Reading gets us through the tough times...

There’s a great article in today’s Yorkshire Post by Sheena Hastings about how books can give solace in difficult times. It begins by quoting the actress Emma Thompson (Nanny McPhee) who said that Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen ‘helped me from going under.’ Now that’s quite a big statement but it’s one that doesn’t surprise me. Books can comfort, they can heal, they can wrap you up like a warm blanket. Books don’t judge you or dump you or tell you that you are a failure. They do the opposite. They give you hope, they give you courage they give you insights to help you when you are down in the doldrums.

The book itself doesn’t have to be sentimental or an easy read. Often, it’s the titles that have storylines about overcoming all odds that speak most to people. Knowing that someone survived the harshest conditions can fill a dejected reader with inspiration.  A Little Princess (FH Burnett) Once by Morris Gleitzman and Goodnight Mr Tom are perfect examples.

I think poetry has a place here, too. A genuinely depressed person might not have the energy to ready prose but poetry - shorter and sharper - can go straight to the heart.

Here are some of my uplifting titles:

Young Adult:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

The Star of Kazan - Eva Ibbotson

The Princess Bride - William Goldman

Apache - Tanya Landman

The Tenderness of Wolves - Steff Penney

The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants - Ann Brashares

Anne of Green Gables - L M Montgomery

8-12s

Private, Keep Out - Gwen Grant

Cosmic - Frank Cottrell Boyce

Two Weeks with the Queen - Morris Gleitzman

Millions - Frank Cottrell Boyce

Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key - Jack Gantos

Ramona Quimby - Beverley Cleary

Judy Moody - Megan McDonald

The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett

Harry Potter (all) - JK Rowling

Goodnight Mr Tom - Michelle Magorian

The Machine Gunners - Robert Westall

The Robe of Skulls - Vivian French

5-8s

Diary of a Killer Cat - Anne Fine

The Legend of Captain Crow’s Teeth - Eion Colfer

Amber Brown - Paula Danziger

Superfudge - Judy Blume

Dirtie Bertie - Alan McDonald

Picture Books -

The Baker’s cat - Posy Simmonds

The Jolly Postman - Alan and Janet Ahlberg

The Gruffalo - Julia Donaldson

Eat your Peas - Kes Gray

Lost and Found - Oliver Jeffers

Prince Cinders - Babette Cole

What are your comfort reads?

The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler by Gene Kemp

I began teacher training college in 1972. Yikes!  Believe it or not, English wasn’t my main subject, it was Environmental Studies. However, because I was training as a primary school teacher, we all had to do in-depth courses in English and maths.  I remember very early on in the first term one of the lecturers reading us an extract from The Midnight Fox by Betsy Byars to demonstrate how giving a reading should be done. Our task the following week was to choose an extract from any children’s work of fiction and read it out loud to the group because reading out loud to a class, and reading out loud well, was seen as the most valuable thing a teacher could do in the classroom.  I still believe that’s true.

I wish I could remember the extract I chose back then but I can’t. I do remember  standing up in front of my peers and reading, full of confidence, enjoying every moment. I was told to slow down my delivery but other than that I was OK. OK?  Excuse me, let’s have a bit more respect for my Eureka moment please, chaps. OK? I was brilliant!

Reading books to my classes became the thing I loved above all else.  I once found an interview by Micheal Morpurgo, another ex-teacher, and he said the same thing.  Maybe its showmanship. Maybe its that magical moment when you read something from something so well crafted and fast paced and you know that your whole class is gripped. And I mean the whole class, not just the bookworms but the ones who are usually the pains in the neck with the attention span of a gnat. Nothing, nothing beats that connection between a good book, a good reader and a keen audience.

The first class reader that worked for me (I began teaching Y7s) was one I found in the store cupboard called Run for Your Life by David Line.  It was about a young boy called Soldier who witnesses a murder. Only  Woolcott, a reluctant ally, believes him. It’s a nail biting thriller full of narrow escapes and dashes across the bleak Norfolk countryside. The fact that the enemies were Hungarian allowed me to put on a dreadful Eastern European accent.

