No. 62 - The Phantom Tollbooth

Hi everyone, me again. 

I hope you're all doing well in lockdown.

Last week I wrote about 7 ways to keep children busy and learning during lockdown , and I hope some of you found this post useful. 

I've been continuing to keep my eyes peeled for other things, and have something else for you today!

Here is the latest newsletter from Caboodle, the National Book Token  people. There's a children's competition  to win a £10 book token and one for every pupil in their class, just by creating a new design for the book token cards! Worth a try! I would have loved this when I was little!

There's also the annual competition to win £5,000 worth of book tokens for your child's school, plus £100 for the child too! Take a look. 

Another thing that I've found is that the Haynes Motor Museum in Somerset has got some really lovely online activities for kids (and big kids!). There are set for KS1 and KS2, and the 'My Car the Superhero' story writing competition caught my eye as a perfect literacy activity for KS2, especially for the boy's who might need a little more encouragement to get reading and writing! The bonus is that if you post your child's entry on social media and tag Haynes Motor Museum you could win a family ticket to the museum when it opens up again! Ideal! 

And talking of motoring... back to this week's book! The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. 

Firstly, what a book! The Phantom Tollbooth is just the right amount of bizarre, surreal and down right weird! Yet, it is strangely logical, and disguises a strong moral tale. It makes no sense, yet makes total sense. Confused yet? Me too! 

I'll give you a quick synopsis. The book is about a boy called Milo, who is living life, but not really experiencing it. He is grumpy about everything, bored by school, and can't seem to find much he enjoys doing, despite having all kinds of toys and games. But when he arrives home to find a tollbooth has been delivered to his bedroom, suddenly life starts getting interesting. He hops in his little electric car, pays his toll and crosses into the Kingdom of Wisdom. 

Here he ventures on to Dictionopolis, through the Valley of Sound, amongst other places, to Digitopolis, to rescue the Princesses Rhyme and Reason and help unite the Kingdom of Wisdom once again. It's a literacy and numeracy based didactic, fantasy adventure story! I told you it was an odd one! 

I'm going to be totally honest here and say I was not very keen on reading this book when I started it. It was wordy, and a map at the start of a book always puts me off a bit. I think it comes from not really being into fantasy all that much, and equating the genre with books like The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula le Guin (which I didn't get on with at all!). So, with some trepidation I opened the book, or selected it (Kindle reading is all have at the moment! Gosh, I miss the library!), and began. 

As I've already said, it was wordy to start with and the action was very fast paced, giving me little time to digest what was going on! However, once Milo settled into his journey things calmed down a bit and I started revelling in the bizarre world Juster had created! 

This book reminded me of lots of different things, of other children's stories, of adult fiction, of pop culture, it has little hints of everything in it. It has often been said that it shares many similarities with Alice in Wonderland, and I can certainly see why! It begins with a bored child, who through either daydreams or magic (i'll let you decide), ventures into another world full of surreal situations and characters. There is also more than a passing resemblance to The Wizard of Oz at occasions. In fact this book reminded me of so many different texts. It obviously has it's roots in classic moral tales, in particular The Pilgrim's Progress, and there is also a likeness to the journeying elements of Tolkein's books. From a magical perspective it reminded me of the Chrestomanci series by Dianna Wynne Jones, of timeslip fiction like Tom's Midnight Garden, and of course The Wizard of Earthsea. It even had hints of the surreal sci-fi classic The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Roald Dahl's creations, and Maurice Sendak's seminal picture book Where the Wild Things Are. I could go on and on! This book, as self-contained and original as it may seem, is a wonderful melting pot of different genres and can be read in so many different ways depending on what you as the reader find within it's pages. 

Something Juster does so very well in this book is puns and word play. The place names, character names and action all have a meaning, hidden or literal. For example, I particularly enjoyed it when Milo, Tock the Watchdog and the Humbug end up flying through the air to an island called Conclusions; they literally jump to Conclusions! This amused me probably more that it should have done, and there are plenty more of these wordy mind games throughout the story to keep you happy! 

