Books and Adventures Review of the Year

As we soak in the warm bath of another festive lull, it seems a great time to review a busy first year on the blog at Books and Adventures.

We got started in February with an ABCTales/AbracaDABra Radio award for my children’s story Shark with the Mind of a Rabbit. The story had a dual origin in reading sessions with Volunteer Reading Help and old university jokes about a lecturer who we had cast as a wicked witch...

Then came the interviews – and our first celebrity interviewee was a Teletubby, no less...Nikky Smedley joined me to discuss her storytelling and dance production The Tell Woman in March.

April saw the Annual General Meeting of the British branch of IBBY, where I met Mick Inkpen of Kipper fame. During my time with Volunteer Reading Help, I saw a child go from tearing books up on sight to vowing to write his own...Mick’s Anything Cuddly Will Do was a key book in making that transition.

In May I wrote my first theatre review for Claire Massey’s great blog, The Fairy Tale Cupboard. Claire, who edits New Fairy Tales, also pointed me to one of my favourite events of the year, Ignite 2010.

July was the highlight of the literacy calendar for me - I was privileged to speak at the House of Commons on behalf of Volunteer Reading Help, the incredible English charity which helps children develop a lifelong love of reading.

In the same month, I read the first of the late Patricia Wrightson’s Wirrun books, which led on to an interview with Patricia’s publisher Mark Macleod and a series of features on these important, controversial and underrated pieces of fantasy writing. Huge thanks to Judith Ridge for putting me on to this great writer.

The Song of Wirrun, and Nnedi Okorafor’s pitch-perfect novel Zahrah the Windseeker, were my favourite reads of the year. (To be honest, I’m almost scared to read anything else by Nnedi because that first book was so perfect!).

The latter part of the year saw Books and Adventures go on a ‘world tour of literacy support’ with NGOs and charities from San Francisco to Sydney and beyond. Starting with Reading Partners and Reach Out and Read in the USA, we moved on to South Africa’s help2read, and then Rhonda Brain’s inspirational Paint the Town Read scheme in Australia.
 

In November, I was foolhardy enough to participate in, and complete, the 50,000-word challenge of NaNoWriMo, although the resulting text (written to a topic determined at random by fellow writers) will now be broken up to be re-used in an entirely different way!

Still, Chris Angotti, who runs the Young Writers’ Program for Nano, was kind enough to grant an interview during his busiest month of the year –you can find what he had to say about enthusing and supporting young writers here.


Roland Pietsch

Other highlights from the year’s interviews included: Stories from the Web, Edgardo Zaghini of Outside In, storyteller and psychologist Steve Killick, philanthropy guru Mike Dickson, Elena Schmitz of Wales' Young People's Writing Squads, and an old colleague turned pirate historian, Roland Pietsch. Some of these went on to provide useful fodder for Zoe Toft’s directory of book charities at Playing By the Book.

Amid all this frantic reading, writing and blogging, there was a little time for some running, too. Getting bitten by that bug has led me to make some dumb commitments, like signing up to run a 10k in the immediate aftermath of Christmas. (Assuming we don’t get snowed off, I’ll be the guy at the back of the field, with turkey and sprouts visibly bouncing up and down in a still-swollen belly!).

Once post-Christmas recovery has completed, there’ll be a lot more Books and Adventures to come in 2011...I’m looking forward to more interviews from around the world, including YA author Claire Dopson, and guest bloggers including storyteller Eric Maddern. There’s also some big travel plans on the horizon, so hopefully I’ll be delivering some front-line reports from foreign climes along the way!

Wishing you all the best for the season...see you in 2011!

Matt

PS...How pleased was I to see flying sharks in Doctor Who???

Festive sneak preview

Especially given the weather...I couldn't resist a festive sneak preview...

*

Winter wasn’t right this year.

It seemed normal enough in the city of London. The weather was cold, the streets were full of shoppers, and there were Christmas songs on the TV and Radio. School finished and the holidays started. Children played in the park, wrapped up in coats and hats and thick woollen scarves.

But winter wasn’t right this year. And only Stella knew it.

Stella’s parents were in the kitchen having breakfast. Dad served the coffee and peeked over Mum’s shoulder at the newspaper.

‘I see there’s a new exhibition on at the Modern Art Gallery,’ he said.

‘Mum,’ said Stella.

