Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill (18 page)

Bill has a bad dog.

Get a rod. Hit a dog.

Jack hit his neck.

Dick hit his hip.

Tom got a bad kick in the neck.

 

The author gets into her stride when it comes to infant mortality. When the wagon gets stuck in the snow, the little sisters freeze to death, and when Jack falls from the high tree, his neck is ‘snapped' and ‘he is killed on the spot'. A disobedient child drinks poison and dies in agony – ‘the poison has destroyed him'. One particularly grisly account involves William, who played with gunpowder with dire results. His father, Mr Morley, rushes up the stairs on hearing a loud noise.

 

What a sight! All his children lying on the floor burning.

The doctor says, ‘The children are blind, they will soon die.'

 

A century and a half later, material for emergent readers, thank goodness, is very different. These bright, informative and entertaining picture books and early texts enrich life, they take children to places they may never visit and introduce them to characters they may never meet, and the early reader grows to see reading as a pleasurable activity.

In the post with Dr O'Shea's gift came another book, this one produced by the Book Trust.
Treasure, a Book of Ideas
celebrates learning in its broadest sense with advice for parents and teachers on how to give children the very best start in reading: a curiosity about life, an eagerness to learn and a lifelong love of books. Thankfully,
Reading Without Tears
is not a recommended text.

In the Reading Corner

The reading corner in the small Dales school had a hard-backed teacher's chair, a small square of coloured carpet, two large cushions and a bookcase full of assorted books. I had agreed to read a story to the sixteen bright-eyed children, and selected a story from
The Tales of Peter Rabbit
, the children's classic by Beatrix Potter. The selection of this book, I found, was singularly unfortunate, and I came to appreciate just how shrewd, bluntly honest and witty the Dales child can be.

John, a serious little boy of about seven or eight, with a tangled mop of straw-coloured hair, was clearly not very enamoured with the plot. I arrived at that part of the story when poor Peter Rabbit, to escape the terrifying Mr McGregor, who was searching for him in the vegetable garden, became entangled in the gooseberry net. The frightened little rabbit gave himself up for lost and shed big tears. It was the climax to the story and when I had read this part to my little nephew Jamie and my niece Kirsten, their eyes had widened like saucers and their mouths had fallen open in expectation of the capture of the poor little rabbit by the cruel gardener. But John stared impassively at me, with tight little lips and wide staring eyes.

‘What a terrible thing it would be,' I said, ‘if poor Peter Rabbit should be caught.'

‘Rabbits! Rabbits!' cried the angry-faced little lad, scratching the tangled mop of hair in irritation. ‘They're a blasted nuisance, that's what my dad says! Have you seen what rabbits do to a crop?' I answered that I had not. ‘Rabbits with little cotton-wool tails and pipe-cleaner whiskers,' he sneered, ‘and fur as soft as velvet. Huh! We shoot the buggers! They can eat their way through a crop in a week, can rabbits. Clear nine acres in a month! Millions of pounds' worth of damage when it's a mild winter. No amount of fencing will stop 'em.'

‘We don't shoot rabbits on our farm,' announced a little girl of about ten, with round rosy cheeks and closely cropped red hair.

‘Don't you?' I asked.

‘We gas ours!' she told me. ‘That stops 'em, I can tell you.'

‘Nay, Marianne,' retorted the boy, curling a small lip, ‘gassin' doesn't work.' Then, looking me straight in the eyes, he added: ‘Never mind poor old Peter Rabbit. It's Mr McGregor I feel sorry for – trying to grow his vegetables with a lot of 'ungry rabbits all ovver t'place!'

‘Perhaps I should read another book,' I suggested feebly.

 

A Favourite Book

I am frequently asked, by children in the schools I visit, which is my very favourite story. I tell them I have read a good many books in my time but the one story which I love the most, one which brings back such happy memories of my childhood and one which I wish I had written myself, is
The Selfish Giant
by Oscar Wilde. It was my grandmother's favourite story and was read to me when I was small. It is a powerful, poignant and simply written narrative about a mean-minded Giant who forbids the little children to enter his beautiful garden to play.

One Easter time, when visiting a small rural primary school in Nidderdale, North Yorkshire, I read
The Selfish Giant
to a group of eight-year-olds. The children sat in a semi-circle around me on the carpet in the reading corner and listened intently as I recounted the tale.

‘My own garden is my own garden,' he tells the children, ‘and I will not allow anyone to play in it but myself.' When spring comes, the Giant's garden remains cold and barren and a great white cloak of snow buries everything. The Giant cannot understand why the spring passes his garden by. Summer doesn't come, and neither does autumn, and the garden stays perpetually cold and empty of life. One morning, the Giant sees a most wonderful sight. Through a little hole in the wall, the children have crept into his garden and every tree has a little child sitting in the branches amongst the blossoms. They have brought life back to his garden, and the Giant's heart melts. He creeps into the garden but when the children see him they are frightened and run away. One small boy doesn't see the Giant, for his eyes are full of tears. The Giant steals up behind the child and gently takes his little hand in his. Many years pass and the little boy never comes back to play in the garden. Now very old and feeble, the giant longs to see his first little friend again. One day the small child returns.

 

Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, ‘Who hath dared to wound thee?' For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of the two nails were on the little feet.

‘Who hath dared to wound thee?' cried the Giant; ‘tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.'

