Juxtabook

The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill

This lovely book was lent to me by a very dear friend who knows my taste for edgy modern literary fiction. She said, as she gave it to me, "It is a very gentle book", and this was clearly by way of a preemptive apology. She thought it might be too staid for me, and too much the non-fiction book. She's a lady of good taste however, and I am sure many people will find something to enjoy here.

The good news is that though my friend is right, it is gentle, it is also a busy, textured book and there is much to recommend. The Magic Apple Tree is an account of a year in the life of novelist Susan Hill focusing on her life in the country with her husband and young daughter. Beginning with Winter the book is split into four seasons and each covers the family home, the people in the village and surrounding countryside, seasonal change, food, traditions, gardening and wildlife as the changes of the year move though the English countryside. There are recipes, gardening advice, country relationships and the keeping of hens, and it is beautifully written and all very charming.

However, it is not just a sentimental review of a WI lifestyle, and it is certainly not a modern Lark Rise to Candleford. There is modern life here too. Hill, though clearly working, as well as being a housewife and mother, has no 'room of her own':

I do not require a large or grand room, but I have always had one in which to work, to close the door on everyone and to be myself. In winter, I had eventually taken to writing in the kitchen and, later, to having my desk and papers and type-writer on the small, light landing, which is a little room in itself, albeit a passageway too, and overlooks Mr Elder's greenhouse, and a lane up to the village. That, and the kitchen, are fine when no-one else is in the house, but they will not do otherwise, and moreover they are not really mine, not private places.

Which brings to mind of course Virginia Woolf's famous, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". For those living a creative life in a property without half a dozen bedrooms, division of space is hard. For Susan Hill the scholar-husband got the study. Here, Mr J and I share a study which is chaos as I blog, run a business and occasionally dabble in the side effects of education (known as exams), and also do Mr J's paperwork. I do this on my large desk, behind the desk, between the desk and cupboard which won't shut, and all over the floor. Mr J meanwhile attempts to run his teaching and part time writing from the alcove in the corner; but he has the best desk, more drawers and a shelf in here for his own books (my study shelves are full of bookshop stock and tax files). The 4 year old sproglet draws on the floor in the 8 square inches of space in the middle. We'd both be happier and more efficient with a room of our own. The 4 year old does have a room of her own, with a desk, but she prefers her creativity should play itself out under her parents' feet; such are infants! I suppose I should be glad it's not lego.

In The Magic Apple Tree the author's room dilemmas are solved and this is the tenor of the book: small but nonetheless important problems have their solutions worked out often by taking one's time and interacting with family and neighbours, and the right person, the right place or the right decision will out.

There are also the contradictions of country living. Only a town dweller could call a book about country life sentimental. The book has its fair share of natural violence, creature upon creature, as well as the local hunt and of course farm animals. Hill reminds us of the complicated provenance of our table:

Spring is lambing time, the fields are full of them, bleating and leaping, frisking in pairs and trios, playing the way all young things play, and Jessica says how lucky the farmers are to have all these lambs to play with, just as we have our cats and dog, and I say, yes, yes, yes, and the first, milk fed legs of lamb are hung in the butcher's stalls in the city market, covered in that creamy white caul that looks so very like a baby's lacy vest, and it will be tender and delicious, served with the earliest of the potatoes, the very first tiny broad beans, and carrot thinnings, and I cannot bear it for the meat tastes of mother's milk and sweet meadow flowers, and turn to ashes in my mouth...But later in the year I shall manage the chops all right, thickly smeared with my own mint or redcurrant jelly, just as I feed our own hens in the morning and then go to collect a freshly-killed one later the same day...to eat at night.

The language might be as tender as the meat but the eating goes on.

Throughout the apple tree in the garden helps pin the whole together. We see it at different times of day, in different seasons, and in different social situations. The tree rather than a cast of characters holds the book together, representing both change and continuity, seasons and landscape, the traditions of the past and the hopes of the future.

I go to the top of the seven stone steps and look down, at the magic apple tree and at my daughter dancing beneath it, arms outspread to the cats and the dog, and to the bending sunflowers, and the country beyond, the Buttercup field, the Rise and all the flat Fen, still sunlight, all the sky, still blue.

*******************************************

I was lucky enough to read this in the Long Barn Books anniversary edition which appears to be out of print at the moment. If you can find a copy then I recommend you do as it is beautifully produced with John Lawrence's engravings still in attendance from the original Hamish Hamilton publication. Otherwise there are more plentiful copies of the Penguin version easily available. Both Ibooknet and Biblio have secondhand copies of the Hamilton and/or the Penguin.

BAFAB Round-up

A quick round up of some of the BAFAB giveaways about on the blogosphere:

Musings from a Muddy Island - which turned 1 yesterday. Happy Blogoversary Juliet!

Write from Karen

In Spring it is the Dawn

Books4All

Oxford Reader

Cornflower

Some of the draws finish quite early so don't delay your visits. And Juxtabook's draw can be found here. Anyone may enter Juxtabook's draw, you don't have to have a blog, or have commented here before, and I am happy to send internationally. Thanks to everyone who has entered already.

Edited to add a few more giveaways:

Stuck in a Book

Shelf Love

Random Distractions

and coming up on the outside Books, Mud and Compost

Does "Mr Collins" stop you enjoying a book?