But it wasn't just the places that pleased me, the characters were by far my favourite part of this story.  Here are the one's I'd like to meet!

• The Spelling Bee - literally a giant bee, who spells everything he says out loud! 
• The Dodecahedron - a very weird chap with 12 faces, who wouldn't look out of place in an episode of The Mighty Boosh!

•  The lovely Tock - he's a watchdog, so of course, he has a massive clock stuck to his side (see cover picture at the start of this post)!
•  Faintly Macabre, the not-so-wicked Which - She's not a Witch, but a Which! She used to choose which words could be used for what occasions, which ones were spoken, and which ones were written down. Quite an important job really! 
• Kakofonous A. Dischord, Doctor of Dissonance - he's a mad professor who collects sounds, especially weird ones! He asks Milo "Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?" I rest my case!

So, as you can see the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Wisdom are quite something! But underneath all this madness and wordplay there is a valuable tale to be found in this book. It may seem like a pointless romp through a surrealist's dictionary, but in fact it's a essay on education, childhood and learning. Milo begins the story fed up with his life, he doesn't see the point in learning, of going to school, of being taught what he considers to be useless information. He can't see any Rhyme or Reason to it! The Kingdom of Wisdom is a metaphor for Milo's relationship with learning, it's broken, at war with itself. In order to understand education as a whole, as an important activity, Milo must discover and restore both it's Rhyme and it's Reason, which in the story manifest themselves as two beautiful princesses. Once reunited with their Kingdom, the world makes a lot more sense. By the end of his adventures Milo has a greater understanding of why learning is so important, and has had his eyes opened to the joys of the world around him. He appreciates the power of nature, the sounds all around him, he sees merit in being creative, of making things, of using his imagination. Just by looking around his bedroom he can see a hundred things to do; things that he would have ignored before his trip through the Phantom Tollbooth. It is a message of enlightenment at it's best. Totally hidden, yet incredibly potent. 

Thanks for reading, L x

Next up, Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. 

No. 63 - Flour Babies

Hello!
It's taken me a bit longer to get around to writing this post, not because I didn't enjoy the book, but because it's a tricky one to write about. It's hard to put my finger on what made this book special, I just know that it was a brilliant read and took me to places I didn't expect. This week's book is Flour Babies by Anne Fine.

I was pretty sure I'd read a few of Anne Fine's book, I mean she's Anne Fine isn't she! She spawned Mrs Doubtfire! Anyone who grew up in the 90's had to have read her books right? Wrong! It would seem that I had somehow missed out! Having had a little Google of her books I could see some titles that I recognised, but nothing that seemed familiar. I think maybe we had read some of her books at school, but they're often the books that you blank out of your 'read that!' memory, aren't they. So, with this in mind I approached Flour Babies with some caution, interested to see what would have put me off Fine's books when I was young. I can safely say I have no idea! Flour Babies was brilliant!

Flour Babies is an upper middle grade, lower YA novel, about a group of underachieving boys who are given the task of looking after 'flour babies' as a school science experiment. As a plot this intrigued me, and I was keen to find out how these boys looked after their little sacks of flour! Would they treat them as exactly what they were, just bags of flour, or would they find some kind and caring side to them that wanted to nurture these little 'babies'?

Most of the action takes place in the school, and in particular the boy's classroom. Let me tell you a bit about class 4C. The boy's in 4C are the bottom of the bottom, they are grouped together because they are expected to achieve nothing. Half of them don't even bother to come to school everyday! They pick and choose when they turn up, and what lesson's they do! We all remember boy's like that from our own secondary education don't we! I know I do! And we can all recognise our teachers in the long-suffering Mr Cartwright, always picked to take care of that year's 4C. He's the kind of teacher that has been doing it a long time, seen it all before, and knows exactly how to handle these boys. The descriptions and dialogue are perfect! The book opens with a fantastic example of this that took me straight back to school! 