‘We could go and see it after we take Stella to the theatre,’ said Mum.

‘Dad,’ said Stella.

‘That would be nice,’ said Dad. ‘I’m just so excited about seeing Barry Hercules! They say it’s the greatest magic show ever!’

‘OI!’ shouted Stella.

‘What?’ said her parents.

‘Come and look at the snow,’ Stella said. ‘It’s…weird.’

*

Stella and her parents stood in the doorway looking out at the street. The sky was thick with black clouds and the cars had almost disappeared underneath a deep sooty layer of snow.

Stella looked at her parents.

‘Well?’ she said.

They looked at her.

‘Black snow?’ she said.

Dad reached down and picked up a handful.

‘Looks pretty normal to me,’ he said. He made a snowball and threw it at Stella.

It exploded with a PLOOMPH on her coat. It left an oily stain.

‘Look!’ said Stella. ‘Look at my coat!’

Mum reached out and put her hand on Stella’s forehead. ‘Are you getting a temperature, darling?’

‘It’s black snow!’ Stella said again.

‘I think she’s overexcited,’ said Mum. ‘With the trip and all.’

‘Probably,’ said Dad. ‘Come on, Stel, let’s have some breakfast. Plenty of time for excitement later.’

Stella scowled as her parents led her back in doors.

Soon the family would be off on their special trip to the theatre.

And by the end of the night, Stella’s parents would disappear from the face of the Earth.

*

Merry Christmas!!! Matt

The Lesson of League Tables

I’m sure many UK readers will have seen the news today about the primary school league tables, whose results have just been published.

Angela Harrison of the BBC reports that almost 1 in 10 of schools with validated and published results failed to meet minimum standards in the SATs. But how many of these schools will be located in the most challenged areas of this country, where pupils and parents alike need support and encouragement, rather than teachers bound to a regime of relentless formal assessment?

Teaching in a London school where a high percentage of pupils had English as an Additional Language, I was incredibly frustrated by the box-ticking mentality, especially in literacy.

Such an attitude encourages teaching to the test rather than a love of reading and writing. The best teachers in the world will find themselves sitting with an “underperforming” student on the day results are due in, thinking, “Just let me tick one more box so I can move you up another sub-level!”

My class made great progress in their literacy skills – but more from an attitude on the part of our year group that we would make learning fun, engaging and creative.

A poetry unit was delivered to rap music – our class gave themselves rap names and learned to freestyle to The 900 Number (“I like / chocolate / I want / CHOCOLATE CAKE!”). I knew we had made an impact when months later one of our pupils, who had little English and numerous educational needs, was still using the rap names with his friends in the playground.

In another class, we created a ‘living comic book’ together, using a whiteboard for each panel of the story of ‘Melon Boy’, a superhero who transformed into a caped, flying cantaloupe when he consumed too much of the fruit in question.

The story was inspired by a boy in our class who had given himself a laughing fit that morning, when he said, ‘My mum says if I eat too much melon, I might just turn into one.’

It was the first time he had ever given himself an attack of the giggles. He couldn’t stop, and the whole class ended up laughing along with him.

By using that moment as a springboard for our literacy lesson, the entire class became enthused and empowered to apply their own creativity to reading and writing.

When the education system mandates ‘teaching to the test’ in the very earliest stages of schooling, which should be about fostering a love of learning...
When teachers have their performance management directly linked to children’s formal levels....
It becomes incredibly difficult for classroom practitioners to be confident, creative and...dare we say it...a little subversive.

With the best will in the world, teachers find themselves ‘playing it safe’ and delivering mediocre education under such a system. Check-boxes will never prioritise the kind of passion for learning which brings together parents, pupils, and teachers – the kind of whole-community commitment which schemes like Paint the Town Read deliver so well in Australia.

It’s frustrating that around the world, so much of the ‘heavy lifting’ of encouragement and enthusiasm in education – work which is actively frustrated by the league table/”No Child Left Behind” mentality – falls to committed, creative, subversive teachers – and to those generous members of the community who commit to schemes like Volunteer Reading Help, Reading Partners, or Paint the Town Read. It’s time for the authorities to rethink their priorities and put a love of learning before league tables.

*

Well, that’s almost it for 2010. Next time on Books and Adventures, our review of the year, along with some sneak previews of features, interviews and guest writers for 2011!