This was followed by a little light relief with Helen Cresswell’s Bagthorpe Saga then back to war time with The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall.  My class was so engrossed with The Machine Gunners, I used it, appropriately enough, as a weapon. Wind me up, you guys, and no story. It never failed.

In my second teaching post, a middle school for 8-12 year olds near Oxford, I discovered Bernard Ashley’s books. His novel, The Trouble With Donavon Croft, about a 10 year old black boy who was so traumatised in his foster home he became an elective mute, was groundbreaking. Equally as profound was The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler (pictured).  The kids loved the fact that every chapter began with a joke. In fact, the entire book was that perfect combination of humour and pathos. Not only that, it had a perfect twist at the end. Classic.  By the way, while teaching in Oxford I met this guy - a fellow head of English at a nearby school - who was putting a poetry anthology together. What was his name now? Philip… Philip…  Philip Pullman. That’s it.  What a spooky little world we live in.

Another Oxford memory is of reading Judy Blume’s Superfudge and Beverley Cleary’s Ramona Quimby stories in the launderette on Friday evenings. I used to laugh out loud - not recommended in such serious establishments.

In 1981 I moved to Sheffield and, despite my primary school training, ended up in a secondary school. The book I remember from my time there was Sue Townsend’s refreshing and original The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13¾. Loaned to me by a Y10 girl, I used to read it on the bus going into work, tears streaming down my face. Happy days.  Plays always went down well in Sheffield. Willy Russell’s Our Day Out was brilliant for reading round the class and Barry Hines’ The Price of Coal was popular too.

After that, my career became a little bitty. I had children and stopped teaching full time. I did several maternity covers and part-time posts instead. I used The Demon Headmaster by Gillian Cross a few  times because the pupils enjoyed working out the puzzles and Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce always went down well. Towards the end of my teaching career I was even brave enough to try supply teaching. Having a good poetry collection to hand or a short story in my bag helped me get through many rough days in tough schools. A good book is an instant ice breaker.  Anne Fine’s Diary of a Killer Cat was like the horse whisperer for cover lessons. It calmed and soothed and made kids chuckle. Similarly anything by Michael Rosen.  Bellowing Your dad’s fatter than my dad at a class of Y4s is a great attention grabber.

Nika

After posting yesterday’s piece on  Miep Gries I’ve been thinking about bravery. I write about bravery a lot. Nika’s story, ‘What’s Ukrainian for Football’ is about bravery.  In it, Nika re-tells the true story of FC Start, a Ukrainian football team who, in 1942 occupied Kiev, bravely defied the order to lose to the German team, with tragic consequences.  Their bravery inspires Nika herself to be brave; she confronts a team-mate who has been taunting her about being foreign.

Yet bravery isn’t always about fighting and wars. In the book I’m working on at the moment, Tabinda is scared of heading the ball.  It seems such a small thing, doesn’t it, but it’s taken over her life. It not only effects the way she plays, it effects her relationship with her dad. He doesn’t understand why she’s so inconsistent on the field and because she daren’t tell him, everything gets blown out of proportion. Tabinda calls it headerphobia.  People can have phobias - irrational fears - about all sorts of things. I saw a TV programme once where someone had a fear of baked beans. Then there’s Genuphobia (fear of knees) Helminthophobia (worms) Alektorophobia (chickens) Chionophobia (snow). The thing is, no matter how silly these things may seem to other people, to the sufferer it’s real and frightening.

As a writer, I am sometimes asked by journalists, publishers or bloggers to list my favourite things. Books, films, paintings and so on. I always find this difficult, if not impossible. How can I name one painting out of all the amazing works of art that exist, for example? Besides, my answer fluctuates from mood to mood, phase to phase, season to season.

Futility by Wilfred Owen was my poem of choice for a posting I was kindly invited to do recently for Norman Geras’s highly acclaimed  ‘Normblog‘.  I chose it because Wilfred Owen was the first poet I came across at school that I understood and that didn’t bore me witless.  He died in action right at the very end of the Great War aged 25.

Futility

Move him into the sun-

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

*

Think how it wakes the seeds,-

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,

Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth’s sleep at all?