A Christmas Carol: December 2013

It’s a beautiful day out. Blue skies, wonderful trees opposite, now turned the colour of orange zest. The light, the colours are what I hope for for autumn.

But in fact, it’s December already. Right now it looks a long way away from Christmas card scenes of snow, robins and the like. Yet I know, from the eagerly awaited first door of the advent calendar, that we are on our way there.

An idea came to me today: my own version of a Christmas Carol. No need for ghosts, chains and so on, I trust. But a chance to think about Christmas through the lens of the story: Christmas past, Christmas present, and maybe some Christmas future too.

As adults, we may find it hard to look to the excitement of Christmas, when we are considering to do lists, and more dates in the diary, and so on.

Yet we may well have earlier memories when Christmas was all about anticipation, amazement. I want to capture some of that.

At the same time, none of us live purely in traditions. There will be some we take, some we dispense with, but there are also the tasks of all year round: clean the sink, wash the clothes, cook the evening meal.

I want to see what elements of anticipation may be there in the everyday, as well as in the more deliberately Christmassy activities.

In a Christmas Carol, Scrooge was given the chance to look forward and see how things might be if he didn’t change. I don’t want to be in that category either: but I’d also like to think about how Christmas might be in the future.

What would it look like to spend Christmas in another country? What if I ever finally tackle cooking turkey for multitudes? What would a Christmas be like if presents weren’t part of the picture at all?

I don’t know that I am signing up to any or all of these, but I am interested to think about it. What makes Christmas Christmas for me, my family – and what in fact is open to change, maybe to improvement too?

And if I can dig out our copy, it might be a good time to read Dickens’ original too. I’ll see what happens on that one, but I’d like to find out how the original works, separate from Grinches or Muppets, fun though they are.

Over on Facebook for November, I joined others in looking at what I was grateful for, day by day through the month. It was great to see the variety of responses – in different countries, different settings.

I’m hoping that this Christmas Carol will keep going with the gratitudes. But I hope I will also find a way to look at anticipation, longing, uncertain beginnings, and moments where I am simply present to what is happening.

Picture Book Inspiration Month: a few more ideas

It’s another Thursday. That’s a start. Might even be an opportunity to do some blogging again.

It’s nearly the end of the month – that month where I said I would come up with more ideas for picture books. The numerically astute among you will see that didn’t really happen.
At least, not at the ‘one a day’ quantity I was after.

Turns out that’s OK. It’s a stretch to put up ideas when you’re not quite sure about them – and when you’re off finding out about someone else’s ideas, easy to fill up the time and not consider developing your own ideas.

This is the usual quandry. I love finding out about things – some I act on sooner, others sit for a while. But it’s easy to be ‘busy’ doing that, and not do the thing you said you were going to do.

Anyway. There were a few more ideas that I thought I would capture here, even if they are sketches rather than more worked out ideas. So here goes:

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Mr Teeth. I’d like to write a story about Mr Teeth. If any of you have a wind up toy that looks like a large mouth with big teeth, that’s it. And if not, here’s a picture.

Junior Reader is fond of Mr Teeth. (In fact, the version we have is actually Mr Teeth 2 – the original copped it on a playdate. Junior Reader cried. Granny, the finder of Mr Teeth, managed to find a replacement. Phew.)

So at the moment, Mr Teeth is sitting on my bedside table, waiting for an adventure. I’m not sure quite what.

The easy version is that Mr Teeth gets wound up, falls off the edge of a table or something like that, gets lost for a bit, has an adventure, and then is found again.

But there are a lot of stories like that. It’s not that I don’t like lost and found stories (some can be great – Stick Man is one that springs to mind), but you need to be good to pull them off well.

I think it’s more likely that Mr Teeth scares people, because of the size of the teeth. And that he doesn’t really know it.

So he gets wound up and jumps around on the top of the table, doing his party trick, and the other toys back off because he seems a little…well. Overly aggressive. When he isn’t really.

I’d like to think that there’s a point where Mr Teeth saves the day – a bit like where Mog meows very loudly at the burglar, he’s caught, and her previous sins of sitting on the flowers in the kitchen windowbox (and a few others) are forgiven.

Maybe Mr Teeth is an encouragement to eat your tea – that the reluctant eater is prepared to eat at the same time as Mr Teeth is dancing round the table.

I’d also like to think that Mr Teeth gets into a TV studio and steals the show from the anchor man, or something of that kind. To do a one-up on someone else who is all teeth, you see.

So. That’s where Mr Teeth is up to so far. Go 50 /50. Phone a friend. Let me know what you think Mr Teeth ought to be doing, and I’ll wind him up, and we’ll see where he goes.

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The next idea I have is for Partians. Partians are an invention: they are marrowfat peas, which look a little different from regular peas. I added some to Junior Reader’s plate a while back, and was asked what they were, so I said Partians.

(Sometimes the trouble is echoes of other books. They could have been small green drops, a la Charlie and Lola. But I don’t need to work to get Junior Reader to eat, so I haven’t gone that route.)

Partians are a bit different to Martians. They are green, whereas we think Martians might be red (red planet and all that). They spend their time landing on different planets – but because they are not very astute, they are really crash landing on children’s dinner plates.