Paint the Town Read - Interview with Rhonda Brain, Part 2

You'll find Part One of this Interview here:

http://booksadventures.blogspot.com/2010/11/paint-town-read-interview-with-rhonda.html

Rhonda Brain, founder of Australia’s Paint the Town Read scheme, now takes the PTTR message to other towns across New South Wales and beyond.

“When I share our scheme with communities, I always remind them that we have been going for a long time, so they shouldn’t be daunted by the amount of things we do....Other towns may use as many or as few of our strategies as they like: they’re a springboard.” 

A number of the communities have adopted the idea of a reading mascot, and most run a Community Reading Day, but as Rhonda puts it, “on the whole, committees take on the concept and run with it! The concept is THE biggest "engenderer" of creative and fun ideas, I have ever come across....PTTR committees are always amazed and excited at how the ideas will flow...”

For example - in Toongabbie, New South Wales, the Portico Plaza shopping centre worked with local authorities at Holroyd City Council this year to run storytelling and craft sessions for children, hosted by local reading mascot Poppy the Possum.

'Poppy the Possum' in Holroyd, NSW encourages the community to 'Paint the Town Read'

 


Diane Hacking of Portico Plaza explains why the staff and management were so keen to get behind the scheme:

“We’re a small neighbourhood centre, and the majority of our shoppers are families. We had no hesitation in helping local children to get a good start, giving them a chance to be better educated, and hopefully to secure a good job later in life. Many of them will grow up to be the teenagers, mothers and fathers who we serve here at Portico Plaza.”

The fun-filled events run by PTTR committees are fuelled by grassroots passion, but based in the latest scholarship on language development.

“There’s a plethora of research now on the brain's need for stimulus for language development, from birth right up to age five,” says Rhonda Brain. “But it’s of little use if parents near hear of it....so, our motto is RESEARCH SAYS IT, WE SPREAD IT! In a creative, fun-filled, celebratory way.”

Rhonda sees a profound impact in this apparently light-hearted approach: “When something is celebrated, it is given value. We create a climate of wanting to read...with the whole community owning the project, from the mayor to the schools, businesses, parents, maternity wards, police, and beyond!”

Rhonda is emphatic that such a project serves the whole community, not just infants:

“We’ve seen the huge impact such a project can have on building social capacity and connectiveness - addressing our 3 basic emotional needs: to have a sense of belonging; a sense of worth and a sense of competency; relationships - not to mention the positive impact it could have on the economy...”

In 2010, PTTR continues to spread from town to town and Rhonda is now lobbying the government of New South Wales to adopt it as an official scheme.

 ‘Whether they do or they don’t, it’s happening, spreading like wildfire from town to town’ she says. ‘I would love to hold a book relay across New South Wales…and then Australia. One day we hope to have Australians celebrating literacy at the same level we celebrate sport – wouldn’t THAT be something!’

Paint the Town Read - Interview with Rhonda Brain, Part 1

Find the latest on Paint the Town REaD at www.paintthetownread.info 
Dr. Matt Finch's new website is at booksadventures.wordpress.com

‘I hope you’re reading to the baby, Mum, ‘cause I don’t want a dumb sister’

When a child in a New South Wales kindergarten met his newborn sister for the first time, he knew just what advice to give his mother.

The young boy wasn’t even in primary school yet, but he had been brought up to value literacy thanks to ‘Paint the Town Read’ (PTTR), an Australian campaign to raise awareness of children’s need for a language-rich environment right from birth.

It seems that no-one does ‘Books and Adventures’ quite like Australians. We’re back down under on the blog this week to talk with Rhonda Brain, a former headteacher from New South Wales who has seen the PTTR scheme, which she devised, take her homeland by storm.

Teaching in Parkes, New South Wales, Rhonda and her team realised that there were a growing number of children coming to kindergarten with delayed language development. Rhonda decided to target every new parent right at source – in the maternity ward!

She continues the story: “I wrote to every school and pre-school in Parkes, asking them to donate an agreed amount to purchase books for every new born, with a message in it from the schools ...and later from the Shire Library.”

Government funding allowed Rhonda to think even bigger. She recruited a team of movers and shakers in childcare and literacy, including teachers, maternity nurses, and the local speech pathologist. With a motto of “We don't want your money but we do want your co-operation!”, the team quickly secured the support of the mayor and other town leaders.