"Mr Cartwright swung his legs to and fro under the desk, and raised his voice over the waves of bad-tempered muttering. 

          'Don't worry if you feel you can't give this your full attention now, 4C,' he said to his new class. 'I'll be delighted to go over it again in your break time.'

          Some of them visibly made a bit of an effort. A few pens were pulled out of a few mouths. One or two of the boys swivelled their heads back from the riveting sight of the janitor painting large white numbers on the dustbins. But, on the whole, the improvement was pitiful. Half of them looked as if they'd left their brains at home. The other half looked as if they didn't have any."

It paints a brilliant picture of the kind of characters we are dealing with, and then of course it makes you consider how these boys are ever going to get their heads around caring for 'flour babies'?

I expected this book to focus on all the boy's experiences of 'flour baby' parenthood, but in fact it focuses on one boy in particular, Simon Martin. Simon appears to be quite high up in the hierarchy of 4C, and is an ungainly, huge, loping teenage boy. His size makes him quite formidable, and it for this reason that he becomes the unlikely hero of this book! Simon takes on the 'flour baby' project with some enthusiasm because he can't wait to burst the sack of flour all over the classroom when the 3 weeks is up! This excitement for the big flour explosion means that he tries really hard to keep his 'flour baby' intact, unlike his mates (one of them even kicks his into the canal!). Unwittingly, big tough Simon falls in love with his little baby shaped bundle, and he struggles to come to terms with the paternal feelings he is experiencing. When teachers start noticing his broodiness they begin to get concerned! And when he starts behaving they fear there must be something really wrong! The education system had lost all faith in the boy's from 4C, and it comes as a shock when one of them begins to reform!

The problem with Simon is that the 'flour baby' has stirred up all the thoughts and feelings he has about his absent father. With the little 'flour baby' in his care, he can't imagine how someone could abandon their own child at only 6 weeks old! Along with Simon, we learn all about the day his father left, how he just walked out and never came back. There were no warning signs, he just had to leave. To begin with Simon can't understand why his Dad left, especially as he is getting an idea of what parental love and responsibility feels like. As the book progresses we go through all the emotions Simon is feeling, first sadness, then anger, and then understanding and acceptance. It is tender portrayal of teenage a boy making sense of his life, understanding his past and growing up. It is no wonder that this book won the Carnegie Medal in 1992, and the Whitbread Children's Book Award in 1993. The emotion creeps up on you, and all of a sudden you are being hit with the full wave of how Simon is feeling. Simon learns so much about his background, but also grows more in confidence in the person he is. He knows he will never be an 'ear'ol' (a swot), and by the end of the book he's causing glorious mayhem once again, feeling relief at no longer having the responsibility of the 'flour baby'! He suddenly understands the responsibilities of parenthood, and how his father was far too young to take this on. Simon no longer feels bitter about this, and instead realises that he can learn from his father's mistakes, that his fate was in his hands. There is a lovely poignant moment during this epiphany that I'd like to share with you. 

"There would be time enough to be responsible when he was older. When the right moment came, there would be all the time in the world to be a good father. 

But not now. Not while he was so young. Not while he had the strength and power and energy to do anything, and all his horizons were giddy and bright, and wider than he could imagine... He wouldn't make the same mistakes as his father. Oh, no. He wasn't going to pin himself down years too soon, and have to make the bitter choice between snatching back his own life, and leaving some child... talking inside his head to some crinkly blue-eyed father he'd had to make up all by himself, because the real one hadn't stayed around."

So this story wasn't really about a science experiment at all! In fact, it was actually a poignant coming of age novel, about the responsibilities of growing up, of how we can shape our own future, and how you can overcome your past to become more than you, or anyone else, ever believed you could be. Through the 'flour babies' experiment Simon is finally able to let go of this idealised, and sometimes hated, father figure he'd been carrying around his entire life. He, and his teachers are able to see that he has a bright future ahead of him, and he has a better understanding of how this is going to pan out. 

