Homework serendipity

I'm not a massive fan of homework for five-year-olds - the poor mites are knackered enough by the end of the week, without having to spend their spare time practicing spelling (not to mention their poor exhausted parents ...) But I eat my words this week.

The very day I'd picked up a leaflet for Greenwich Theatre Festival and seen with a pang that there's a puppet show of The Velveteen Rabbit, Little A came home with a project to find a story about toys, and draw a character from it.

The Velveteen Rabbit is one of my favourite children's books, but Little A has never been interested, which made me sad. This Friday, though, all because of homework, we spent a happy hour curled up on the sofa under a fleecy blanket, reading the story of the rabbit who was loved so much by his boy that he became Real. Little A clutched her own beloved toy rabbit, who peeked over the edge of the book and is surely destined to be hopping through meadows herself one day.

Happy hoppy happy.

PS also discovered through homework this week The Magic Paint Brush by Julia Donaldson. She is a complete genius.

Appy ever after

That's it. My work is officially done. I've been replaced by an iphone.

As I write this, little a is having her bedtime story read to her not by a doting auntie, fithusband or grandma, but at the touch of a button on the 3-D fairy tale that is nosy crow's Three Little Pigs app.

I haven't even recorded a personalised voiceover, which I believe is the ultra modern act of love from absentee parents.

Is that it, then? have I completely sold out?

We didn't have a television at all when I was growing up, there's a lingering part of me that sees them as the ultimate decadent corruption and I have equally ambivalent feelings towards the computer: lured by the bright entertaining fun of it all but guilty that I don't have to put in much work.

But the pictures in these apps are as charming as any story-book, and in many ways it's a calmer more child-centred experience than me galloping through some hideous pink fairy book with my teeth gritted. Isn't it?

Now all we need is an app that will get out of bed at hideous times of the night to scare off monsters and we'll truly be ready to retire.

Mr Nosy

Don't you love other people's book collections? Especially their children's books: full of old, familiar but forgotten faces, and some new ones that you otherwise would never have found.

We've just had two weeks of blissful quality time, not only with each other but with friends. And with friends, and their children, come a host of new stories. THE GIANT JAM SANDWICH, one of those delights which little a knows and loves from school but we don't have at home. And TIDDLER, a new Julia Donaldson with plenty of opportunities for audience participation (Tiddler? Tiddler? TIDDLER'S LATE!!!) And best of all, the chance to nose around in a friend's childhood library: lots of Miffys we haven't had before, and PIPPIN AND POD what naughty mice.

Now I can't decide whether we should have those books in our library, or keep them as treats when we get to nose around othere people's houses. Because I find books bring you memories - of where you were when you read them, or first read them. So maybe the Giant Jam Sandwich will always evoke a window seat in Lyme Regis for all of us, and that's something I'd love as much as it becoming part of the fabric of little a's childhood.

Truth is scarier than fiction

I've just come back down from comforting little a, too scared to fall asleep. That's not unusual. She has a low fear threshold, my daughter. What is unusual is that tonight her fears were completely founded in reality. Usually, we spend a hearty five minutes bopping imaginary monsters, dragons and storybook burglars on the nose. I can promise her that bad earthquakes don't happen in this country, and it's really unlikely that we'll get hit by lightning. But tonight, when she told me she'd overheard the bigger girls talking about 'scary things' I didn't have the answers. She's starting to be that age where she understands, but doesn't quite. And part of me wants to protect her from every bad thing in the world, from even knowing that there are bad things. But a much bigger part wants her to grow up tough. I want her to be Pippi Longstocking: strong and free and kind (and if at all possible, with a large bag of gold coins ...)

So doesn't she need to know about the bad things then? So that she can learn to stand up to them? But how do I tell her and still let her sleep at night? How do I explain the riots when I don't really understand them or know what I think myself? I found myself telling her we'd be safe because we didn't have trainers, or a shop that sold flatscreen TVs. That we were on the top of a hill and lived on a quiet street. But I knew how tenuous my arguments were, because I've just spent three days watching reports of the weirdest and most arbitrary, unpredictable and, yes, scary, things that people do.

I think a lot about the stories we tell our children. I wonder why we value stories so much. I wonder why, in the attempts to understand the riots, so many seem to feel that if only we could teach every child to read, they would be okay. Is that really true? or is it that reading to your child is an act of love, because it takes time and togetherness, and what all children need most of all is to be loved?