Over at Random Jottings Elaine mentioned being aggravated by a couple of female characters in the Inspector Lynley novels. She noted that one was "the female character I would most like to kick in the butt", and this got me thinking about annoying characters in general.

My characters that "I would most like to kick in the butt" include Catherine Morland and Fanny Price courtesy of Miss Austen in Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park respectively, and Cathy Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights. Also in contention are George Eliot's characters Gwendolen Harleth from Daniel Deronda and Rosamond Vincy from Middlemarch. To be honest I think Rosamond Vincy takes the prize. There is something about a lot of heroines in nineteenth century novels that sets my teeth on edge. They're often either vapery and missish, or potentially bitchy rebels that are just a bit too tea-party or lady of the manorish in their rebellion, or failing that they are just dishonest. Give me the eighteenth century Moll Flanders over silly sly Victorian Cathy Earnshaw any day.

In the spirit of equality male characters for whom the same treatment is required include, for me, Joe in Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, Louis de Bernieres Captain Correlli (he of the Mandolin), Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice (of course!), Margaret Hale's father in Mrs Gaskell's North and South and Paul Dombey senior in Dickens' Dombey and Son and Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse. Oddly I can think of more irritating men in twentieth century novels than in the nineteenth century ones. For women (avoiding chick-lit) I think the chronology of irritation is reversed.

In children's fiction of course many irritating characters are included deliberatly as irritating characters, and you are meant to enjoy your irritation. Gwendolen in Malory Towers, Susan Pyke in Ruby Ferguson's Jill books, Crabbe and Goyle in Harry Potter (though of course these latter become something far more sinister) are just a few. Not only do they irritate the reader, often humourously, they irritate the characters in the books too. Interestingly you get this a lot in Jane Austen too: Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine de Burgh and (again) Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice alone. Irritating characters in adult novels rarely do this I think, and it is strangely a feature of Austen's work. Gwendolen Harleth and Cathy Earnshaw are explosively annoying to the other characters in the novels, rather than being scratchily irritating. Maybe it is partly because of this feature that Austen shares with children's fiction, that Austen is so easily enjoyed by any child (girl usually) old enough to cope with the vocabulary. It helps create the surface lightness and bubbly sensation of mild social tension, so beloved of the traditional "Janeite", regardless of whether you fully understand the real maelstrom turning underneath.

Irritating characters interestingly do not necessarily impair one's enjoyment of a book. In fact I would put almost all of the adult novels I have mentioned very high on my list of all time favourites. So long as the irritating character is balanced in a good mix then, no problems. For me my least favourite of the adult novels above is Wuthering Heights, and this, I think is because so many of the characters share the same facets of Cathy's character that annoy me so. If you are not annoyed by Cathy, then you probably feel more positively about Wuthering Heights. WH is so incestuous (literally as well as metaphorically) that characteristics are bound to be replicated; it is like watching marked or even bad characteristics in a dog being deliberately bred though an entire extended gene pool. For me it is bad enough reading about Cathy without Heathcliff, Hareton, Hindley, Joseph and the rest.

Contrastingly Pride and Prejudice is enhanced by Lady Catherine and Miss Bingley, they make Elizabeth's enagement more than a good romantic conclusion; it is also a social victory. We could perhaps have lived without Mr Collins though!

So which literary characters would you "most like to kick in the butt"? Do they have the potential to spoil books for you, or do you find it doesn't matter? 

Buy a Friend a Book Week and more on Haworth

Prize draw 1: As BAFAB week is fast approaching it seems fortuitous that I have a copy of The Road to Haworth. This little hard back volume covers the Bronte story in Ireland (facts, not a fictional version) and I am offering it as a prize. It is secondhand (I am a used book dealer after all) but I also have a small selection of mint postcards from the Bronte Parsonage Museum Shop which I will include as well. The postcards show interiors of the parsonage plus the famous Apostles cabinet which is mentioned in the red room in Jane Eyre. To enter all you have to do it leave a comment on this post.

Prize draw 2: I also contribute to the Ibooknet blog Books4All and on there I am offering a paperback novel. It is fairly recent, it is literary and it is yours if you are first out of the hat after commenting on the appropriate post on the Ibooknet blog.

N.B. To enter both draws you have to comment on both blogs.

Lastly, returning to Haworth the photos were taken a few weeks ago, not when we went to the Simon Armitage reading, but when we went to see the Fay Godwin exhibition at the Museum. It is Fay Godwin whose photographs so beautifully illustrate Ted Hughes' Elmet.

I have a few more Haworth photographs which I shall add below as I know from the stats that many visitors here are from outside of the UK and may not know, or have a Chance to see the landscape that it is so important to the Bronte novels. Most of them are just shots of the countryside. You'll notice that there are plenty of trees; Mrs Gaskell says otherwise. The difference is economic I think. The apparent barrenness of the area when Mrs Gaskell was there was not just her famous exaggeration, but also the over-grazing of land and over-felling of trees caused by having a fast increasing and very poor population.

The first photograph is of the parsonage from behind and above from the conservation meadow. The rest are snaps of the outlook from Haworth and some features from within the village.

