Frydmania

Delving through my basket of emotion books, I realise that there are a few in there that do sit closer to the notion of a morality tale.

The main deal of a morality tale, it often seems, is that children are dreadful – and if they stay dreadful, they reap the consequences of it.

While I enjoy the likes of the classic poem about Matilda, I don’t really want dreadful things to happen to those I read to. I do want to offer some useful life lessons along the way, yes, but in a less heavy-handed way.

So how is the modern morality tale for children to operate? Some take the classic instructional stories and add a new twist. Others turn the morality tale on its head, and have the children telling off the parents for poor behaviour.

And a few others take things that parents protest about in children’s behaviour – and show the positives in it.

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The Boy Who Cried Wolf – Tony Ross

We are big fans of Tony Ross – the illustrator for the wonderful Doctor Xargle and many others. But Ross writes plenty of stories of his own too, and here he takes on a classic injunction: do not tell lies.

If your tinies are concerned about ravenous wolves in general, you may want to check this out first. The wolf is not scary in looks – in fact, he appears to be quite the epicure, putting on a dinner jacket for his trips over the mountains in search of food.

The child in the story understands that the grownups are just as afraid of the wolf as any, so he spends much of his time scaring them. This gets him out of baths, violin practice and other questionable activities.

Part of why I like the book is the way that the wolf himself responds to the grownups’ moralising:

“At last the wolf caught up with Harry.

‘You shouldn’t have told so many lies!’ said the grown-ups sternly.

The wolf heard the grown-ups and changed his mind about eating Harry…”

I’ll leave you to find out the climax of the story for yourself, but it tackles a familiar story in a much more ingenious way.

Another of our favourites sees the parents under the microscope for poor behaviour.

Naughty Parents – Joy Gosney

Here the children have to keep tabs on the parents, who are doing all the things they are normally telling children not to do: dribble ice creams, run away in the park, and so on.

Children love the joke being turned round – there is a lot of scope for more dramatic, finger-wagging versions if you do this as a read-aloud.

The visual style is bright and loosely drawn, giving a sense of the energy of the miscreants. (I would like a little of that energy – maybe I need to run off and eat ice cream more often myself.)

Why? – Lindsay Camp, Tony Ross

Tony Ross gets a second mention in one post. It’s always worth it with Ross, but especially so with this delicious tale which shows why it’s sometimes good to have someone prepared to keep asking why.

The heroine Lily asks why after why, in time-honoured fashion. Her dad accompanies her through her day, doing his best to keep up with all the questions, but even he gives up at points:

” ‘I wish you wouldn’t always say “why”, Lily.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it drives me mad.’

‘Why?’

‘It just does, Lily. It just does.’ “

If I simply tell you that the next day, it all changes, it’s only because I really need not to give away just why that little question is so important.

But I can tell you that I had one of those laugh out loud moments, in a completely un-internetty kind of way, because what happens next in the story is so unexpected – and so great.

Those junior readers who like a bit of code cracking will also be happy to decipher a little of what is included.

By the end of the tale, ‘why?’ moves on from becoming irritating – and Lily’s dad changes his mind about his daughter’s ‘why’ habit.

I should tell you that ‘it just does, Lily, it just does’ has entered the family collection of stock phrases. It’s that good.

I highly encourage you to seek this one out. Even when you know what’s coming on a reread, it’s still definitely worth it.

I have a soft spot for slightly mangled phrases. I don’t really mind where they come from, as long as they taste good on the tongue and serve well for repetition.

Some come from children – whether one’s own or from others. A good children’s saying is like a fossilised piece of language, fixing a child at a particular age and stage.

So it is that we still say ‘Chicken in a schoo-ool!’ to each other at times, with dire looks in our eyes, and think happily of the young Thomas the Tank Engine enthusiast who narrated it quite so worriedly.

It has reached the stage where we have told Junior Reader where the phrases come from, and now they have new usage, beyond those who were there at the time.

Winnie the Pooh is a good one for multiple-usage phrases, as I have already alluded to. He also gave us ‘crustimoney proseedcake’ (instead of customary procedure), and the famous ‘expotition to dicsover the North Pole’.