Obviously, I like to tell myself that in reading her stories, I'm not telling her lies about the world, but showing her truths. But part of me thinks I'm just weaving that web of cotton wool even thicker. I'm wrapping us both in the cocoon of a world with cats named Mog and tigers who come to tea, where the goodies and baddies are as easy to tell apart as fairies and witches. And of course it's all middle middle class and a world away from the real baddies who aren't so much bad as bored or jealous or angry.

I do want her to learn the difference. Just maybe not yet.

How to be a Woman

Little a is Daddy Camping. Appropriately enough for Father's Day, fithusband and friend have taken their daughters off to the wild and I am revelling in the guilty pleasure of some me-time. Obviously that doesn't stop me mainly worrying that the weather is terrible and the night was cold and windy and did they take a spare pair of knickers? But I'm also loving the peace, and the Friday night I had out with my amazing girlfriends who inspire and nurture me.

And last night - bliss - an empty house, a bowl of cherries and a bar of chocolate; and curling up under a blanket to read HOW TO BE A WOMAN by Caitlin Moran.

I'm loving this book. The first chapter - in which she talks with hilarious, searing honesty (I work in publishing. I'm allowed to use this phrase. In fact, it's virtually compulsory) about getting her first period - I was thinking: 'Fantastic. I am going to buy a copy of this now, wrap it in tissue and put it in a drawer as a present for little a on acquiring her womanhood'. Then I read chapter two - more hilarity, more searing honesty - which moves on to masturbation. And started to worry about people reading it over my shoulder on the bus. And thinking maybe I'll just leave it in a drawer for little a to find for herself on acquiring her womanhood ...

I am laughing out loud. Which I do very rarely, and almost never with non-fiction. Who am I kidding? I never read non-fiction unless I have to. Maybe because I want to learn something, or escape into beauty, like with WATER LOG by Roger Deakin. But for laughs? That's more Marian Keyes's job.

I'm also fighting a weird compulsion to buy every song I ever remember from the eighties and listen to it: Kate Bush, Fleetwood Mac, Fairground Attraction - all receiving unexpected royalties this weekend. Which makes me think that maybe Caitlin Moran hasn't succeeeded in writing a timeless manual of womanhood but rather, David Nicholls' ONE DAY-like, is simply holding up a very very funny and onthenose mirror to my own experience. Frankly, little a isn't going to get even three quarters of any of the references in this book.

But what I'm mainly wondering is whether she will read the experiences with a similar sense of datedness. Sexism in the workplace? she will wonder - that sounds really odd. Unequal pay - yeah, and didn't they used to send children up chimneys?

And, having spent that fantastic Friday night with some of my favourite women in the world, I'm also thinking that there's this deep rooted problem it's going to take a long time - longer than the 70 years since we got the vote - to shift. There we all were, successful women with our own careers, eleven gorgeous children between us, happy relationships, and every one of us confessing at some point during the evening to some discomfiting sense of unease, of things not being quite right. Frankly, of us not being quite right. And reading HOW TO BE A WOMAN, when I'm not laughing, I'm also trying to work out how to raise little a not so that she's thinking she can be great, but with the straightforward understanding that she is great, and the world is a better place for having her in it.

I think that's what we give our boys, in the main, but don't quite yet give our girls.

It's a generalisation, I know. But all this talk of feminism is. And no more so than the page of articles in The Times yesterday about the oversexualisation of women in the media and the impact it has on developing girls' self esteem. A high profile head teacher is concerned that this is leading to her pupils having eating disorders. Of course, they illustrated the article with pictures of Britney Spears and Rhianna, rather than Lauren Laverne and Jemima Khan. And on the opposing page was a full page ad featuring a beautiful woman wearing nothing more than a man's dinner jacket. It reminded me of the pictures I used to tear out of magazines and put on my wall as a teenager. And I remember reading similar articles then, too. So it seems there's still work to be done.

I went to a top notch all girls' school, with impeccable academic credentials. There, we were pushed not only to get the best A level results and go on to Oxbridge, but also to use our spare time being talented artists and musicians and sportswomen. And a lot of us were. But I also watched so many of those beautiful and talented young women struggle with eating disorders, and depression, as we dressed ourselves in jumble-sale clothes and never washed our hair. This was the eighties. Many of those girls had fathers who owned whole countries. We were surrounded by images of wealth and success, and over-sexualisation of women (remember 'Hello, Boys?' That was then). But we weren't anorexic, or living only on cereal, because we wanted to look like Madonna. It was because it was our way of coping with the pressure to be perfect. The only rebellion, at a boarding school, where we had no other freedom or control, and the only way of showing the world that, actually, we were struggling to be all that, and it would be nice, just once, to hear that we were doing okay, and that someone loved us just the way we were.