 

...the road to Haworth

In a town one does not look for vivid colouring; what there may be of this is furnished by the wares in the shops, not by foliage or atmospheric effects; but in the country some brilliance and vividness seems to be instinctively expected, and there is consequently a slight feeling of disappointment at the grey neutral tint of every object near or far off, on the way from Keighley to Haworth. The distance is about four miles; and as I have said, what with villas, great worsted factories,

rows of workman's houses,

with here and there an old-fashioned farm-house and outbuildings, it can hardly be called country any part of the way.

...Right before the traveller on this road rises Haworth village; he can see it for two miles before he arrives,

for it is situated on the side of a pretty steep hill, with a background of dun and purple moors, rising and sweeping away yet higher than the church, which is built at the summit of the long narrow street.

... the ascent through the village begins

...The old stone houses are high compared with the width of the street,

...which makes an abrupt turn before reaching the more level ground at the head of the village, so that the steep aspect of the place in one part, is almost like that of a wall. But this surmounted, the church lies a little off the main road on the left;

...hundred yards, or so, and the driver relaxes his care, and the horse breathes more easily, as they pass into the quiet little by street that leads to Haworth Parsonage.

...The parsonage stands at right angles to the road, facing down upon the church; so that, in fact, parsonage, church and belfried school house, form three sides of an irregular oblong, of which the fourth is open to fields and moors. The area of this oblong is filled up with by a crowded church yard...

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Chapter 1.

Simon Armitage

Last night Mr J and I had the great pleasure of listening to poet Simon Armitage read at a Bronte Society event in Haworth. I have enjoyed his work for a long time both as a reader and a teacher, indeed the first poem I ever taught was 'About his person'. Armitage's work is a technical masterclass which is a teacher's dream of quick witted similes, rich metaphor and structural finesse. Juxtaposed with the clear apprenticeship in traditional form is his laconic, vernacular word play and easy conversational style, and the ability to pull off wit, absurdity, pathos, or loss and pain as the subjects twist and turn through his work. Work which has now been published over a frightening number of years for a man who is only just approaching his mid-forties and includes the snappy Book of Matches, the poignant Out of the Blue (providing memorial work on 9/11, World War II and Cambodia) and the self depreciating autobiography Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-star Fantasist.

Assembling in the upper room of a chapel in Haworth were assorted members of the Bronte Society and poetry enthusiasts from the locale; a pleasing age mix from a couple of teenagers to those in late middle age. After a brief introduction from one of the Bronte Society Arts officers Simon began to read and immediately had the audience in the palm of his hand. The first two poems he picked were hilarious; the first on the surreal musings of a sperm whale and the second on the quasi biblical crossing of a causeway before the tide was properly out. He had his rather staid audience rolling with laughter. His ad libbed comments between the poems were also funny, and his timing when reading was like watching the best of comic actors. Having got us totally onside he moved on to a range of poetry covering a great mix of styles and emotions. His preambles before each poem made everything quickly accessible even if you had not heard that poem before, or if the poem proved difficult. And don't be fooled by his easy style, his work is often challenging and his little talks helped to peel away stylistic or thematic layers.

After a well run break (tops marks for Bronte Soc organisation) he read again beginning with the poem 'Emily Bronte' by Ted Hughes from the book variously called Remains of Elmet or simply Elmet in its reissue. The Parsonage is running an exhibition of Fay Godwin's photographs which are an integral part of Hughes' book, so this was particularly appropriate. Simon went on to explain that Elmet was his poetry bible and recommended that if you only ever buy one book of poetry this should be it. We have both Elmet and Remains of Elmet and I shan't argue with him there.

Elmet having given him a nice link to more personal poetry he went on to read poems about his childhood and family. A cute piece inspired by his teenage love of punk was concluded with the surprising comment that it was a sonnet - "That's what happened to punk in our house", he added wryly - but in truth it is a tribute to his light handling of form that the structural foundations of his poems don't over-bear. He ended his recital with the poignant 'Evening' from his recent Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Corduroy Kid.

The clapping at the end was roof raising and had it not been such a small intimate venue where such gestures seemed inappropriate it was that sort of applause that becomes a standing ovation. I have seen other poets read including his rival for the soon to be announced Poet Laureate position Carol Ann Duffy, but Armitage combines depth, humour, warmth and technical wizardry like no other at the moment. He also has the long view combining a very modern approach with a real understanding of context, hence his pacey, readable and sharp translation of Gawain and his reworking of some of the Classical tales. His performance was superb and if you ever get the chance to see him then I really recommend it. You don't need to know his work to get a lot of out the evening. As a bookseller I kept a close eye on the mobile Bronte Society Bookshop in the corner and despite bringing a lot of stock I noticed they just about sold out of Armitage's work: no higher tribute really.

At the end Simon was asked if he would take some questions, which he clearly hadn't been expecting, but he took it in good part and gave lengthy thoughtful answers on poetry, music and influences.

As if it wasn't enough that he is talented on the page, or as poetic raconteur, apparently he has also begun a career as a rock musician. If you like The Smiths or Joy Division or other northern rock of the 80s then you'll probably like The Scaremongers self-depreciatingly described as "The Sound of Mature Huddersfield". If only all mid-life crises could be so good.

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

Despite struggling a bit in the middle I did finally finish The War of the Worlds. I am glad I didn't start reading Wells with this volume else I don't think I would have picked up another one. Having finished it I decided to leave it a week before trying to write about it; I felt a bit of distance was required to make proper sense of things.