Rhonda explains: “It is wonderful, the town really do have ownership of the scheme, even to the point of being annoyed when TV reports the latest person as coming up with this wonderful idea of reading to your children from a young age.

“We held our launch in August 1996, gave the first baby born after the launch many books and prepared for our first Reading Day, held in 1997. We had many out-of-town guests from educational institutions and from parliament. The mayor held a civic reception for them and our committee and principals. Special education expert Dr Loretta Gircelli spoke at our launch and at our first reading day.”

PTTR activities today fall into three categories: on-going, one-off and annual.

Communities involved in PTTR arrange for books to be given to every child throughout their early years. The first of these on-going gifts is given to every newborn baby by their maternity nurse, complete with a personal message, and is followed by age-appropriate PTTR-designed story booklets, given out at immunization days, antenatal bookings and high school events.

One-off events included the clever appropriation of Y2K media panic to create the Millennium Reading Bug in 2000. This mascot has become increasingly popular, even generating its own fun dance at school socials and PTTR events. (When the Reading Bug laid an egg in 2004, children were encouraged to visit it and read to it just as their parents read to them!).

Along with a human chain of readers stretching more than a kilometre down Parkes Main Street, a 12-hour overnight “readathon”, and other attention-grabbing activities, Rhonda’s team have worked hard to keep literacy in the spotlight across New South Wales. In 2005, a Reading Relay saw a book passed, like the Olympic torch, from town to town across over 60 communities and 5500 kilometres in just two weeks. The message to ‘Paint the Town Read’ travelled by hot air balloon, motorbike, fire engine and even on horseback in a striking celebration of the communities’ dedication to encouraging children’s literacy.

The highlight of the PTTR calendar is the Annual Community Reading Day. Now in its fourteenth year, this event sees schoolteachers rise early to literally ‘paint the town read’, decorating shopfronts and streets throughout the town. Pupils, teachers and local workers all dress up according to a theme, and storytelling events take place in the town’s stores before the local park plays host to a celebratory ceremony that has over 2000 people in attendance. Guest speakers have included sports personalities, writers, government ministers, and even the Governor General of Australia.

Next time on Books and Adventures we’ll follow Rhonda as she takes the message of Paint the Town Read to communities across Australia.

You'll find Part Two of this Interview here:

http://booksadventures.blogspot.com/2010/12/paint-town-read-interview-with-rhonda.html

NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program – Chris Angotti Interview

It’s been hard to miss it this month – in cafés and libraries from Vancouver to Vienna, you’ll have seen them hunched over laptops or notepads. The Internet is resounding with their hopes, dreams…and occasional frustration as they battle on towards a final word count.

Over 250,000 people worldwide are participating in this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which sets contestants the challenge of producing their own novel between 1st and 30th of November.

Among those thousands of dedicated souls are 50,000 under-18s who have signed up for NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program, setting their own word count goal for the month. The Program provides a wide range of resources and support for budding novelists and their classroom teachers – available here.

Chris Angotti, who runs the Young Writers Program for NaNoWriMo’s parent organization, joins us today for an interview on Books and Adventures.

What was the aim of setting up the Young Writers Program at NaNoWriMo? Was it hard to get schools on board initially?
The Young Writers Program was originally set up as a way to support teachers who wanted to implement NaNoWriMo in their classrooms. In the beginning, many of them were participants or friends of participants. So it wasn’t hard to get schools onboard; these folks were already aware of the potential of NaNo. Since then, we’ve done some outreach, but most of our expansion has been through word of mouth, with more and more young writers and educators excited by NaNo every year.

What has been the Program's greatest success to date?
I think our greatest success has been how much we’ve evolved. We’ve gone from a few classrooms to thousands. Our materials have gotten better, and we’re seeing the results of the hard work we’ve put in.

In terms of specific successes, I get those when I ask for stories from our participants. My greatest satisfaction is when I hear about kids—sometimes whole classes—who have gone from writing simple sentences to entire, involved novels. All because of the Young Writers Program.

What else does the YWP teach apart from creative writing skills? How does it affect students’ broader outlook?
I’m very proud of what we do for students’ self-esteem. In our surveys, almost 100% of educators agree that the program has made kids look at themselves as more capable and accomplished. They tell us that their students are ready to take on far more in life than just writing.