‘Nay!' answered the child: ‘but these are the wounds of Love.'

‘Who art thou?' said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.

And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, ‘You let me play once in your garden, today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.'

And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.

 

At the end, my little listeners were clearly moved, as I was when I first heard the story, and they sat in silence. The teacher dabbed her eyes. Then a small girl sitting at the front declared, ‘I'm a Methodist, Mr Phinn, and I'm going to Paradise one day.'

‘I am sure you are,' I told her, smiling.

‘I'm Church of England,' volunteered another child, ‘and I'm going to Paradise as well.'

I nodded. ‘Of course.'

A wiry-looking little boy at the back stood up and announced loudly, ‘Well, I'm nowt – but I'm gerrin in!'

You will probably be first in the queue, I thought to myself.

Playing Safe      

Last autumn, I visited a primary school to read some of my poems to the children, and to open a new block. As I walked across the playground at break, I caught sight of some junior boys playing football with a large foam ball.

‘That's not a proper football,' I observed.

‘Aye, well,' one replied, wiping his nose on the back of his hand, ‘we're not allowed to use a proper one in case someone gets hurt. Last year a lad got hit in the face and bust his nose.' I recalled when I was their age and played football on Herringthorpe Playing Fields, in Rotherham, with a substantial football. I well recall when the heavy, sodden, leather orb arched its way through the air towards me and smacked me on my bare legs. It stung for ages but it was worth it.

‘Lasses can't skip, either,' said the other boy, ‘in case they fall over.'

‘Then t'school could get done,' the first boy told me, ‘if somebody gets 'urt and 'as to go to t'ospital.'

‘No win, no fee,' said the second boy, nodding sagely.

Earlier that year, I had visited a school in British Columbia, Canada, to speak to teachers and school trustees and work in some of the schools. This school, on the spectacular Victoria Island, was one of the highest achieving in the country; it was bright, cheerful and welcoming, with an outstanding reputation in music, art and poetry. On a glorious day, I sat in the sunshine with a group of elementary school children, outside their classroom, during recess.

Above us circled two magnificent birds with snow white heads, golden beaks and incredibly large wing spans.

‘Bald eagles,' said the little girl sitting next to me, shaking her head.

I stared up in amazement. ‘I have never seen such huge and beautiful birds,' I said.

‘Yeah,' said the girl, in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘We get a lot of these around here. They're real nuisances. We have to keep our cat indoors when they are breeding.'

‘They take your cats?' I exclaimed.

‘Sure do, and anything else they can get. They like the salmon the best but they will eat anything. They're on the lookout now because they've two chicks to feed.'

‘I would love to see the chicks,' I said.

‘Well, take a walk up the path at the back of the school,' the child told me, ‘and turn right at the top and you'll see the eagles' nest high up in the cottonwood tree.'

‘I shall do that at lunchtime,' I said.

‘Remember to get your bell and pepper spray from the school secretary.'

‘Bell and pepper spray?' I repeated.

‘In case you come across a black bear up there,' the child told me.

‘Black bear,' I mouthed.

‘They're breeding at the moment too,' the child informed me, casually. ‘It's the brown bears, the grizzlies, that you have to be careful of, but they are up on the mountains and don't usually come down.'

‘Grizzly bears,' I whispered.

‘The black are mostly harmless unless you get in between the mother and her cub. Then they can be nasty. But if you come across one on the path, look her straight in the eyes, ring your bell really loudly and use the pepper spray, and they soon skedaddle.'

‘I see,' I said.

‘Keep an eye out for a cougar,' another little girl told me. ‘He sometimes likes to rest in the branches of a tree.'

‘Don't look a cougar in the eye though,' added the other. ‘They feel threatened if you do.'

I sat there in the sunshine and thought for a moment. In some schools in England, the children are not allowed to play football and skip. In Canada there are black bears and cougars in the woods at the back of the schools. Such is life!

A Prickly Customer

It won't be long now before the prickly residents which live in my garden make their appearance. Last October, I set up three boxes by the compost heap for the hedgehogs, so they could settle down for the winter. We have quite a colony in our garden (I believe the correct collective noun for hedgehogs is ‘prickle') and, when the children were small, they would wait until dusk and go out onto the lawn to watch these strange, shy and endearing little creatures snuffling about, looking for the dog food we put out for them. Lizzie, my daughter, still loves hedgehogs and, when she was little, her very favourite Beatrix Potter story featured Mrs Tiggywinkle.

I recall visiting a primary school one cold November day, when I was a school inspector. The teacher asked the eight-year-olds to describe anything interesting that they had seen over the weekend. One child informed her that she had seen a hedgehog on the lawn.

‘It's very strange,' said the teacher, looking in my direction, ‘that a hedgehog has come out at this time of year, isn't it, Mr Phinn?'

‘It is,' I agreed.

‘They usually have a long sleep in the winter, don't they, Mr Phinn?'

‘They do,' I concurred again.

‘Did you disturb it, Chardonnay?' asked the teacher.

‘No, Miss,' replied the child.

‘Well it is strange, isn't it, Mr Phinn?' asked the teacher.

‘It is,' I replied, wishing that she would desist from constantly consulting me.

‘And did anything happen to you over the weekend, Darren?' asked the teacher of a small frizzy-haired boy with large eyes.

‘Some white worms come out of my bottom,' announced the child bluntly.