Thanks for reading, L x

Next up, it's The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.

7 Ways To Keep the Children Busy and Learing During Lockdown!

Hi there!

I hope you're all doing well!

I wanted to share some resources with you that have been popping into my email inbox over the past few weeks.

1.  The Happy News - A fantastic, quirky, smiley newspaper full of handpicked positive news from around the world! You can subscribe to the paper itself, but I was also sent an activity pack for kids, full of positive news, and a blank sheet for them to create their very own Happy News! You can access this pack, and read more about subscriptions here!
2. Caboodle - This is a loyalty scheme by National Book Tokens. Just register and you can start collecting points with them straight away by entering competitions and playing games. Once you start collecting points they'll send you all kinds of exclusive content, other competitions and lots more lovely bookish stuff. There's a children's section and lots of for grown ups too! Explore Caboodle here!
3. Family Zone - I think I've mentioned this in one of my last posts, but I thought I'd pop the link in again for those who might have missed it. Family Zone is an area on the National Literacy Trust's website especially for children from 0-11. It is full of fun activities that will have your children learning and improving their literacy and reading skills without even realising! Take a look here!
4. Puffin Books - Their latest newsletter has a brilliant activity pack for children, full of fun activites based on favourites such a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. There's also a brilliant new podcast which went down well with the smaller ones in my family, and lots of must read book recommendations. Download the activities, and learn more about the other bits here!
5. Harry Potter with Audible - Queen J.K Rowling has been amazing once again and relaxed the copyright laws on the first Harry Potter Audiobook read by Stephen Fry, and allowed Audible to let everyone listen to it for free! I can't think of a better way to get through lockdown! Go on, listen!
6. Harry Potter at Home - If the free audiobook has ignited your children's imaginations, why not go and check out the new resource from The Wizarding World - Harry Potter at Home. Especially put together for the lockdown this website has all kinds of extra reading, facts about the Harry Potter books, quizzes, puzzles, crafts, and lots more to help you explore the world of Harry Potter. How amazing is that! You can find the Harry Potter at Home Hub here!
7. The World of David Walliams - David Walliams's website is full of hoards of fun activities, games, and downloadable puzzles based on his much-loved books, that will keep your kids busy for hours! There are also free audio books and live story time videos too! Check it out here!

Right, so that's my rundown of the latest activities and resources I could find to keep your families busy, keep boredom at bay, and secretly teach them things too, during lockdown!

Thanks for reading, Lx

Ps. Flour Babies by Anne Fine is up next!

No. 64 - Centrally Heated Knickers

Hello again! It's Tuesday... I think!
I'm back with another book for you. This week it's Michael Rosen's poetry collection Centrally Heated Knickers (tehe!). It's a collection of poems all about science and technology, and is a fun, and slightly bonkers look at lots of different topics within these areas.

If I were a primary school teacher I would be really grateful for this book when it came to exploring all things science with my class! It's divided up into four sections, Environment, Design and Innovation, Chemistry, and Physics, and there are around twenty-five poems per section. Topics covered include sustainable energy, how we can help the planet, the properties of different materials, space, food, and lots more!

The poems themselves are typical of Michael Rosen's style. They are silly, irreverent at times, full of word play, and the joy of language. They are also touching, thought provoking musings on modern life. I think quite a few of these poems would act as springboard for discussion with children (hence why they would be great in the classroom), opening the door to hot topics such as sustainability, renewable energy and climate change. They are domestic, child friendly, and usually based around a child character. I remember doing simple experiments in primary school around weight, speed, melting points etc, and these poems took me back to those days. The time before science meant getting out the Bunsen Burners and chemicals in test tubes!