And it occurs to me, as I putawashonmakethebedtidythecupboardthatwon'tcloseanymorefinallyoilthatsqueakydoorwriteabloggoforaruncleanthehouseipaymostofthemortgageon all before ten on a Sunday morning, so that I have time to visit bestfriend A and her newborn baby in hospital before I go to see bestfriend B on the complete other side of town, that if I can raise my daughter to do all of that without at the same time beating herself up for not looking like a model and also squeezing in somegardeningputtingthatenormouspileofcleanclothesawayohgodandtheironingthenametapesneedsewingonsortingoutourfinancesandwereallyshouldwriteawill then maybe, just maybe, I'll be going some way to improving the lot of womankind.

Rainy Sunday

It may be unfashionable to admit, but I love a rainy Sunday. Unless you have something exciting on, or are on granny-bashing* duty, it's the perfect excuse not to charge around or go to the park, but stay all cosy at home instead.

If you were to ask me my ideal rainy Sunday activity, it would have to be curling up with a good book and a chocolate cake. That ain't going to happen with little a around (WHY is it that on week days I have to wake her up to say goodbye before I go to work, but on a Sunday she's there on the dot of half six prising my eyelids open and demanding a story?) so my next best is a day of quality time with my daughter, baking and making and generally pretending to be supermum.

Even the early start is kind of a bonus, since by 9 this morning we had finished our book, got a cake in the oven, bread on the rise, and glitter strewn across the kitchen table.

The book was IVY & BEAN, which we discovered thanks to Ottie and The Bea, our delicious local toyshop. We've had it a while, but little a hasn't been interested before. This week, we've been loving it. Two chapters a night, lots of naughtiness, not many pictures, and a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter which had us full of anticipation for the next night's instalment. The only downside is that it's full of references to dollars and sidewalks, which brings me out in a terrible American accent ...

So now we have read our first full length non-picture book cover to cover, and we loved it so much that we spent the day making a house for Ivy and Bean. It all started when little a decided she didn't like having the paper cover round it. The publisher/collector/inner librarian in me yelped at the sacrilege, then galloped downstairs in search of scissors. Our first plan was to make a badge (oh yes I bought a badgemaker! I always wanted one when I was a kid. Now I have one. That's being a grownup for you). But we quickly got diverted by a shoebox and my memory of the hours of fun I had making houses with my sister.

So, while I kneaded bread (supermum!!), little a painted the shoebox and made glitter wallpaper (all her own imagining, I might add). Then we sat down together and cut out furniture and gardens from magazines. I'm not sure that Bean, with her love of worms and danger, would be much impressed by little white company bunnies and bunting, but little a is more of an Ivy at heart.

It was very fun. I like rainy Sundays. Did I say?


Today I made: bread, Focaccia, chocolate fudge cake, flapjacks, roast chicken ... and (helped with) a shoebox house. Tired but happy. Manic baking inspired by breadmaking course at Blackheath Cooks.

*'Granny-bashing' is my dad's phrase. How weird that he's now the granny to be bashed. If you know what I mean ...

Home made fairy tales

Starting to dip our toes into the world of non-fiction: it feels adventurous, far less steeped in nostalgia for me. Though now I've said that, I'm thinking of 'how to make a square egg' and the origami book I read obsessively for a while. Quite probably shouldn't admit that in print if I want to keep any friends at all ...

I'm ashamed to say I don't know who gave little a FAIRY TALE THINGS TO MAKE AND DO for her Birthday (when I left the room they were in a beautiful pile, when I came back the floor was strewn with shiny pink paper and all the (equally pink) presents were out. Self-restraint something to work on, then). But whoever it was, I thank you. It has been neglected for a while, then we suddenly rediscovered it and have been working our way through. It's not quite origami, but I've been loving it.

So far, we've made: fairy tale frogs, double-sided Little Red Riding Hood grandma, complete with hand-woven paper quilt and Wolf on the reverse, Princess and the Pea collage and Cinderella's sparkly shoe.

Now have the problem of what to do with these priceless works of art. They're not easy to dust. Do we have to rent a Saatchi-esque garage to store them and hope there's no unfortunate fire? So here they are, a photograph for posterity.