But this week, the one sticking in my mind is the Elephant’s Child, in Kipling’s Just So stories, and his ” ‘satiable curtiosity”.

In this case, it is what gets him into trouble – but what also serves to make him distinctive. (Mangled phrases can do that for you.)

I have happy memories of reading this to a certain keen reader who is now too big and grown up to fit on my knee. But I do remember putting our feet up together and revelling in all the wonderful phrases of this tale.

I hope you will too – and you can read the whole story online

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The Elephant’s Child – Rudyard Kipling

“…he lived in Africa, and he filled all Africa with his ‘satiable curtiosities. He asked his tall aunt, the Ostrich, why her tail-feathers grew just so, and his tall aunt the Ostrich spanked him with her hard, hard claw. He asked his tall uncle, the Giraffe, what made his skin spotty, and his tall uncle, the Giraffe, spanked him with his hard, hard hoof. And still he was full of ‘satiable curtiosity!”

We’re wading on through the feelings basket of books – and this time, it’s looking at feelings of sadness.

On the Way Home – Jill Murphy

This is an interesting book, by a familiar author – you may have seen her Worst Witch chapter books, and we’re also fond of the picture book Whatever Next. Murphy’s visual style is rich, encouraging you to linger over the illustrations.

In one sense, you could suggest this is also a book about fears – the book’s character Claire seems to be followed by various scary characters, as she makes her way home after hurting her knee.

As Claire meets friends along the route, the story changes, and the reasons for Claire’s poorly knee get more and more spectacular.

What’s effective is how the story changes when Claire gets home. We hear the truth about what happened, and, safe now, Claire can let go of her pretend fears for the real pain of the injury – and mum not being there.

Fortunately, Claire’s mum knows all the right things to do – including finding the biggest plaster to help make the poorly knee get better fast.

I enjoyed this book as a way to see how children respond differently to pain. Sometimes we are very much in touch with it, and there are tears.

Sometimes we have to bottle it up until we can get to a safe place, and Claire’s stories suggest how she dealt with her sadness until she could get home to mum.

Cheer up Your Teddy Bear, Emily Brown! – Cressida Cowell

Emily Brown is back on the case, this time dealing with feelings of sadness and loneliness. She and her rabbit friend Stanley meet the Tearful Teddybear, who is on his own in the toybox and feeling very sorry for himself.

Emily tries various cheering up techniques with the teddbybear, but none of them seem to work.

What’s interesting here is how Emily and Stanley also then become sad – an introduction to depression, and the impact of it on those around the person who is depressed.

The teddybear’s sadness is shown as rain throughout the book, and by the time Emily and Stanley are affected, there is a big black raincloud that washes out the pictures they were painting.

Emily is able to invoke a large red magical umbrella to keep them all out of the rain – and the teddybear goes on to discover not only that he is not alone, but that he can help himself to find ways to smile again.

We can’t always ‘fix’ sadness, but the message that there are others like us out there is a helpful one, as is the notion of positive thinking as having a place in how we respond to situations.

Sad Book – Michael Rosen, Quentin Blake

Fully up the scale of sadness is Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, dealing with the author’s loss of his son. This is not part of the basket of books I mentioned, but one I have looked through, and seemed appropriate to include here.

Bereavement is a difficult enough topic for anyone to deal with. To deal with the loss of a child, a whole step further. That Rosen does so through the means of a picture book with verse makes this a very special read, even though not an easy one.

This is one of the reasons that children’s literature is so important – because it does not shy away from the truly difficult topics. Something of the simplicity of a children’s book means that it cuts to the heart of what is important – as well as allowing plenty of space for the reader to respond in their own way.

I also read Goodbye Mog a while back, where the beloved Mog of Mog the Forgetful Cat ends her own journey – and then comes back to look in at her family to see how they are getting on.

I was initially shocked by it – we so rarely see death of main characters in children’s books – but then found it very helpful.

Given that children often experience death first through the loss of a well-loved pet, a book like Goodbye Mog offers a way into this situation – as well as something to turn to if our own junior readers find themselves in this position.