I also discovered, when researching for this post, that Michael Rosen used some of the poems in Centrally Heated Knickers to create a stage show! There's a couple of great videos of it on YouTube, this is the making of, and this one is the trailer of the show, giving you an idea of the way Rosen really brings his poems to life during performance. These poems definitely need to be enjoyed aloud. I tried reading them in my head, but as anyone who loves poetry knows, you can't get a real idea of the sound of the words, or the rhythm of the poem without vocalising it!

At the moment in the UK a lot of people are having to homeschool their children, and I think this would be the perfect book to use to help engage your children in a bit of science, and maybe it might even inspire you to do some fun DIY experiments! You can buy it on Amazon here (the kindle version is only £2.99!). 

Thanks for reading, L X

Next up - Flour Babies by Anne Fine (which I've started reading, and it's great!)

(Ps. not sure what's up with the formatting on this post...? Sorry!) 

No. 65 - The Way Back Home

Hi all, I'm a few days late i'm afraid. Not the best start to a new routine! Anyway, a quick note about this post. I started writing it way before this isolation malarkey started and funnily enough some of the points I make feel very valid for right now. So let's heed the wise words of Oliver Jeffers, and take heart from the Martian and the boy.

I love a picture book, and this one is no exception! It even had me feeling a bit teary at times! 

Oliver Jeffers is a master of the picture book genre, and The Way Back Home is a beautiful, enchanting tale of intergalactic friendship, teamwork and motor mechanics! For me this book is also a story about equality, anxiety, and hope in the darkest of times. Let me tell you all about it.  

The boy (who you may recognise from some of Jeffer's other books) finds an aeroplane in a cupboard and takes it for a spin. However, he makes a major error and ends up stuck on the moon with no fuel! Silly boy! Elsewhere in the galaxy, a Martian is having a bit of a 'mare too. The engine of his spaceship is failing, and he has to land on the moon asap! Both stranded at each end of the moon, they begin to get very worried. 

They both believe that they are all alone and something nasty is going to loom out of the darkness and get them! They are in one of  those horrid 'what if' situations that we all feel at various times in our lives. Stranded, alone, and in the dark, they fear the worst. But luckily they are not alone!

Very cleverly Jeffer's uses the situation to explain a fundamental point, that in life we are never truly alone. There will always be someone going through the same thing as you, or experiencing the same feelings. Whether this is in childhood or adulthood, the point is the same, you are not the first person to have been through this. The Martian and the boy are a literal example of this. They are both very anxious about the position they had found themselves in, but to know someone else is experiencing the same problem gives them reassurance. For children, this is a reassuring thing to know, and let me tell you, as an adult it helps too!

The boy and the Martian eschew their own worries to help each other, and work together as a team to try and plan their way back home. This unlikely friendship between boy and alien is a delight, and I particularly like the illustration below, where you can see their plans coming together through a variety of gestures and drawings. I like to think that they can't speak each other's languages and this is their best method of communication. There is no language barrier here! The boy and the Martian are not interested in that, they are united in their mission to get off the moon. There is a childhood innocence to this. Play and imagination are universal languages, they pay no attention to race or culture. If you put two children together who speak different languages they will ultimately find a way to communicate and play together, and that, I think, is what's happening here. It's hidden moral message, help others, no matter what their background may be.

As I've already explained, this book takes a clever and fresh look at the subconscious worries we all have on various levels as humans. The fear of the unknown, the fear of the dark, of being stranded all alone. Another example of this is the boy's connection with his home. It is very easy for the boy to fly to the moon, much easier than you might think (ignore all your physics knowledge), but once he is stuck up there home suddenly seems very far away, and getting back seems impossible. I think this eludes to the idea that a problem always seems so much bigger when you are in the middle of it. However, once the Martian arrives and he has company, the boy feels much less anxious, and the idea of popping home to get supplies is as simple as popping around the corner! He parachutes back down to earth, and home again. What was he so worried about!? He's even so relaxed that he has a rest in his favourite chair! However, this is short lived when he remembers his new friend stuck up on the moon! The boy could have stayed put, he was home, he was comfy, but he knew he still had to rescue the Martian. He is selfless, not selfish. Another cheeky, secret moral message! 