Next project: little a wants to make an igloo. Hmmm. Serves me right for going all educational and getting a book about Homes Around the World from the library.

I'll let you know how we get on ...

Fancy bows and all!

Ahhhh! a pause in the Princess Poppy phase! And we are delighting in The Elves and the Shoemaker, and The Little Old Lady in the Strawberry patch.

Spring is here, and we are making things and dreaming of sweet red fruit.

Loving it.

Princessism

This Princess Poppy phase is interminable ...

I've been yearning for a bit of Milly Molly Mandy or My Naughty Little Sister - although at a party on Saturday night (40th! can't believe I've started going to 40ths!) a new acquaintance pointed out that they're equally trite and stereotyped. Maybe I just like them for the nostalgia - not just for my own childhood but for some imagined simpler time when things were more straightforward and mothers did proper mothering with baking and scrubbing and hair up in rollers.

It's all just a reaction to a run of late nights working and Guardian front pages about the rotten lot of modern woman. Not to mention the new Princess Poppy I brought home from work - which features gladiator sandals and a routine that Gina Ford would be proud of, all in the first chapter.

Sometimes I wish we'd stop moaning though. Women. Are we never going to be happy? We just put so much pressure on ourselves to do it all and be perfect. Maybe we should start trying to have more fun instead.

Don't want to undermine all those decades of feminism or anything but I'm starting to wonder if it isn't time for a bit of princessism. I'm going to take a leaf out of Poppy's book: adopt the Pollyanna attitude to life. Sulk a little when I don't get what I want, but know that in the end things will turn out my way. Oh, and have attentive adults making sure that they do.

Maybe it's time to move on to Roald Dahl ...

The Little Old Lady in the Strawberry Patch

A little PS post for THE LITTLE OLD LADY IN THE STRAWBERRY PATCH, which we read tonight (along with the ubiquitous PRINCESS POPPY AND TWINKLETOES of course).

Lovely, straightforward storytelling. A favourite from my childhood, the final picture of the little old lady falling asleep clutching the largest strawberry (so tired is she after painting all the strawberries in the strawberry patch) is a part of me.

World Book Night, every night

It's World Book Night and I've been watching as the BBC try to make books feel exciting on television. Sad to say that it's like live theatre or music - it just doesn't translate. So while great books, and even not-so-great books can be adapted into great TV shows or films, people talking about books or reading from them just isn't very watchable.

Although I loved Jackanory, and that storytime at the end of CBeebies is pretty good too. So maybe I'm being unfair on the reading thing.

It's just that books need to be brought to life. When you're reading them yourself, your imagination does it. When someone's reading to you, they need to bring an extra dimension of performance to it, otherwise your imagination switches off and thinks about something more interesting instead.

Well, that's my excuse for making every bedtime story into some kind of one woman show.

Little a is used to it. But I've had complaints from wider audiences: 'you're too loud' being the most frequent. Must remember there's no need to project in a room where there's not even room to swing a cat.

We're still in our Princess Poppy phase, hence quietness on blogging front (there's really only so much I can find to say about Honey and Twinkletoes I'm afraid.) Am feeling really guilty about how quickly I'm reading at the moment. So desperate to get through the things that I'm speed-reading, hardly even pausing to do different accents - and regularly 'forgetting' to open the little tiny envelope on the first page with the twee message about how to stand like a ballerina or measure a horse using your hands (yes, really ...)

We went away for half term. Cunningly didn't pack any Princess Poppy and had a blissful week of Milly Molly Mandy and My Naughty Little Sister. Failed to wean her off though, since we got back it's been relentless princess homilies all the way.

So, my homily for tonight: I love World Book Night, what a great idea - to give away books and spread the love of reading. And isn't that what we all do, by reading to our children? Long may it continue ...

Happy year of the rabbit

We have been reading about dragons recently - because it's Chinese New Year, my supermulticultural daughter tells me.

Apparently, they didn't use knives at lunchtime in school on Thursday. In China, it's bad luck to cut on New Year, because you cut your luck.

So, I am beginning the Year of the Rabbit (very close to little a's heart, her favourite toy is a rabbit) with new knowledge and a new story: Chang the painter, who could not  refuse the Emperor's demand that he paint eyes into his dragons.

Shark in the Dark

The relentless Princess Poppy run may be at an end. Or at least is having a rest, thanks to Shark in the Park. Our neighbours - in fact, possibly the whole street - may be less pleased, since it is apparently essential to yell THERE'S A SHARK IN THE PARK!!!!!! at the absolute top of your lungs on every page.