So there’s scope to describe the food in terms of a strange landscape that the Partians are exploring. They’ve traversed scrambled egg, they’ve waded through the stew swamps, and I’m sure they might try a few other things.

The complication is that if they are on the plate, they get eaten. Although the Partians, ever optimistic, might see this as an opportunity to go caving, and see what’s down at the bottom of that nice dark cave.

When I write this, I am reminded of one of our reading heroes, Traction Man. We haven’t read the first one, but Traction Man Meets Turbo Dog was an early library-borrowed success.

Traction Man does lots of exploring, such as climbing the compost heap, making his way through the garden pond on an old boot, and so on. I love this book, but it may have become a little too internalised – I don’t want the Partians to be doing exactly the same.

Junior Reader has since coloured me a person-shaped bookmark and told me it’s a Partian. This one is a mix of a pinky-purple and a deep blue. This means I now have a Partian bookmark, which not everyone has, but I am unsure about the end colour of Partians.

I suspect that the Partians are a bit like the aliens in Galaxy Quest – very serious and thus unintentionally funny at the same time.

So there is scope for them to do quite a few different outings (I’m sorry, expeditions), if I can just work out where they go and what they do while they’re there.

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Finally, pigeons. I’ve written before about the pigeon formation team that circles our house a lot. This month, I’ve particularly enjoyed seeing them, when the low light catches their bellies and they glow in the winter sunshine.

I wonder to myself why they continue to circle, and whether they might choose to move on, like migratory birds do. What would it be like if one of them choose to migrate? Where would he go? How would he learn to find his way there?

There are a good number of books out there with themes of birds migrating – picture books, and some chapter books too.

It could be interesting to look at this from an outsider’s perspective: would he be accepted? Would he learn to fly in formation with the other birds, the way geese do?

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The thing about all these themes: it’s about inspiration. Sometimes, not that much. But a feeling that a certain idea, or toy, or bird is more than just what I see on the surface.

And maybe that’s all we need. We are all more than we seem, at first appearance.
We all have the potential in us to travel, to risk, to be foolish as well as brave.

And maybe one of these characters, or a different one, will agree to set out on a word quest with me some day. I very much hope so.

Picture Book Inspiration Month: how did that happen?

A month of inspiration? I know. A few ideas, yes, but not a month’s worth.

Turns out that’s OK. At least, it’s OK by me, and since I tend to have my own take on other people’s monthly themes, to quote Victor Borge, ‘that’s the way it’s gonna BE!’.

Anyway, I think there may be inspiration in Thursdays. It turned out that I came up with more ideas on Thursday last week too. Maybe it’s the prospect of the weekend round the corner, the sense of jobs ticked off in the week so there’s space to play – something like that.

I have had a few other ideas, and I will share those too (in another post), because it is, after all, about inspiration: not necessarily about finished product. (There’s a separate month for that. Will see how I feel about that when the time comes round.)

But this evening, I had one of those ideas that ‘takes itself for a walk’, and I thought I would pick it up, and let it wander up and down my keyboard for a bit.

Here goes.

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[You need to imagine this as a double page spread: one half has a child’s response, the other half has the adult’s response. But the recurring phrase ‘How did that happen?’ needs to sit across both halves of the page, at the bottom, so that it applies to both.

I’m going to mark them C for child and A for adult, just so you can follow whose ideas are whose, as they unfold.]

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C: I lost my new sticker! I’m sure I put it somewhere. YES! I already checked my coat pocket. Of course I did.

A: Time for another haircut for him already? Looks like his hair filled out fast.

How did that happen?

C: My water fell off the table. I didn’t touch it! I was just eating my dinner and my elbow dusted the cup a bit.

A: All of a sudden, there’s an inch of ankle below those pyjamas. I’m sure she hasn’t grown that quickly – has she?

How did that happen?

C: Mum! Mum! Look! It snowed last night. It’s up to the back door already, but there wasn’t any when I went to bed.

A: No Nativity play this year. They don’t do them any more when they get ‘big’.

How did that happen?

C: Dad! There’s no pocket money left in my wallet. I know I didn’t spend it – well not much. Only part of it went on sweets.

A: Don’t tell me we’ve run out of milk…I bought a big jug of it only yesterday.

How did that happen?

C: Mum! The sweet shop stopped selling sherbet fountains. They’ve always sold sherbet fountains.

A: I thought she didn’t like the new girl in her class – and here they are playing together.

How did that happen?

C: Dad! You don’t need to pick me up – I can reach it myself.

A: He can’t be up to my shoulder already – can he?

How did that happen?

[Then there’s a double page spread with lots of different ‘reasons why’, interspersed with each other]

It’s Christmas already…I put it in my bag…He had two bowls of cereal before bedtime…The shop owner doesn’t like sherbet fountains – they don’t sell…It is time for a haircut – his hair grows faster in the summer…She’s in third grade now – they do a Christmas concert instead….I just got bigger, that’s all…The snow fell really fast…I didn’t see my cup was on the edge of the table…I forgot I owed Dad some money too…she’s having a growth spurt…he’s twelve already…the new girl likes making up stories too…

[and at the bottom of the page]

…that’s how it happened.