In addition, the program teaches time and project management skills—life lessons that are well conveyed through this challenge.

Is there a danger of pupils taking away a message of quantity not quality from the Young Writers’ Program? Are there educational benefits to a ‘quality not quantity’ approach?
We’ve always said that what NaNoWriMo helps with is a first draft. We definitely think it’s important that writers edit and revise their work. By the end of November, students are so attached to their novel that they want to do this. It’s no longer the chore it might be during standard grammar lessons. These young authors are proud of their work, and they want it to shine.

There’s a lot of pressure on teachers to fill an already packed school day with all the curriculum activities demanded by education authorities. How much time should they make for NaNoWriMo each day and why?
It’s really up to the individual teacher to determine how NaNo can work with his or her class. Some teachers simply introduce the challenge, and then students work on it individually at home. Others make it a major part of November, with time spent in class for planning, sharing, and editing. I think it depends most on students’ needs, and nobody knows that better than good teachers.

Have there been any memorable ‘Thank Goodness It’s Over’ parties held by the YWP groups?
We hear about people doing all kinds of stuff: prizes—quills, crowns, certificates—for writers; presenting students with finished copies of their novels; even just eating lots of pizza and celebrating. The TGIO party is an important part of the process—to acknowledge what students have completed and to make a special time to celebrate it.

One of my favorite parties is the one the Washington School for the Deaf throws every year. That’s a great inspiration.

What have been your own experiences as a ‘Wrimo’?
This is actually my first November as YWP Director, and my first year doing NaNoWriMo. So far, I’ve been keeping up the best I can with my word count. It’s not as hard as people think! The support I’ve gotten from the office, and from my local region, has been invaluable. I love it, and I’m happy to be forced to write. I know that even if my book is not perfect (or even close to it), I’ll have accomplished something that most others haven’t.

What are your favourite books?
I like most anything by Fitzgerald or Hemingway. They’re my go-to authors. Two more recent books that I really love are Jim the Boy by Tony Earley and Underworld by Don DeLillo. Each is epic and evocative in its own way—one more simple and restrained, the other sprawling. I’m always reading, though, and have too many favorites to list.

You can find out more about NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program at http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/

Patricia Wrightson, Part 5: Looking To The Future

You can find the first part of this feature here:

http://booksadventures.blogspot.com/2010/10/patricia-wrightson-part-1-song-of.html

We've made it to the fifth and final part of our discussion of Patricia Wrightson, and it's time to look towards the future.

The challenges of Wrightson’s legacy, the power of her storytelling, and the undeniable literary quality of her writing, make it an absolute shame that her books are so hard to get hold of today.

I was lucky that Judith Ridge’s notice of Patricia Wrightson’s death led me to pick up old paperback editions online, and lucky once more that Claire Massey of the Fairy Tale Cupboard led me to Katherine Langrish’s blog, Seven Miles of Steel Thistles.

A post on Seven Miles, ‘Cultural Appropriation and The White Saviour’, addressing Katherine’s own use of Native American myth in her fantasy writing, brings us forward to the 21st century. It pointed me towards the Australian government’s protocols on using Aboriginal culture in literature – a valuable initiative which nonetheless raises further interesting questions about how legal and governmental bodies regulate the imagination!

But ultimately, as Katherine points out: ‘While I find it terribly sad that Wrightson’s books were shunned, I can see also that when so much has been stolen, people are going to feel strongly about ownership of their own stories. Stories are the signature of a culture. And sometimes stories are all you have left.’

I recognise the limits of what we’ve done here at Books and Adventures this month. All I can hope is that, for readers as new to Wrightson as me, these few instalments on the blog have gone beyond the obituaries and given a little more attention to the issues, and existing discussions, surrounding Wrightson’s work.

Let's give the last word to Mark Macleod, who talked to me about the prospects of a reissue for Wrightson’s works:

‘A very few publishers have shown that they are willing to republish Australian classics, but the problem is that the 'classic' presentation they choose has almost no appeal to young readers today, and the sales that result create a self-fulfilling prophecy about the likely level of interest in such writers. Maybe some enthusiast will find ways of making them work in the digital space, by focusing on readers who are not the traditional supporters of literary fiction.’

Next time on Books and Adventures: an interview with Chris Angotti, Director of the Young Writers' Program at NaNoWrimo...