force: the women's branch of the RAF.

I hadn't been sure who had embroidered the firescreen. I'd rather thought it was Auntie Ada, an old friend of Mum's, who had been a sort of a mother substitute to Mum (whose own mother had been somewhat deficient in the nurturing department), and who I knew to have given Mum lots of embroidered tablecloths and the like. But clearly, Mum had made it herself. And she'd done it during the war. 

Photo by Chris Davies

She was stationed on various bases in Lincolnshire, and she got to know a farmer and his wife, Mr and Mrs Thorpe. I think Mrs Thorpe was another substitute mother figure: she and Frank were very kind to Mum, and they stayed in touch after the war. (In fact oddly, with a nice little touch of circularity, the old carved chest, which we'd gone to look at when Katie spotted the firescreen, was left to Mum by the Thorpes.) Perhaps Mum worked on the firescreen when she was staying with the Thorpes: I couldn't really imagine her doing it in the hurly burly of an airforce base, with constant emergencies and admissions to the hospital.

Dad didn't talk much about his experiences as a POW, and Mum didn't talk much about her experiences in the WAAF. She reminisced occasionally about the different bases she'd been on, and she had a few photos - and she stayed in touch with one of the nurses she'd served with, who in fact was one of my godmothers. But you never got a sense of what day-to-day life was like, what it felt like to be in that situation. Probably, sadly, I just didn't ask the right questions.

But this little detail - her name scratched proudly onto the frame of this picture which she'd embroidered so painstakingly - somehow has drawn her closer to me. Our relationship wasn't always easy. Probably thanks largely to her own mother, she didn't find it easy to show affection. She poured it into the things she made for myself and my sister: dresses she sewed, cardigans she knitted - once, even, beautiful tweed suits that she went on an evening course to learn how to tailor. She loved making things and growing things. 

Now, when I look at the picture, I will imagine her working on it as the war raged and planes circled above the flat Lincolnshire countryside - and it will remind me of her.

A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN by Sheena Wilkinson

I've written on here before about the shift from living alone (for 24 years) to living with a husband, step child and two dogs, and the impact that has had on my writing from a purely practical point of view.

view from the desk (if I turn round)

When I first moved into this house, the only place for me to work was the dining room. I wrote  at the  table, and when we needed something bigger than the kitchen table to eat at --  if we had more than two people for dinner -- I could magically twitch my nose, shove all my writing paraphernalia into a cupboard, whip out a tablecloth and -- ta-da! -- the room became a dining room again. 

the old set up

It worked for a while. I was proud of my ability to compromise. It made sense to have a dual-purpose room. It was, spoilt, first-world and middle-class of me to complain that I didn't really have my own writing space. We wouldn't be staying here forever, and I looked forward to moving into a house where I could prioritise a room of my own once again. I would be happy with a tiny box, just so long as it didn't have to be anything BUT a study. And we don't entertain much, so the occasions when I had to transform the room back into a dining room were infrequent. 

too many chairs but nowhere to sit!

And yet. The room never felt right. The table was too big and invariably ended up in a mess, which I hated because I like order. There was an armchair but I never sat in it because the room was so dominated by the table that it never felt like somewhere to relax. And when we did use it as a dining room I felt that all my shoved-into-a-cupboard writing was judging me. As for that move -- well, it's still on the horizon, but we know now that, for various reasons, we are here for the duration.

It was time to transform this dual-purpose room. Out with the table -- it became the kitchen table, and the kitchen table found a new home. One of the sofas was moved into the room-formerly-known-as-the-dining-room. Most excitingly, for the first time in my life, I bought a brand-new, very lovely, solid oak desk. 

my lovely new desk

I now have a proper room of my own. It felt selfish, in a way, to claim this whole space, which is much bigger than I need, but in fact, rendering the room single-purpose has actually made it more flexible. I now have a comfy place to sit and read. When my husband is watching the racing on TV I have somewhere to go that isn't the kitchen. I can entertain my friends here, or knit and listen to podcasts, or simply read. 

somewhere to sit and read 

Has it improved my writing? Well, only time will tell, but it certainly hasn't hurt it. 

tiny bookcase -- £15 in a charity shop 

REMEMBERING A SERIOUS GAME By Penny Dolan

The academic year might be over but schools are, behind the gates, still working.
Computers & IT systems need attention, Classrooms, corridors and spaces must be cleaned, cupboards tidied, stationery re-ordered, art & craft materials topped up and library stock and book-boxes sorted out for the year ahead. All the essential practical tasks.

And the ‘niggly’ tidying has to happen too: all those random items that need to be stored, shifted or even 'moved onwards'. A bags of spare socks, mostly odd? Coloured pages magazines, with the best images removed? Tangled sports day ribbons or unwanted certificates? Irrelevant stickers? Unclaimed papier-mache sculptures? A child's gift too sentimental to take home? Oh well . . .

Old material can have an emotional weight that persists, like the old printed paper file that has been getting one last long look this week. Time for tidying over the summer here, too. Inside is a generous collection of my own particularly 'favourite poems', as once used on primary school visits. At the back, among my 'poetry info' crib sheets, was a wonderfully inspirational quote.

 The words came from the poet Pie Corbett, who has been a teacher, headteacher, lecturer & Ofsted Inspector, as well as a vocal critic of the government’s approach to testing in schools. His popular ‘Talk for Writing’ teacher training programmes influenced many schools and teachers, and he is the author of over two hundred books.

The quote I collected came from one of his earliest books: ‘Catapults & Kingfishers: Teaching Poetry In Primary Schools' which was a useful ‘how to’ book, full of ideas, poetic forms that children can enjoy and language games, and one that I worked with many times. What was clear was that, though Pie enjoyed the fun that went with writing poetry as an activity, he was also very sure about what he wanted children to experience during creative writing sessions. He did not want rote teaching or to see his advice become dull prescription. Nor did he want a silly sentimental approach. He wanted the children to feel they could play with language, that words were theirs to own and use.

What Pie Corbett wrote was this:

A SERIOUS GAME

“It is never easy to say what it is that creates an atmosphere where children write creatively, (where there is) an enjoyment of what each individual has to offer, a love of words, a rich and exciting use of language, an encouraging attitude so that children start to change their self-image, to feel that they can do it. Above all it is probably the ability of the teacher to turn the whole activity into a serious game. A game that is both fun and fulfilling. This will go a long way towards developing a love of writing and enhancing our children’s lives with a clearer expression of the true nature of themselves and their world.”

When I found this quote, printed ready for some long-ago INSET sessions, I paused in my tidying, sorting and shredding and thought for a while.

A SERIOUS GAME?

Words needed not only for the children? Maybe a reminder to me that, even in this summer’s exhausting heat, writing can be more than a trudge. A hint of playfulness, a touch of the serious game might make a more useful approach to my own writing projects. Think on't, Penny. A game of words, but a serious game indeed.

Meanwhile: Researching this post led me to Children'sPoetrySummit.com, a current, useful site about UK poetry for children, but which is linked to the work of Pie Corbett and Brian Moses and writing in schools. https://childrenspoetrysummit.com/

In particular, I'd recommend finding the page Fire Lit Eyes: Running a School Writing Club by Brian Moses for a powerful but nostalgic description of how they worked with children in schools back, as they say, 'in the day'. Seriously!

Penny Dolan 

July 2026