[Ideally I’d like the end papers of the book to pick up some images from the story – including showing where the missing sticker ended up.]

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I wanted to show how both child and adult can be surprised, at the same time, but over completely different things. The child is still discovering and exploring; the adult is realising that the child is growing up, and seeing how fast time is moving on.

I didn’t want to take the exploring too far – it is still a picture book. No need for the child to be grown up by the end, or the adult to be at the empty nest point. But I did want to show a sense of the child maturing, over the course of the story – that some of the early concerns are superceded by more grown-up ones.

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I think this could take some more work – I’d quite like the child and the adult to be in the same visual scene, united by that, if still separated by their different ‘how did that happen?’ concerns. It could go through seasons in the year – or rooms in the house – or some other device that offers movement to the story.

I don’t know how much a child would want to read the adult’s thoughts – but they do hear the adult ask ‘how did that happen?’, so it might still work as a book for the child too.

The repetition of ‘how did that happen?’ is aimed at the child – and poking fun at some of the incredulity of how things ‘do’ happen in life, sometimes seemingly overnight.

A run up

Dan is trying to encourage me towards some TV. That’s OK. It’s a Thursday night, and both of us are feeling that slow drag towards the end of the working/school week.

I reply that I think I might do some writing. Which is good, because, you know, it’s 7 November, and I have been avoiding writing since the start of the month.

Dan agrees. ‘Are you in the zone?’ he asks.

‘I’m in the run up to considering being in the zone,’ I say.

When did writing become like pole vaulting, I wonder.

Not just a run and hurl yourself over a bar, high jump style. But an even more gravity-defying scheme: grab a big bendy stick, choose an even higher bar, run like mad, and hope that somehow you will hurtle over it.

I don’t know how many people grow up wanting to be pole vaulters. I suspect there are more people who say they want to be writers. I’m pretty sure there are, because one of the online groups I became part of seems to be full of people saying they want to be writers.

All week, I’ve been ignoring the high bar. I know there’s a crash mat on the other side, sure, but writing doesn’t always feel like that.  (There is always the delete post option if you think you’ve really crashed big time, but that doesn’t always encourage you into writing.)

I’ve been waiting for the words, the ideas. A bit like the pole, if you will. The right words, the right bit of flex…you can feel the movement building up already when you have those.

Trying to hurl yourself over an impossibly high bar with no stick…that would be plain stupid. (Especially given the thoughts about the crash mat, or possible absence thereof.)

Your alternative would be to drop yourself from a great height, and somehow find a bar – and a crash mat – to land on the other side of. And yes, I know the Queen parachuted out of a plane at the opening of the Olympics, but no one saw her make it over the bar either.

(Don’t worry. I do know about the opening. And yes, I gasped too when she spun round, in the earlier footage at the palace, and you realised it really was the woman herself.)

But sometimes, someone pushes the pole into your hands, just through uttering a handful of words. Or through you pausing for a half-second, between hanging up the washing and considering the sound of the rain outside – noticing something.

And before you know it, your brain is revving up, and you think you’ll have a go at it again. Muscle memory. Great thing, that. And that height must be possible, surely, or they wouldn’t have invented the sport, would they?

How do you gain the courage to consider flipping your body off the ground, propelled by a bendy stick? I don’t know. It’s not something I’m planning on trying. Any time soon.

But that run up, that sighting something high and lofty, and up-in-the-air exciting? The heft of the words in your hands, under your fingers as you type?

The grunt, as you set the computer before you and just begin. It is about performing, yes, and it isn’t about performing at all.

It’s setting your own bar, raising it, time and time again, and then daring to consider that you might surmount even that.

One thing, though. There will be no wearing of shorts during the composition of this post.

Picture Book Ideas Month: magpies

These are the ones that are just germs of ideas so far. They haven’t really started to sprout. But I want to add them in, because they might in the future.

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Twelve magpies: another one that came from a blog post of mine. There’s the original rhyme about counting magpies – and one day I saw a full twelve magpies in a tree in next door’s garden, way more than the seven that the rhyme finishes with.

I think there is something rather magical about this, still, which is why I’d like it to become a book. I think it has to include giving the original rhyme. Perhaps children in the story develop alternative rhymes for magpies 8-12.

The original seven magpies are to do with the kind of things that fables excel at: pairs and contrast. Sorrow, joy; girl, boy. But also things known and things unknown: ‘seven for a secret never to be told’.

Another way of viewing this is perhaps with the magpies leading the children through a series of clues, so they do find the secret – but more besides. That would allow for giving rise to there being more magpies.

Magpies are a mixed bag: liked in some ways, feared in others (or at least considered carefully), mocked in others. Maybe it’s the cockiness; maybe it’s the stealing of shiny items.

We have quite a lot of magpies near us, for some reason. I like the way they move, almost hopping in both feet, bouncing really. I like the bravado.

So it would be nice to consider a way to show magpies in a better light – and perhaps one where they share their ‘silver and gold’ with children, for a change.