You'll  be pleased to know that it all ends well for the Martian and the boy. The Martian fills the plane's petrol tank, and the boy fixes the Martian's engine, and they both go home safely. Hooray! This book is a delight from start to finish. Jeffer's distinctive illustrations create wonderful characters, that you just can't help but fall in love with. Despite being just a child, and an alien they speak hugely about the human condition, in a really touching way. The unity and equality portrayed in this book makes me incredibly happy! Maybe I've read too much into it, but I feel like there is a lot to be learnt from this book, and not just for children.

Thanks for reading, L x

PS. Next up is Michael Rosen's science and technology poems collection, Centrally Heated Knickers!

No. 66 - Peter Pan

Hello! 

I've started a new routine at home, like many of you probably have, and Tuesday is my day for blogging. Hopefully I will be able to get hold of a lot of the books digitally and can continue to write a new post once a week for the time being. Maybe, I can even keep this routine up when things go back to normal! 

This week's book is in fact a play! We haven't had one of those yet! It's J.M. Barrie's fantastical tale, Peter Pan. The play was originally devised by Barrie as a way of amusing some boys he knew, the Llewellyns. If you've ever seen Finding Neverland, you'll know about the relationship Barrie had with these boys and their mother. If you haven't seen this film, I suggest you watch it, it's brilliant! Anyway, although the play came first, Barrie first published the story as a novel for children called Peter and Wendy in 1911, and later in 1928 the play was published, and has been amusing audiences across the world ever since!

Peter, the Lost Boys, Wendy and Captain Hook are a well know set of characters in children's literature. Of course made all the more popular by our friend Walt Disney! I'm not going to moan about Walt this time though as I've never actually seen the Disney Peter Pan (no gasping please!). Instead I'm going to talk to you about the version I know, the play, the original tale of Peter and Wendy. I've never read the novelisation of the play, but I might after this. You can read it for free on the super Project Gutenberg website. Maybe I'll read it and write another post comparing the book and the play. The Project Gutenberg website is great. You can read loads of out of copyright classics online or download them as ebooks for free. 

Now, during my degree Peter Pan was one of the play texts we studied, and my word there is a lot more to it than you expect! At first glance it seems to be a story of childhood vs adulthood, of growing up and loosing your belief in magic. In the famous scene where Tinkerbell is dying Peter Pan asks the audience to save her life by clapping if they believe in fairies. Here the entire audience, adults and children alike, are holding the fate of the character in their hands, literally. A critic once said that more often than not it was the adults who stood up during this scene, clapping furiously. Barrie is inviting them to embrace their childhood again, and the magic of believing in magic. In that moment, and indeed throughout the play, we are asked to suspend our disbelief, and it is interesting to see how far this stretches in adults and children. As we know, it is much easier  for children to believe and we see this is so many children's books. There is always a negative stance on adulthood, and how adults view the world. It is often suggested that adults grow out of believing in the fantastic, and this is a theme found in Peter Pan. However, instead of creating a closed world Barrie encouraged adults to relive their childhood fantasies, rather than shutting them out. Adults are as much allowed to look at Neverland as children are. In fact it has been said that Peter Pan was predominately written for adults, for this exact reason. This claim is backed up by the fact that the characters had already appeared in one of Barrie's novels for adults The White Bird. 

Once you start digging a bit deeper with this play you begin to notice the characters rather than the story. The story itself is muddled, confusing at times, and seemingly a lot happens with no real purpose. Pan is trying to kill Hook, Hook is trying to kill Pan, but it is never truly explained why. There are some fights, and then everyone flies home again, except stubborn Peter. It has been suggested that things never resolve themselves in Neverland because Neverland is not a real place. There are no consequences, they can do what they like. You feel like you've stumbled into a children's game that only makes real sense to those involved. 

