Floating down to Camelot

I've posted before about how children's non-fiction publishing is almost entirely based around the school curriculum. "Leisure interest" books such as Scary Animals With Teeth!, HUGE trucks, Ahhh!they'resocuuuuuteandfurries and football are exempt, but history and science books, in particular, are published entirely with the curriculum in mind. Tudors are done in year 4, where they do Henry VIII and Rich & Poor in Tudor England, so there are no books on Tudors for 5 year olds or 12 year olds, and nothing for anyone at all on Elizabeth I.

Obviously, this is all very unfortunate for the 6 year old child who conceives a mad, burning enthusiasm for Tudors. It is also very unfortunate for schools and libraries when the curriculum goes and changes, and you find yourself staring at 450 books on Tudors for 9 year olds, when Tudors Aren't Done now, and all everyone wants is books on the Stone Age for 6 year olds.

Yes, the Stone Age. Primary School children now start history at the Stone Age, and work through the Bronze Age and the Iron Age until they finally reach Vikings by 11 - although they do depart from this chronology to do certain other themes and projects along the way. Unfortunately, the Stone Age hasn't been done in school for years, and there are literally NO BOOKS on it. Despite the fact that the new curriculum was announced a good while back, and went live in September, there are still NO BOOKS on it. This is causing considerable angst and despair in all quarters.

Personally, I can't really see what They were thinking to start the children off on the Stone Age. The previous curriculum started them off gently by introducing the concept of the past, and the fact that Things Were Sometimes Different Then, focusing on things like toys, houses, clothes etc.

But now children have to launch straight in to what is, in my opinion, a very hard period to understand. I still remember the shock of going from 19th century history for A-level (which is not at all my favourite, but it's what I was landed with, since apparently only Bad Boys did my preferred choice of the Renaissance) to the Anglo-Saxon invasions in my first term at Oxford. It was so hard to go from a period where documentary evidence abounds, to a period when we know so very little, and have to piece it together from archaeological finds and dubious documentary sources. Each new archaeological find could potentially overturn everything we thought we knew. How on earth do you teach this to 5 year olds?

I've just been reading about a new series of children's books from Scholastic, called Spirit Animals. It is, according to the publisher, "part engrossing book series and part role-playing game." When the children buy the books, they are able to unlock new elements of an online game in which they create a character and go on quests alongside the book characters.

The librarian in me immediately thinks, "Using games to encourage children to read! Great!"

The role-player in me immediately thinks, "Using books to encourage children to play roleplaying games! Great!"

The cynic in me, rather belatedly, thinks, "Money-grabbing marketing ploy. Grump!"

I am, in short, Conflicted and Confused.

According to two separate literacy/reading newsletters I received today, Education Minister Michael Gove has said that all children should have read Great Expectations by the age of 11. Dickens' biographer has lamented that today's children are sadly incapable of carrying out this duty, because they do not possess the necessary attention span, due to being allowed to watch "horrid television programmes."

I have ranted quite a bit on this today, in the expected predictable fashion. So this is me, ranting predictably about it here, too - but I'll spare you the actual content of the rant, since I've said it all before.

The updated Famous Five books appeared on my approvals list last week. Apparently, audience research showed that modern children were put off by the old-fashioned language, so they've gone through the series updating the language, but keeping the plot untouched. (Actually, the press release says that the old-fashioned language was preventing some parents from buying the books for their children, so it's possible that the children themselves were entirely unbothered.) "Mother and father" becomes "mum and dad," "school tunic" becomes "uniform," "house mistress" becomes "teacher," and, "She must be jolly lonely all by herself," now reads, "She must get lonely all by herself." Apparently "no modern slang has been used to replaced the outdated expressions; rather, the goal is to make the books 'timeless.'"

However, they're not timeless. One of the bits I read showed the children being happily waved off on a solo caravan tour. When suspicious people are spotted, no mobile phones are in evidence. There is no internet. Roads are all country lanes with little traffic. The old-fashioned language helps show that this is set in a different age when the rules were different. I actually found it more jarring to have all these things happening in a modern-sounding voice.

When I was 8, I was completely obsessed with the Swallows and Amazons books. Those children wore knickerbockers and spoke in old-fashioned language, but I don't ever remember getting confused. I don't remember if I realised early on that this was written and set in the 30s, or if I just accepted it as a slightly different storybook world, but I certainly didn't need the language updated to love the books. The books weren't for everyone - my best friend never liked them - and perhaps the language was one of the things that put them off, but I still don't see that as a reason to update it.