Narratively speaking the whole thing is preposterous from the start. The un-named narrator falls in immediately with an astronomer which means he witnesses the martian explosions that herald the coming threat. He then happens to be in the right place at the right time to witness the first capsule and the emerging creatures. This kind of marked coincidence happens chapter after chapter. Clearly, if you are going to have  a first person narrator then they have to be both a witness and a survivor but Wells takes it to absurd lengths. It is made worse by the fact that there is no characterisation whatsoever. The narrator is just a function and it is hard therefore to emotionally engage with what is happening. The events hardly move out of the home counties which is exasperating too.

What makes all of the above a problem is the real drive of the book is the shock factor, and the impact of the new; the science fiction of it all. Of course, this is a book it is impossible to come to cold, and what was new and brightly imaginative in Well's hands in 1898 is now hackneyed, trite and reminiscent of 1950s B movies. Without a really strong plot, proper narrative design, characterisation, humour or emotion it is dated, dated, dated.

Despite all that should you read it? Yes, I think you probably should. There is no denying its importance in the SF genre. My copy has Brian Aldiss quoted on the front, "The foundation stone for all alien invasion stories", and indeed it is. There are some eerie moments in the invasion, and many salient observations about human behaviour, government, colonialism, armed reactions to unpredictable threats, man's interaction with the environment and man's treatment of animals.

The ordinary sapper is a great deal better educated than the common soldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the possible fight with some acuteness. I described the Heat-ray to them, and they began to argue among themselves.

'Crawl up under cover and rush 'em, say I,' said one.

'Get aht!' said another.'What's cover against this 'ere 'eat? Sticks to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near as the ground'll let us, and then drive a trench.'

'Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches; you ought to ha' been born a rabbit, Snippy.'

A eerie portent for the first world war and the cold war and perhaps also the war on terror. 'What's cover against this' indeed. Further, though the martian requirement for living space is not a total parallel with the expansion of Nazi Germany (as mars as an environment is presented as dying whereas 1930s Germany was not) but it does still make you think of lebensraum, with the martian attitude to humans being akin to untermensch.

Other twentieth century concerns such as farming, animal welfare and vegetarianism are also foreshadowed here:

They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh living blood of the other creatures, and injected it into their own veins...Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by means of a pipette into the recipient canal.

The bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but at the same time I think that we should remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit.

It is such reflective nuggets that make the book worth persevering with. It will not shock or frighten you as it might have done your great-grandparents, it is embarrassingly parochial in places, and woefully stilted at times, but it has the dual virtues of being short and an important piece of literary history. So try it, but don't let it put you off Wells if this is your first go. And don't read it in the Red Penguin edition as I did. It infuriatingly has the superscript numbering for footnotes, but no actual notes, and as the contemporary reaction and situation of this book is important I think the notes would have been most useful. The Penguin volume that is edited by Patrick Parrinder and has an introduction by Brian Aldiss looks a much better bet, and to be honest a bit of partisan enthusiam from a fan and fellow writer like Aldiss might have been just what was needed to help me through the book's time delivered failings.

My favourite H. G. Wells so far has been Tono-Bungay, and I have Ann Veronica lined up now too. Can anyone with wider Wellsian experience recommend where they would start with his work, or what they think is his best work? I'd be delighted to know.

My Last Thoughts on Age Banding

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read and/or comment on my last post. My visitor stats rocketed for several days so it is obviously a topic of interest. At the risk of boring those not following the saga I am going to make a few more observations before going back to reviewing books, and in part I hope to answer some of the points raised in response to my post.

I think the main problem with the argument is that, in principle, the No Age Banders are right. Of course no-one should want to put kids or books into categories, and categories will change over the years too, and will date as average reading ages and the subject matter considered suitable for a particular age group alter over time. Juliet points out that even if removable stickers (and I admit they are horrible, unevironmentally friendly and, as a used bookseller, the bane of my life!) were used they might quickly become part of the permanent book image. Jane and Vanessa both point out the unbalanced and potentially inaccurate 'research' which doesn't seem to have any academic standing, that has come out of marketing-land, and they are rightly suspicious. Adele Geras (in a comment to my last post and on the Guardian books pages) points out that authors have not been consulted about what happens with their own books. These are all important parts of the debate.

However ...

tackling the easy one first - Adele's point. I appreciate and sympathise that it must be awful to have your work messed about with but what has that to do with the reading public? Authors might get bad illustrations, bad printing, bad book binding and a whole pile of more irritating features pushed the way of their work of art but that is between them, their agents, and their publisher. It has nothing to do with kids and reading. Why sign a petition about only one tiny aspect of publishers interfering in authors' work? I understand authors' personal annoyance, but don't see why this should be the subject of wider debate.

Vanessa's worries about the unsubstantiated market research and the Tescoifcation of the book sale world are well grounded and shared by me too. Tesco is quite dominant enough. She is quite right to worry, but then the dormant teacher in me thinks - some kids might get books who would not have done so previously, and will Tesco be any worse at it than Smiths? Non-literary families don't go to book shops nor do they go to libraries unless taken by school but they do go to supermarkets and to shops that sell other things like CDs or computer games (ie W H Smiths, or Woolworths). Kids from such backgrounds don't buy books at all, if they ever have them then they are bought for them by someone else. If the banding is in the shop and removable ie a sticker on the front or on the shelving then the kids might never see it, and to be honest even if it was printed directly on there I really don't think they would notice. Most kids don't notice signs in red letters several inches high. Do we want more democracy from the book world for kids currently disenfranchised? If yes, then all power to Tesco as they'll do more for literacy than Ofsted have ever done. I want both good independent bookshops where I can discuss books with knowledgeable people and for books to be available to people from backgrounds different to mine. If Tesco need age banding then why not - just don't make it permanent folks (can I start a separate petition for that?).