Once we ignore the plot, we can start to look more closely at the characters, and this is where it gets interesting! Peter Pan, the boy who refuses to grow up, is a mythical character. Is he human? Is he a fairy? We are never sure. He famously says 'To die will be an awfully big adventure" suggesting that for him death is of no consequence and implies that maybe he is immortal. Peter, like Neverland, is made up and so anything can happen. Captain Hook on the other hand has a very real reminder of his mortality in the shape of the crocodile that has swallowed a clock! The creature ate Hook's hand and Hook is convinced that the crocodile would like to eat the rest of him. The ticking of the clock inside the crocodile's stomach can be heard every time the crocodile approaches Hook, like a ticking time bomb, a reminder that eventually Hook's time will be up because he is a mere mortal! Interestingly, in most productions of Peter Pan, the actor playing Mr Darling (the children's father), also plays Captain Hook (think of Jason Isaacs in the 2003 Peter Pan film). This double role reinforces the idea of Hook as mortal. In fact, is Hook actually Mr Darling? One of my theories is that Neverland is in fact an elaborate make-believe game played within the nursery. Peter Pan is a symbol for the Darling children's childhood, and his conflict with Hook or Mr Darling is about the way the children are growing up. The crocodile is a metaphor for their mortality, whilst Hook's need to defeat Pan, or childhood, is Mr Darling's ambition that his children will grow up to be successful adults. 

There is another theory that has been put forth many times, which will change the way you view this children's story forever. Some critics have suggested that Peter Pan is in fact a retelling of the Oedipus story, where the son tries to kill the father so he can marry the mother. In terms of this story, Peter Pan can be seen as the son, Hook the father and Wendy the mother. There is an extraordinary amount of emphasis placed on the figure of the mother in Peter Pan, and this Freudian reading of the story could explain why. Peter's main purpose seems to be to attack Hook at all eventualities, suggesting that if Hook were the father figure (he is the double of Mr Darling remember) Peter seems pretty intent on bumping him off. As for Wendy, she is portrayed as the mother very early on. In the first scene of the play she is playing at being her own mother with her younger brother John. Then once Peter arrives she becomes his mother, and in Neverland she is the Lost Boys' mother too. Despite being mother to all, Peter is very possessive of Wendy. This could be suggestive of an Oedipus complex. However, when Wendy asks him what his feelings towards her are (and she does this many times!) he always replies 'you are my mother', suggesting he has nothing but familial feelings for Wendy. 

I'm not sure how far I follow the Oedipal theory when it comes to Peter Pan, but it is interesting to explore these critical theories and use them to inform our reading of something that seems, on the surface, just a fantastical play for children. For me, the most interesting aspects of the analysis lie in the doubling of characters, and the theories surrounding the themes of childhood and growing up. I hope this has been of interest to some of you, I've certainly enjoyed writing it. It's not often now that I get to do a critical review of a text. Maybe I'll try and do more! 

Thanks for reading, L x

Next week, I'll be looking at Oliver Jeffer's picture book The Way Back Home. 

No. 67 - Asterix the Gaul

A big hello from me! I hope you're all doing well and are getting through in the best way you can during this time of uncertainty. It's a funny old world, and frankly it all feels a bit like a dream, but as with all dreams we'll wake up to a bright new morning at the end of all this. This week in the UK we learnt that we all had to stay indoors for the time being, and so it's time to fall back on our own resources. For all the parents having to home school your children, I hope you have fun together and learn from each other. The National Literacy Trust has a wonderful resource called Family Zone to help you with lots of useful links and activities to make home schooling a lot easier. Why not check it out! If I discover anything else I'll post it on here. I might also do some more posts with activities and book recommendations etc too, so watch this space!

It's a perfect time to explore new books series, and other types of literature too. I think this post about the Asterix comics has come just at the right time! 