It's our library choice this week (tomorrow is save our libraries day of action, by the way http://www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk/wordpress/ 
I love libraries. Our local one was a big part of my childhood. I never even considered buying books until I was in my late teens, really. But the idea that you could have six books to take home as often as you liked seemed heaven to me. And I yearn for their collection of international fairy tales, which first introduced me to Baba Yaga. Libraries aren't cool, or particularly exciting, I know. Even the super-refurbished ones have bad carpet and dubious taste in soft furnishings. But through those doors is world upon world of new discoveries and places to go. And it's a safe place to explore that is asking nothing from you in return. That's pretty rare.)

But, as usual, I digress. Shark in the Park is our saviour, thanks to the library. Little a chose it because it was so familiar from nursery. I love that. She's started introducing me to books, as well as the other way round. Brilliant.

Though I do have to question the wisdom of a bedtime story about sharks, given her over-active imagination. And perhaps reading it alongside Little Red Riding Hood - the original version, where the wolf eats grandma, Red, then gets his stomach cut open and filled with stones - wasn't the wisest combination.

Maybe Princess Poppy and her icky world of sweetness and light isn't such a bad thing after all ... at least then the only nightmares will be about drowning in glitter ...



A friend of mine made a sweet defence of Poppy today: she said how nice it was that everyone was making things in the stories. It's true, they do - it's like the children's equivalent of Kirstie's Homemade Home (which I do love). Oh no. I'm going to start dressing in pink soon.

My brain is turning into pink blancmange

Here's a plea to the grandparents: when your heart thrills with the thought of your granddaughter's little face when she sees the fabulously pink and sparkly bag of books you've given her for her birthday, spare a thought for your own poor child.

Did you really spend all that time and money on the very best education so that the fruit of your loins could read, night in, night out, the moralising adventures of Princess Poppy?

Argh, they are so sweet my teeth hurt to read them: Poppy and Saffron and Honey, and their adventures in Honeypot hill (or something, I may be misremembering and I can't bear to look at it again tonight to check).

I admit, I would have loved them when I was little a's age. The illustrations are sweetly pretty, they have engaging little letters in real envelopes at the front, and they do attempt to teach something of the ways of the world.

But do they stand up to being read again and again interminably for the whole of the month of January?

No, they do not.

Although little a's birthday was only on the 20th. That was a week ago. Has it really only been a week? She's threatening to take them on our half term holiday. I fear I will be lacking in new material for this blog for some time to come.

Time to bring in some Horrid Henry or Roald Dahl, because if my brain is turning to pink blancmange, what good can it be doing to the precious daughter?

Slightly Invisible

oooh oooh ooh there's a new Charlie and Lola! a real one - not one of the TV spin-offs but a real proper Lauren Child wrote the story and did the pictures one.

That, together with my sister giving little a the Lauren Child illustrated edition of Pippi Longstocking for Christmas, means we're starting 2011 on a reading high.

True, I may not have been this excited had I not been forced to read Just for You Blue Kangaroo every night for the past three weeks (thank goodness for Twelfth Night and the loft. That's twelfth night the last day of Christmas, not the Shakespeare play. I know I'm middle class, but I'm not that pushy. Yet)

So, back to Slightly Invisible. As you can tell, we're big Charlie & Lola fans in this house. I have a friend who won't read them because of the bad grammar, which gave me about a milisecond's pause for thought before I remembered reading Enid Blyton never did me any harm. I mean I work in publishing now, so my grammar must be fine isn't it?

Little a took the appearance of a new Charlie & Lola in her stride (I love that acceptance that the world is of course filled with magical things that come to you at regular intervals. When does that wear off? How can I get it back?). I think it might be my favourite one yet, but ask me again after I've read it 200 times ... And at the risk of going all publishing on you, it's got much more of a narrative arc than the previous books somehow, less full of cute phrases and a bit more grownup-feeling.

We liked spotting Soren Lorensen hidden in shiny varnish on each page.

Probably not a starter Charlie & Lola, I'd say, but if like us you've grown up with them over the past five years, it's a very very welcome new addition to our collection of favourites.

PS I'd better confess my interest here: I work for a sister company of Orchard books - but this is the first of their books I've knowingly reviewed here. In fact, such a fool am I that I had bought all the previous C&L books before I even realised the original Lauren Childs are published by Orchard. Hey ho, it keeps us all going I guess ...