Books go out of fashion. One decade's must-read book can sink without a trace. I'm in favour of just accepting this. After all, there are thousands of new books around that are written for today's audience, so I just don't see the point in doing a cosmetic updating of some fairly run-of-the-mill adventures from decades ago. I've never been happy with simple retellings of classic stories, either - but I've got to go to work now, so you're spared my rant on that. :-)

(Oh! I can use LJ Scrapbook for the first time in years! It never works at home, but it works just fine at work. This very much supports my conclusion that the LJ login manager I use at home is to blame for everything. Or everything relevant to LJ logins, anyway; I don't think I'll try to blame it for the world economic crisis or the Chile earthquake.)

Anyway, I'll put the behind a cut, since you've all heard me ranting about his before. I just like collecting particularly vexing examples.

( That old thing about sexism in children's books )

I've just been struggling to put together some collections of books for teachers who wanted short and easy stories set in imaginary worlds, and have come to some conclusions. Firstly, magical worlds appear in many stories for the under 5s, without being commented on: they're just stories about princesses and dragons and talking unicorns and the like, little different from stories about talking animals and rabbits in trousers. However, once you get to chapter books and novels for children between about 7 and 11, magic mostly appears in our world. Wizards are encountered in supermarkets, teachers turn out to be mythical beings, ordinary items are enchanted, but all of this is encountered by modern-day children who remain throughout in our world. It's surprisingly hard to find stories for 8 year olds set entirely in magical worlds. The main exceptions are girlie fairy/mermaid/pink glittery unicorn stories - though even those usually involve a modern-day girl getting involved in the magic - or reworkings of fairy tales.

However, once you get to the 500 page epics aimed at young teenagers, the setting is almost always made-up worlds. Sometimes someone from our world find their way into this world in the first chapter, but most of them are set entirely in an imaginary world. They're much closer to the traditions of adult fantasy, where imaginary worlds still rule - no, not exclusively, I know, but scan the fantasy shelves of a book shop, and most are set entirely in made-up worlds.

I wonder why this is. I also wonder why there are so few children's books set in space, and why (stories about knights, dragons or pirates aside) historical novels barely exist at all for the under 9s, except in worthy series of stories written to tie in with National Curriculum topics.

Dear people who publish children's books,

Please would you entertain the possibility that there are already quite enough fairy books in the world. There are, in fact, about 953 different books in which good little girls team up with the glittery Knuckleduster Fairy and her pet kitten Tinkle in order to rescue the Sparkle-Sausage of Pinkness from the naughty goblins, who want to plunge the world into something that isn't very doomy at all, since that would be scary, but into something like the eternal absence of pink. The young readers' sections in libraries across the country have already been overtaken by the creeping advance of pink, with all other colours fading and dying in the face of its advance, and little boys realising for a fact that books aren't for them. Please stop. Please, please stop. There are already enough books out there to keep even the most fairy-mad girl busy until she discovers boys and moves on to something new and original and exciting the 953 slightly thicker pink and glittery books that dominate the section next door. We do not need any more.

Yours,
Me

While reading stories this week at various schools' Book Weeks, I've been trying to keep a tally of the most popular costume choice for when children are told to come as a book character. My probably very unreliable impression is that top characters are:

1. Generic princess. (Of course, each princess might be a very specific one from a book, but they looked pretty generic.)
2. Generic pirate, some of which were definitely Captain Hook
3. Harry Potter (especially popular in Reception, despite the fact that books is aimed at rather older children.)
4. Horrid Henry
5. Disney's Snow White
6. Spiderman
7. Generic skeleton (maybe one of the Funnybones?)
8. Robin Hood
9. Generic knight
10. Little Red Riding Hood

I've been reading a story in which nursery rhyme characters write to an agony aunt to solve their problems, and I've been getting children to guess what the answer might be. This was what came up in today's group of mixed year 3 and 4s (aged 7 to 9)( How do you solve a problem like...? )

Dear publishers,

It is possible to have a story for children aged 6 or 7 that is not about fairies. Yes, yes, I know this is a shocking thing for me to say. I know you are sitting here in your pink fluffy towers, with fairy books strewn around you up to your ears. I know you probably speak in hushed tones of that employee who once suggested publishing a story about a boy, and the terrible fate that befell him. However, if you look back into the past, can you not remember that, once upon a time, stories about boys and adventures and spirited heroines and monsters and suchlike actually existed? Can you not remember a time when the "five to eight" section in bookshops and libraries wasn't a sea a pink?

All I can assume is that a fairy queen has taken over your organisations and has sprinkled you with fairy dust so that you cannot envisage anything other than fairies. Band together, I urge you, and overthrow her influence! The reading futures of millions of children depend on you!

Yours,

Me

Wow! China plans to open 640,000 new libraries over the next 7 years.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/12/content_7772153.htm

Quote of the day on the BBC news magazine:

"I am a member of Appledore library" - Devon teenager asked by New York social workers what street gang she was in.