Juliet points out there is some classification already on shelves, and in the same vein Vanessa notes that she uses the concepts pre-school, developing reader, confident reader and young adult (which I would translate in teacher speak as early years, key stage 1 and 2, key stage 3 and key stage 4). If you want to argue that kids aged 8 won't read a book for age 6 kids then you've got admit the correlation that a kid in key stage 3 and a poor reader might not like to be a "developing" reader if he or she knew others the same age were "confident". In other words, there is no way around classification. Kids know this too even if we don't. They know because they recognise attempts to avoid competition and failure for what they are: gilded fibs. They know if they can't read so well as others. They are tested, classed, set all the time. They are used to it. They are also used to age banding on content for films.

Actually perhaps that would be a happy compromise - use the U, PG, 12, 15 and 18 notions. Everyone knows them, they know they are related to content and have no ability stigma.

What has worried me most about all this, far more than poor market research, publishers' desire for more sales, and the growing dominance of Tesco, is that it has revealed how far removed from most real reading situations the movers and shakers in our democracy are. It is really scary that influential people can say "let them use the cover" to tell them which book is right; this is "let them eat cake" for the 21st century. A two nation state or what! For once, maybe for the wrong reasons, a literary barrier called "how to buy a child a book" might be being broken down. See Jane's comments on helping a traveller child to read and then ask yourself if this a barricade worth manning with a petition, or if it should be broken down altogether?

Enough ... back to book reviewing next time, I promise.

No to Age Banding - what is so black and white here?

I have been putting off about posting on this because I don't want to fall out with anyone. The Say No to Age Banding campaign is being supported by many bloggers and authors whose blogs/work I enjoy and whom I respect in many ways. But as a blogger on both literature and literacy I can't ignore it any longer.

If you have managed to miss out on this debate you can read Vanessa's eloquent explanation here, Juliet's here and an impassioned plea by guest poster Steve Augarde on dovegreyreader here.

Steve Augarde notes: "I’ve yet to hear of any author, teacher, librarian or reader who thinks this a good idea." So I guess it is time to stick my head above the parapet. I don't necessarily think it is a good idea to indelibly mark a book as part of the book production process, but a sticker, why not?

There have been impassioned comments on the above blogs by readers and writers, many of them professional readers or writers, about how they or their children read outside the assumed ages of certain types of literature and profited from doing so. Of course. Me too. But let me throw something else into the pot here.

Just addressing Steve's criteria for support/objection: I have an English degree, a post graduate teaching qualification, an MA on the 18th century novel, teaching experience including being "second" in the English department and whole school literacy co-ordinator. I have a decade of experience marking GCSE exams scripts, and I now run my own business selling books. Oh and I am a parent and an aunt. My father was a head teacher and my mother a specialist in the teaching of reading, so I came from a very literate home. I am lucky, and because of that I think this idea needs a second glance.

Back over a decade ago, when I started teaching as a starry eyed middle class graduate in one of the most "challenging" schools in the country, in one of the most deprived areas of the north of England, I had strong feelings about the individuality of kids, and how reading stereo-typing was bad etc. etc., and I would have jumped like a shot to sign this petition. Then I took a middle set year 7 into the library. This was a middle set note, not the bottom set. For many of the kids this was the biggest library in which they had ever been. Even so it was not huge. A long wall of books about 8 bays wide ran away from you as you entered, then there were 2 bays across the bottom of the room before the shelves turned back for about 3 bays, cutting the bottom of the room in half. The other long wall was full of shiny new pcs and desks for homework. Some of the brighter girls went to the shelves and picked out pink things, Baby Sitters club and such like, some, including some boys picked Goosebumps. No other books were touched. 7 years of primary school education, battling against non-literate home backgrounds, hadn't been able to make much of a boost in their literary aspirations. Most of the boys, and some of the girls, just ran about. Given a big space what else were they to do; you can see their thinking.

I persuaded them into chairs and tried to single out the non-book-selectors and assist them to find something. Faced with rows of books they were petrified, which came out as sullen and objectionable behaviour. So I started trying to narrow it down, selecting a few books which I though might interest them, spreading them out on a few tables. Hands vigorously shoved in pockets. Wouldn't touch, wouldn't look. These kids could read a bit, below their chronological age, but they could read a bit, yet nothing could break this barrier between them and the books. Eventually I picked on the most troublesome individual thinking if I could get him to pick a book up, the others would follow.

"What about this one?"

"Is it a boy's book?"

"It is for anyone."