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There are many characters in children’s fiction who experience sadness along the path of a great adventure. I don’t wish to reduce the importance of that.

But I do want to acknowledge the everyday nature of sadness – and how an openness about it can often help us, and those around us. We may move on from it quickly, as Claire does, or more slowly, depending on the circumstance.

Finding ways to express the sadness – and ways to depict the sadness for others, so we understand – can be crucial in reducing a sense of isolation.

I’ve drawn on a wide range of expressions of sadness among the books I’ve mentioned. They are not all to be dived into at the same time.

But little by little, according to our own junior reader and their situations, we may find that old and kindly solace of books: that someone has been there before us, and that someone understands.

Moving on through my book basket on feelings, today it’s time to look at some picture books that deal with feelings of worry.

Not a Worry in the World – Marcia Williams

Williams is a favourite of ours. Her cartoony style, with lots of little jokes hidden in borders and margins, is well known for tackling big themes and literary classics, such as Sinbad or Robin Hood.

But she uses this style effectively here for dealing with worries. By bringing them to life on the page, we can explore their ‘nasty nature’, how they seem to get bigger or feel overpowering – and what we can do to bring them down to size again.

The books is available in the UK – the link above is a .com one – but I put it in so you don’t miss out on what the pictures are like. One big advantage is ‘showing’ potential worries – a good way to get them into perspective, and out of our imaginations.

This is a longer read, but it does go through a number of different worry situations. It can be a helpful one to return to – for where a situation may not be a worry at the moment, it may come up in the future, and offer a solution for then.

Winston was Worried – Pamela Duncan Edwards, Benji Davies

This is a newer addition to the collection, but quite an interesting one, because it deals with deeper stories of ‘bad things happen to me’.

Winston the dog gets a splinter in his paw, and is on his way to the vet. He meets various friends on the way who encourage him to join them, but he can’t because of the splinter.

As he tells and retells the story, the splinter becomes bigger and bigger in significance, bringing him to repeat his belief ‘everything always happens to me’.

Caught up in this inner story, he also fails to see the misfortunes that affect his friends in turn – much bigger ones than his own splinter.

By the end, the splinter is gone – but a new worry is there to take its place. However, he is about to see what has happened to his friends – and potentially to put his own situation in perspective.

This one is quite light in tone, and there are some useful comedy mice about the place to spot as well, but the pattern of Winston’s responses is perhaps one that an adult can gently question with a child.

Emily Brown and the Elephant Emergency – Cressida Cowell

Before we knew of Hiccup at all, we met his author, Cressida Cowell, through her picture book heroine Emily Brown, and Emily’s trusty rabbit sidekick, Stanley.

In fact, we started our appreciation of Emily with this book, a later one in the collection of Emily Brown stories, but one that we still enjoy a lot.

Emily and Stanley can be relied on to have various adventures – and they do, this time joined by Matilda the elephant. The trouble is, Matilda’s mummy keeps phoning up and worrying about Matilda in various ways.

What is interesting is the way that Matilda’s mummy’s worries gradually transfer to Matilda herself. After concerns about getting her socks wet and so on, Matilda becomes overly cautious about joining Emily Brown and Stanley at all.

What I love about the story is the way that the three of them rescue Matilda’s mummy from the terrible great greyness that has overcome her at the office where she works.

Matilda’s mummy is now much less worried, and able to get involved in adventures herself. In a nice twist, when the office phones her with a trivial concern, she is able to respond at an appropriate level – but I won’t spoil the surprise.

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Worry is a broad topic – and one often dealt with in much more detail in chapter books. But worry is still there for younger children, whether of the real and threatening kind, or of the true but blown out of proportion kind.

Again, by exploring responses to worry, and ways in which worry feeds itself, it offers junior readers a perspective on their own situations, or those of friends.

Another time, I’ll deal with situations of sadness or depression – less familiar in children’s books perhaps, but valuable still. Lest it seem that all these are concerning, let me encourage you that the stories turn out well – just as we hope for our children’s own mini crises.