I think this opens up a whole new world of possibilities in library marketing to teenagers...

EDIT: The above post was made before reading the story behind the quote.

I was having a discussion with someone the other day about the storage of knowledge. He'd been reading something about the huge British Library warehouses required to house "stuff no-one will ever want to read". He said he could accept that some books ought to be kept, but the line needed to be drawn somewhere – celebrity memoirs, or "magazines about stupid interests like the ones they laugh at on Have I Got News For You." There is no way on earth that these things are worth keeping, he said. ( More )

Well, Harry Potter has given me a lovely bruise on the inside of my arm. Quite violent, he was. And intransigent. He was in the form of a large display unit thingy that really didn't want to get into my car and then refused point blank to let itself be erected. It's all pointless, anyway. What's the point of having a dump bin that can hold multiple copies of a book that was snatched out of my hands the moment I entered the library, and we now have no copies of? "You're too late! Ha-ha!" it should read. We just don't have the money to justify buying 50 copies per library, since they'd all be sitting unloved on the shelves after a few weeks. It would be fun if we could. Everyone was talking yesterday about how Morrisons over the road was selling it for 4.99. We could stand in its carpark with placards saying, "Why pay 4.99? You can get it for free over the road" and steal all their customers. Actually, though, I'd rather do a display full of lovely books by Diana Wynne Jones and the like, labelled "Finished HP? A gaping hole in your life? Read these instead!"

No evil sorcerers descended to strike me down, so I guess my security arrangements passed muster.

I personally enrolled some 70 or 80 children in the Big Wild Read yesterday, each child requiring several minutes of happy, enthusiastic explanation. I was shattered by the end of the day. This led to wine. This led to a late night. This means that I think I am going to go back to bed now.

As for the book, I'm not a huge fan of the series, but I still like to read each book as soon as it comes out, so I can join in conversations. I like the books enough to read them eagerly, but not to reread them. No comments here, since this is a spoiler-free post, so all I will say is that I have now finished.

A lot of people seem to assume that fantasy is only for children, and that adults who read it are somehow inferior - escaping reality, refusing to grow up etc. I've complained about this before. However, yesterday, when I was once again struggling to classify some new children's fiction, I started thinking a bit more about the fantasy genre, and, in particular, the different way fantasy is treated in children's and adult books.

( How fantasy is treated in children's and adult books )

One effect of the National Curriculum seems to be that it is next to impossible to get children's non-fiction on curriculum topics that aren't aimed at schools. You can still get children's non-fiction on non-curriculum topics, like football, but subjects like history or science are purely aimed at curriculum use. This was illustrated very clearly today when a teacher asked for a box of books on medieval life, aimed at children between 5 and 9. There were no books at all suitable for this age group, because, in the curriculum, the Middle Ages are "done" by much older children. Conversely, there were hardly any books on Plague and Fire (or "The Great Plaque of London", as the teacher accidentally typed on their request) suitable for 13 year olds, since that's done in year 2 (6 - 7 year olds).

I can understand why publishers do this. They have to make money, after all, and a book that is clearly relevant to the curriculum will get bought by schools and school library services. But it does seem a shame. I remember getting mad keen on Romans when I was 6, and I was seriously obsessed with the English Civil War when I was 10. Whenever I go to a castle, I see dozens of little boys waving swords around, fired up with enthusiasm about knights and castles, but where are the books that will build on their interest? Even if there are books aimed at the right age group, they're written in a schooly way, focusing on some aspects of a period ("Why did Henry VIII marry six times?", for example), and totally neglecting others.

Just about the only non-curriculum history books out there are the Horrible History books. Children do like these, which is great, and they're funny and do contain some good history, but they focus entirely on the "people in the past were weird and quirky and disgusting" theme, to the exclusion of all else. I certainly don't think they would have satisfied my historical enthusiasms when I was young.

From a website of children's work done in libraries:

What will librarians be like in 2150?
- Dead
- They will all be really old and not able to walk
- Robots (this is a very popular answer)
- There will be a hotel next to the library. The librarians will do the night-time entertainment for people in the hotel
- They will wear purple skirts and peach blouses
- They will all be skating around on rollerblades
- They will be like giant jelly babies. When they get hungry, they will eat each other, but they will grow back later
- They will have 7 arms (to carry the books)
- Big, hairy and scary

Well, lunch time is almost over, so back to my training course (which, as you can guess, is on how to use this subscription-only website for children's book reviews and creative writing.)

EDIT (and irrelevant): GRRM fans who aren't members of the relevant GRRM communities might be interested to see this. No, it is not news of the new book, so don't get your hopes up...