"I want a boy's book"

I paraphrase here. These kids literacy standards were so poor that verbal communication was hard work and heavily reliant on implicit language teamed with shrugs, grunts and grimaces. Having extracted the meaning, I was staggered, was that it? All it was that mattered was the book had to tick some hidden boxes? So, what next, lower my egalitarian standards and start looking for "boys' books", or begin a sociological discussion on gender in fiction with a kid that couldn't give a proverbial, and indeed had made that very point in those terms earlier? I started looking for boy's books. I even found some, labelled as such, helping boy readers. They pounced. They read them, well a bit, and went back to look for similar things the next time we went in. Their diet didn't vary much, though we did manage the Lancashire reading challenge (certificates for reading books from 5 different genres) as a class, and some of them got certificates. But I had to get them into the library and up to the shelves to start the process. They were so out of the reading loop that all the clues that a middle class kid (or parent) would use to tell them about the subject matter, the reading ability, the age range anticipated, were not there in their minds. They might pick a book because they liked the picture of a an RAF plane on the front but they couldn't tell you whether they were expecting a story, history, biography, or a fighter pilot's instruction book. They had no idea whether the contents was likely to be akin to Andy McNab or Thomas the Tank Engine.

So who are books for? No doubt most of those who have signed petition would say everybody. I'd beg to differ. I'd say they were for middle class kids and their parents who use the libraries, who go to book shops, who know you can ask for help, who have the vocabulary to attempt the questions needed to find a right book.

We label books for adults. We have Penguin Classics, Penguin reissues in classic crime banded green covers, Everyman, Macmillan New Writers, Heineman African Writers series, Canongate Scottish Classics, Virago, Persephone etc., We also label with chick lit covers, airport covers, gritty crime covers, quaint-harking-back-to-Agatha-Christie crime covers, misery lit covers, ghost written biographies of famous people covers and you don't need to be a literacy co-ordinator to estimate the reading age of each genre. Adults have reading ages too you know. Many of them have ones lower than those of your own kids.

I had a very good reading age of 16+ when I was just 9 - if you are literate enough to blog on books your kids probably have a high reading age too. I have, aged 36, a spelling age of just 14 - there's a confession for you. I avoid some writing situations - anything "live" for example. I never used the blackboard when teaching. Unlike most teachers, most literate adults, I have a window of experience of what it is like to not quite be in control of language. How is the parent or grandparent of a child buying maybe one book a year, for Christmas maybe, supposed to break into our world of books? When confronted with a live situation in a shop, even if they ask, they discover knowing the age of their grandchild is not enough, they have to answer other questions the helpful shop assistant throws at them. It is not they don't know their child but they don't understand, because they don't read, why additional questions are relevant. My kids would've said, "What's point?" (no definite article). They just want a story book that's "right". In a good independent shop the assistant will take an interest and frighten the horses of the non-literate buyer. Perhaps banded books, with stickers so the middle class shop keeper/parent can remove them, will enable the Smiths routine of "books? Over there ..." to be an advantage for those out of their comfort zone. They can go "over there", see the stickers and get the right book (maybe, maybe not, but if it is the only book they're going to buy all year then let them just buy it!) by grabbing one with a label on it. They don't have to enter University Challange, specialist subject, your grandchild, to get something, anything. And for some families this start, this attempt at ownership and interaction with books, is so hard that anything that makes it easier is a good thing.

My caveat to the above, is that it is a good thing in moderation. Not all books should be labelled, and no book benefits from being labelled permanently for the reasons outlined by others on the blog links at the top of this post. All I am saying is that those of us equipped to choose books easily should beware ring fencing books in for ourselves, and for us alone.

...Since writing this, I have noticed Jane's good suggestions for the book-challenged parent over at Books, Mud and Compost and I would especially endorse numbers 4, 5 and 6.

It is interesting actually, as yet, how few teachers have signed this petition. There are some on there, of course, and I am certainly not saying all teachers would agree with me; they won't. However, the list is dominated by authors, publishers, booksellers and librarians. These people deal mostly with kids and families already engaged with books, and for those kids they have a point. I am talking about the rest. (BTW there are between 450,000 and 500,000 serving teachers at any one time in the UK, add to that those no longer teaching, those retired etc. and you have a huge number of people. The number of teachers signing the petition is not statistically significant as yet.)

Tagged again - favourite authors

I have been tagged again, this time by Angela at Writing, Life and the Universe for a meme on favourite authors:

1. Who’s your all-time favourite author, and why?

Probably Jane Austen because I get just as much pleasure out of reading her now as I did at 14, or 21, or 30, and I don't anticipate that changing. As I went through my degrees, and studied literary theory, I found some my tastes changing but Austen survives anything you throw at her I think, whatever sort of reading you are doing.

2. Who was your first favourite author, and why? Do you still consider him or her among your favourites?

Amongst authors for adults, Jane Austen as above, plus Georgette Heyer. Heyer I can see faults in now, but not many and for such a prolific, essentially middle brow author it is amazing how consistently she can engage areas of the intellect you hadn't expected, and then like Austen, make you laugh. Heyer's characterization, at its best can be really sharp. Earlier than that it was probably Enid Blyton, and then Honor Arundle. I loved Arundle's normal Emma in the crazy world of her arty aunt, and re-read all 3 three of the Emma books several times between the ages of 9 and 12. I have re-read them as an adult too and still quite enjoyed them. Can't see myself re-reading Blyton though. That's an interesting thought actually - does anyone re-read Blyton? She was so popular that she must have been many people's favourite - do any of her books stand up to an adult re-reading?