Aside from reading the Beano each week as a child, I've never really been a comics or graphic novels kind of a girl. The first book on this list was The Adventures of Tin Tin, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and you can read my review here. So, I was really glad another comic popped up on the list, and I had a feeling it would be just as enjoyable. As with Tin Tin, I had never seen any adaptations of the stories so I was in the dark as to how the format worked, and what the characters were like. I found a PDF of Asterix the Gaul, the first Asterix comic online, along with all the others, why not take a look! I downloaded it onto my tablet and got reading. I'm not used to reading things on a screen, as I tend to favour a print copy, but a trip to the library was out of the question at the moment! I loved the creasy, battered scan of this comic, it was nostalgic, and reminded me of some kind of archived document. It was almost as good as paper! 

The first adventure of Asterix sees him and his Druid friend Getafix foiling the nasty Romans with a magic potion that makes their hair grow uncontrollably, which as you can imagine is rather funny! Asterix's village remains unconquered by the Romans, at a time when Julius Caesar was rampaging around invading anywhere he could! The Gauls' success is due to another of Getafix's magic potions, one that makes them superhumanly strong! Perfect for fighting Romans! There's classic slapstick, misdirection, and fights punctuated with 'BANG!' and 'BIFF!'; all the wonderful tropes you expect from a comic. The characters are appealing, and the drawing's themselves tell the story as much as the words do. It's great!

Originally of course, this comic was written in French, but it was translated into English in 1969. This meant that a lot of the jokes and names that had been used in the French comics didn't make sense in English, and it was up to translation duo Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge to act not only as translators but comedy geniuses as well! The English Asterix books were praised for keeping the same comedic feel, despite having to be tweaked for English consumption. The character names are the most obvious difference between the French and English editions of this comic. For example, the druid is Panaoramix in the French version, but Bell and Hockridge changed the name to Getafix in the English one, in a reference to drugs and the magic potions he was always concocting! Just from this name change you can see that Asterix doesn't always seem to be aimed at a child audience. In fact, I think they are more for adults than children! The puns are at times so unrelated to childhood that I wonder whether Bell and Hocking, and indeed Goscinny and Udurzo (the original creators) were just trying to make themselves laugh! The Roman centurion named Marcus Ginantonicus is a favourite of mine, for example! There is also a lot of Latin in the English translation. Having not read the French version I can't say if it was in the original, but I do wonder what child today would understand the punchline of a joke if it were in Latin? Is this a symptom of the time it was written? I'm not sure. Latin was certainly being phased out of schools in the 1960s, so I wonder why it was chosen to play such a pivotal role in the text? 

"Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.", "The fact...", "How are you?" "Very well, thank you!" 

Yes, I had to use Google Translate!

In my last post I spoke about nostalgia, about the way child readers these days couldn't necessarily relate to child characters from the past in an immediate way, but there was always the thread of the collective childhood experience that kept them together. However, with the Asterix's books there is no collective childhood, it relies purely on story telling, adventure and an understanding of European history. This, I think, would make these comics a struggle for children these days.

If the whole story was reliant on the text, I think the adventures of Asterix would have been lost long ago. But luckily, the visual storytelling keeps these books afloat. There is a lot to be said about comics, and I'm going to use the phrase reluctant reader again! Combining words and images helps children find a passion for reading, beyond the picture book, but with the same familiarity. I'm not sure this is entirely true of the Asterix comics, because of all the layers to the narrative, but even if you ignore the text I think you can get something from the story. You can see the conflict between the Romans and the Gauls and get a gist of the action unfolding, as well as the physical humour. I love the simple palette of colours and the way the types of characters have their own distinct looks. As a icon of visual culture, Asterix is right up there! 

Overall, these comics have many downfalls when it comes to appealing to modern children. However, as an adult coming to them for the first time I enjoyed the humour, and using Google Translate for the Latin was quite fun! I'm not sure I'd recommend these comics for the child reader, for parents yes, but if you want a classic comic that will entertain today's young people, I'd stick to Tin Tin instead!

Thanks for reading, L x

Next up, it's J.M Barrie's magical Peter Pan.