I read reading a children's book magazine today, and the editorial was talking about the large ongoing debate about "the death of childhood" (which was kicked off in part by this book,Toxic Childhood, which I have to admit I haven't read.) Towards the end of the editorial, it said something along the lines of "perhaps a too-rushed-through childhood is responsible for the irritating sight of adults in their twenties reading children's books."

( Excuse me? Irritating? )

My first round of storytimes is over. I now have two days to prepare the next event, before starting my next grand island tour on Thursday. I'm working on Saturday this week, so I'm destined for a six day week, unless I can prepare my storytime in record time today, and then have tomorrow off.

The storytimes are aimed at children aged around 4 to 9. I start with some stories on the relevant theme. This can be a bit stressful sometimes. I blithly decide I'll do a storytime called "Rumble in the jungle," for example, and put up all the posters. Then, two days before the storytime, I start looking for stories, and find that all the jungle stories are boring. I then have to be creative, which can lead to arguments with children. "That's not about jungles," they complain, as I pick up my next book. "It's set at the North Pole." "I know," I tell them firmly, "but a monkey appears very briefly on page 95, on holiday from the rainforest, so it still counts." Most, though, get stunned into silence. Maybe they just assume that as I'm a grown-up, I know best. Or maybe, like me, they realise that it's better having an excellent story that doesn't suit the theme, rather than a "boring" one that does.

We then have a game. The game has to be one I can play with 70 children in a large library, or with 2 children in a tiny one. It can't single out individuals, because some of them cry. This is where the conning comes in. I just endlessly recycle the same 3 games - and no-one has ever noticed. They just see the accessories, and don't see the mechanics underneath. Last time, they played a game in which they had to build a silly alien from parts. This time, they're playing a game in which they have to blow up each other's pirate ships. They don't notice that both games are actually just a beetle drive.

And then a craft, which is also challenging, since I need to come up with something that can be done by 70 or 2. It needs to accommodate different ages, and have no more than about 30 seconds of adult intervention required. It really is quite limiting. As with the game, I tend to recycle variants of the same craft, and no-one notices.

Then I need something to give to those children who scribble wildly with a crayon for 2 minutes, then announce "I'm finished. What shall I do now?" half an hour before the end of the storytime. And then it's over. Children go home. I tidy up, breathe a huge sigh of relief... and go on to the next library to do it all over again.

Today is the start of the summer holidays. Today, too, is the start of The Reading Mission, this year's summer reading challenge in libraries. "Can you read six books during the summer holidays?" children are challenged. "If you do, you will get a medal."

The books can be any six books the children like. They can be fiction or non-fiction, easy or hard. No-one will complain if children decide to relax over the holidays by reading easy, non-challenging books. Because children can have totally free choice of books (well, as long as they are borrowed from the library, that is) they see the summer reading as fun. All too easily, reading can become a chore at school, and that can put children off. This way, even the least able reader can get a medal for their reading. For some, it is the first time ever that someone has praised them for an academic subject, and it can change their life.

(I bet you can't tell that I've spent the last few weeks writing press releases on this, writing to heads about this, and generally selling it to anyone I meet ;-) )

Anyway, every year, more and more children on the island take part. Every year, more and more of them rush in on the first day of the holidays to join. As a result, I'm spending all of today in the biggest library, helping to join people. Last year, I joined up 150 children on the first day alone. Each child needs several minutes of attention, because there are quite a few goodies to give to them when they sign up, as well as instructions. Central to the summer reading challenge ethos is that children get the chance to talk to library staff about books, and get listened to, so there's a whole lot of talking going on. I expect to return home tonight utterly exhausted, and with no voice.

But it's worth it. Children love it, and it's good for them, too. If anyone knows any children between 4 and 12, please tell them all about it. (If you know children under 4, they might be able to do it, too. I allow them to join in, on the grounds that you can still love books even if you can't read them, and getting a medal "for books" at 3 could make all the difference to a child's attitude to reading when they start school. However, not all library authorities let under 4s join in. Chances are, they'll have the Bookstart Book Crawl for 0-4s, though, which is similar in principle. It gives a lovely certificate every five library visits.)

While rooting around in a cupboard at work today (only two and half weeks to go until The Big Move - eek!) I found copies of a Rhyme Time leaflet I produced, but was never allowed to distribute, since a certain group complained. The reason they complained? Because the rhyme "Jelly on a plate" failed to promote healthy eating, and the horsey knee-bouncing rhyme might lead someone to bounce their baby too hard and break it.

I have spent the journey home trying to come up with nursery rhymes that do satisfy all these government initiatives for children's work, and that would meet today's stringent health and safety laws. Of course it goes without saying that they would all be non-sexist, non-racist, multicultural etc. etc.

Sadly, government targets are not compatible with a rhyme scheme or a metre (jargon and management speech being far more important than clarity of expression and poetry), but here goes. ( Nursery rhymes for the modern age )