3. Who’s the most recent addition to your list of favourite authors, and why?

Probably Ian McEwan. Not very a original perhaps but that's who it is. Like with my disciplined one book at a time reading approach, I am quite disciplined when buying books, but my first McEwan was a very rare impulse purchase. I read the first chapter of Enduring Love and couldn't leave the shop without the book. I love the ice-skating feel of his writing, it is so smooth, but at the same time he grips you. How he combines such lovely elegant measured prose with a driven page turning story I don't know.

4. If someone asked you who your favourite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth? Are there any you’d add on a moment of further reflection?

Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Ian McEwan, George Eliot, David Lodge, Georgette Heyer, Dorothy L Sayers, Josephine Tey, Ted Hughes, Robert Browning, Simon Armitage, Graham Greene

And on further reflection:

Salman Rushdie, Evelyn Waugh, Charles Dickens, Louis de Bernieres, Ngaio Marsh, Kate Atkinson, Peter Carey ...

And passing it on I tag the following:

Bagot Books at Books4All

Cornflower

Welcome to My Tweendom

Ready when you are, CB

Sibylle's Kitchen Sink

Please feel free to ignore the tag if you want to.

A little light relief ...

Usually when I am reading I read one book at a time until it is finished. Then I start another. I always have a book on the go but in reading I am a serial monogamist, always one at a time. I can count on one hand the number of books that I have failed to finish. This discipline is because it has usually been part of my job to read: the next essay, then the next scheme of work, depended on my knowing a text cover to cover, and once I got into the habit I have continued to prefer to give one volume my close attention.

This week things have been a bit different. I am reading H G Wells, whose work I have previously enjoyed. At the moment I am working my way, rather doggedly, through The War of the Worlds and last night I just could not stand any more. Not that I won't finish it, I will, but a bit of light relief is needed. Far from intergalactic warfare, it is taking all Wells' narrative skills to prise us away from Woking. There's Martians on the Cobham Road: so what!

My light relief for the next couple of evenings:

Hurrah for Inspector Morse!

And hurrah for Source Books and Random Jottings. Further cavalry arrived in the form of Mrs Darcy's Dilemma which I won in Random Jottings' draw a few weeks back. It has arrived safe and sound from the US publishers and I will read on with Wells, renewed by Morse, and galvanised by the thought of another good book waiting at the end.

How do you read? Are you a serial monogamist, or a promiscuous gallivanter about your to-be-read pile?

Out and About

In book selling guise at Bedale Bookfair. It is nice to get out from behind the pc and meet the customers. If I look a bit vacant it was the 5.30am start. I am not a morning person.

Under the Sea by Anna Milbourne and Cathy Shimmen

In my quest to find books that avoid the icky-sticky sentimentality rampant in the publishing world for the under 6s I was delighted that my 4 year old received this lovely book recently. Under the Sea by Anna Milbourne and Cathy Shimmen is both visually delightful and textually sensible. It is also non-fiction but even the most dedicated story-head won't notice as there is so much to talk about on each page.

A positive approach for a non-fiction book for the younger age group is the attempt to involved the reader, like a story book might:

"Have you ever looked out to sea and wondered what lies under the waves?"

And just like any good story book would, after taking you on an adventure right to the bottom of the sea with lovely black background pages, and bringing you back up to the sparkling surface, it brings your pre-schooler back to security:

"But sail away far enough across the sea and you'll always come to shore."

There is no reason, of course, why a non-fiction book should be judged by story book type qualities, but the nice bridge in style here is useful if you want to vary your child's literary diet a bit but they expect some narrative tics. If on the other hand you have child stuck on the repetitive non-fiction of near-list type formula tractor or digger or train books then this might also come in handy both for its own sake, and as a non-fiction way into listening to the longer sentences and connected ideas more readily associated (for pre-schoolers at any rate) with a tale.

The endpages also tell me there are 12 more non-fiction titles in this series, focusing on environments but with some historical and weather themes thrown in too. The text is always by Anna Milbourne but the illustrator seems to vary. I quite fancy In the Nest, or In the Castle though On the Seashore would be a good companion for this volume and On the Farm or Under the Ground would appeal to the tractor or train obsessive.

A lovely looking series for which the publishers, Usbourne, should be commended.

It's that time a year again ... but spare a thought for the examiner

As always at this time of year I spare a thought for the teenagers sitting their exams. I also spare a thought for those families living with teenagers sitting their exams. Lastly, this year, I also spare a thought for those teachers who mark the darn things. I say "this year" as this time is the first time in about a decade that I am not among them. In fact I marked for twice as many years as I taught.

Normally sometime in the last week of May I answer the door to the parcelforce man and take receipt of a quantity of post that reaches from the floor to the middle of my thigh. GCSE English Literature is normally first on the GCSE calendar as it is so complicated to mark, so whilst the candidates are still concentrating on their other subjects English teachers across the country are just settling down to tackle one of the hardest subjects to nail to a specific grade. The candidates sitting the exam for my board answer just two questions, but these answers are essays of literary criticism with all the difficulty in standardisation that that entails.

