0 Wonder or Despair: What Are We Giving our Kids to Think About? - David Thorpe

This week I was doing an event at our local library, in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, which has just undergone a very nice refit and upgrade. It's always great to see libraries being renovated and improved rather than closed, which happens all too often these days.

For my event I was put in the section containing racks of books for older children and young adults and graphic novels. Casting my eye across them, and having read quite a few, I was struck by the overwhelming mood of many of them: dystopic and preoccupied with doom, gloom, death, hate, angst.

I suddenly felt sorry for children if that was the entirety of their choice of reading matter.

Of course, I am guilty of writing books that probably fall into this category as well, but I suppose what depressed me was seeing that this type of book is mostly what either the librarians or publishers in general think the kids want to read.

Well, maybe they do. But one book stood out amongst all the others as being exceptionally different. I know, because I've read it and it's by one of my favourite – and the country's most celebrated – authors.

It is a book of wonder, that celebrates creativity, being different, and the splendours of the natural world.

It does not follow any particular page-turning plot structure. Nor does it correspond to any particular genre, although I suppose you could call it in the end fantasy or magical realism, but really it's about imagination.

(The author is on record as saying: "When people began to describe me as a magic realist I thought - I'm just me.")

David Almond's My Name is Mina is about a girl who doesn't fit in, who finds that the constrictive pressures of the school system are too much for her huge personality.

It celebrates learning at your own pace, following your instinct, writing, a love of words and language, finding the marvellous in the everyday, and so on.

Above: a page from the book.

At the same time you can feel the anger that Almond has towards the school system and teachers caught within it. No doubt he is drawing upon his own experience of being a teacher for five years.

I should say that any child reading this, who feels a little bit different, will sense validation for their unique perspective on life.

And anyone else, who was ever looked at a bird, or the sky, or a leaf on a tree and just wondered how it came into being, will also find validation for their purposeless gaze.

I have put passages in my books a bit like this, but I have not ever considered writing a whole book like this. It was a revelation to read.

This is not a book that trades upon the existence of a sense of desperation for its page turning qualities. Although it is in part a kind of an us-versus-them story, Mina's reactions to adversity, particularly from her teacher, are always gentle and loving.

The book shows readers another way to be, and that is to its immense credit. It's a book that takes its time even though it is short.

It's interspersed with lots of exercises, called experiments, for children to try, almost like a self-help book.

It takes courage to go against the grain and write a book like this. Too many writers think that they just have to follow the herd or go with publishing trends. It's your own vision that's the most important and that will last beyond such trends.

David Thorpe is the author of clifi YA fantasy Stormteller and the SF dystopia Hybrids.

Detail: Wonder or Despair: What Are We Giving our Kids to Think About? - David Thorpe

0 Diversity in Children´s Books - Maeve Friel

I am sure that everyone reading this is aware that Guardian Teen Books recently celebrated a week focussing on diversity in books for children.

By diversity, they mean “books by and about all kinds of people… boys, girls, all different colours, all different races and religions, all different sexualities and all different disabilities and anything else you can think of – so our books don’t leave anyone out.”

Benjamin Zephaniah whose Terror Kid is the Guardian Teen Book Club choice says:

“I love diversity. I love multiculturalism… It makes Britain´s music interesting. It makes our food interesting. It makes our literature interesting and it makes for a more interesting country …   To me it’s not about black, white, Asian; it’s about literature for everybody.”

And there you have it: the criterion must be the quality of the literature. I see little value in writing or publishing books to satisfy some sort of quota to reflect the percentages of ethnic or racial populations or other minorities.

The Guardian published a list of 50 books chosen to represent all manner of cultural diversity, from the amazing Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman to Oranges in No Man´s Land by Elizabeth Laird.

Here are a few of my favourite books that are outstanding in every way and that also open windows on to different ways of seeing the world.

The Arrival, by Shaun Tan, is a wordless book about the experience of emigration/immigration, following the lonely journey of a man to a new country where everything is different and inexplicable. (He signed my copy when he spoke at a Children´s Books Ireland conference a few years ago and it is one of most treasured possessions.)

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic novel based on her experiences during the cultural and political upheaval of the Iranian revolution after the overthrown of the Shah.  This is a real eye-opener from the first pages showing tiny girls swathed in unfamiliar and unwanted veils in their school playground.

My Dad´s A Birdman, by David Almond, illustrated joyfully and colourfully by Polly Dunbar, is a terrific book about a young girl and her dad who is so overwhelmed with grief that he goes off the rails. It is suffused with love and tenderness and faith in the act of flying as Dad and daughter take part in a madcap and magical contest to sprout wings and fly across the river.  

Wonder by R.J. Palacio is the story of Auggie, a boy with a shocking facial disfigurement who is
starting 5^th grade after years of home schooling: imagine how he is dreading it -  “I won´t describe what I look like. Whatever you´re thinking, it´s probably worse.

I would like to add two more joyful books to the mix:

From Tangerine Books, a wonderful picture book, Larry and Friends,  by Ecuadorian illustrator Carla Torres in collaboration with Belgian/Venezuelan writer Nat Jasper celebrating the modern melting pot that is New York.

Larry, the New York dog, holds a party for all his amazing immigrant friends among them Magpa the pig from Poland who became a tightrope artist, Laila the Iranian entomologist, Edgar the Colombian alligator street musician, Ulises, the Greek cook and  a host of other talented and tolerant newcomers to the city – all apparently based on real people and how they met up.  

The book project was successfully funded by kickstarter – see more about it here.

As you can see, the illustrations are divine - this is Layla, the Iranian entomologist who works at the museum.

And finally, another great classic is The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats (1963), possibly one of the earliest American picture books to feature a young African-American hero – although this is never mentioned in the text. It simply tells the story of a young four year old boy discovering snow in the city for the first time. 

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Detail: Diversity in Children´s Books - Maeve Friel