The good news, if you or child have sat your GCSE English Literature this year, is that the marking system is very impressive. In the first week after receiving 400+ scripts your examiner will read the mark scheme which is a document at least 50 pages long, and which will help them attribute to the right grade to your efforts. They will also check the piles of scripts against the documents from the exam board to ensure that they have all the right essays from the right schools and from the right candidates. Usually one dodo school examiner has sent the wrong tier (GCSE being spilt into Foundation and Higher tiers which are loosely equivalent to the old CSE and O level respectively; I mark the higher tier), or otherwise done something odd with the entries, and now is the time we sort that out and every script ends up exactly where it should be. Then we mark about twenty scripts in pencil as preparation for thinking about the big training day that normally happens in half term.

So it often was, that on the first Tuesday of this half term I would tackle the journey from the Yorkshire Dales to Manchester. Scary traffic - I loath the M60! Meanwhile senior examiners have been discussing the questions and a large sample of the scripts, and then setting the standards. At the training day we are allocated a group where, with up to eight other teachers, we are taught the standard by a senior examiner. We read, mark and discuss, and by the end of the day have just about got it. For the next week we are closely monitored and exchange several selections of scripts with our senior examiner and if you are not getting it right you have to send more of your marked scripts for review. Eventually, about a week after the training day and nearly two weeks after the exam, if the senior staff think you are doing it right you are cleared for take off and get to mark with a red pen. Even then several samples of scripts are sent in the middle of the marking process and at the end. As a teacher marking for the first time you have to under go additional training too, but old hands generally are left to get on with it for a while now. Believe it or not the senior examiners' checking of examiners' work is also monitored from on high, by even more senior examiners endearingly known as "Apes" (assistant principle examiners), above them all sits the Principle Examiner, all cross checking the work like fury.

What amazed me the first time I went to an examiners' standardisation meeting was how convinced the senior examiners were, that despite the difficulties, a universal standard could be found and applied across this difficult, subjective exam. The senior staff were all impressive and convincing. As current or former English teachers, of course, they were highly literate and good communicators; they were also good teachers themselves, usually drawn from senior staff (heads of department or deputy heads). The training on the day left assistant examiners feeling both the weight of the responsibility but also confident that standardisation could be achieved. The sampling and checking of examiner's work, together with clear feedback to the examiner of where faults in the marking might lie, all ensured the standardisation was achieved. It is never 100% accurate of course in a subjective essay based subject, but the procedures are in place to make it as fair as is humanly possible.

So if you have just sat your GCSE English Literature rest assured that the script you handed in is in good hands, and the teacher marking it will be monitored closely.

If you are marking this year for the first time it is a bit daunting, especially if you are a fairly new teacher. Your senior examiner will probably ring you a lot to check you're ok. The first 100 scripts are the worst, followed by the last 100! The middle two hundred, when you've got your eye in, and you are flying along I always enjoyed. Honestly! The kids, even if they have been a pain in the proverbial for their own staff for their entire school career, tend to try hard in exams so you are seeing the best of them. Some of the A and B grade answers will delight you. Even at 10pm after a full day at work and two hours evening marking someone will give you an answer on To Kill a Mocking Bird or Lord of the Flies that will have you re-reading it just for the sheer pleasure of watching someone do something well. Once you get in that last hundred it is hard: end of term, you're tired and want to get it finished but you get there in the end. And from a parent or student point of view, because of this obvious tiredness towards the end of each examiner's work, senior examiners always call in the last 50 scripts from each marker for double checking.

In a few months time each examiner will receive a written report on their marking with a grade (yes, A-E!) on the standard of reliability and accuracy they reached in applying the agreed standards. If you're not good enough you have you won't be asked to mark again. Only examiners who consistently achieve A grades over several consecutive years will be asked to apply for senior examiner roles.

Not all bureaucratic systems work but this one, considering the odds is not bad at all. So as I look towards my first June in ages with no GCSE script marking to do I will think of those tackling the job with a little envy, but also with a little gloat as I relish the rare freedom.

Self by Yann Martel

Self by Yann Martel is in many ways a delightful book about identity, but much of the exploration is sexual so it will not be to everyone's taste. It also has one extremely brutal, harrowing event in it which may put others off. If you can cope with those provisos then go away and acquire the book, read it and admire, but don't read on here as this is almost impossible to review without littering the post with spoilers. If you have read it then I would be delighted to know what you think.

The reason it is so hard not to include spoilers is that so little of factual note happens and it is impossible to talk about the book sensibly without addressing the key events relating to the main character's identity. Essentially a bildungsroman, we start with the character narrator's earliest memories, move on through childhood, schools, friends, developing sexuality, and emerging academic interests. Much of this parallels the biography of the Spanish, Canadian, and somewhat nomadic author Martel and is rather semi-autobiographical. Much of it also deals with language, and language and identity; fitting obviously when much of the book is set in Canada. A key moment showing the difficulties and joys of both sexual and linguistic identities is the narrator's childhood crush on a little girl, aged 8 as he is, who is a fellow guest at friends of his parents:

She gave off sunshine. She had thick, crinkly blonde hair, skin that was honey coloured, very dark eyes and a face so clear and open that years later, when Tito and I were hiking in the Himalayas and there was a change of wind and suddenly, in an explosion of clarity that cut my breath short, we beheld the mountain Nanga Parbat in its massive, microscopically accurate entirety, the first world, the only word, that came to my lips was her long forgotten name.

The little girl, Marissa, is Czech so they cannot communicate properly. She speaks German