Use Your Words. Please.

It feels almost frivolous to write blog posts about my rarefied life in a world where people are being bombed out of existence and passenger jets are being shot out of the sky and genocides are quietly, systematically going on in various corners of the world and a virulent disease of horrific proportions is cutting a swathe through the people of West Africa. In fact, it doesn’t just feel frivolous: it sort of is.

But, as I so often have to ask myself, what else can I do?

Words, whether written or spoken, are among the most powerful weapons at our disposal. We can use them to rabble-rouse or to comfort; to propagandise or to tell the truth. We can use them calmly, or we can use them in the heat of anger. Sometimes, the same words can mean entirely different things, if said in two different tones of voice. Sometimes, too, writing words down can strip them of nuance and lead to misunderstanding. Two different people can have two entirely different, even contradictory, interpretations of the same written or spoken text, which means that words, our greatest treasure, can also be our biggest liability. Information is as vital a tool in our world as medicine or infrastructure or politics – nations and peoples can rise and fall depending on what words are in their holy books or on the lips of their leaders, and on how the people who hear or read these words understand what they are being told.

So, then, as a person who lives and breathes for words, perhaps I am not as helpless as I feel.

Of course, my sphere is very small, but I can choose what words to fill it with. The words I use go on to have a life without and beyond me, which means I must choose them carefully. My words are my only means of explaining myself to the world, and they will be my only legacy. I can hope that they will be understood as I intended them to be, but I know I have no control over that – once a word has left your pen, or your mouth, or your keyboard, and reached the eyes or ears of another, it is no longer yours. You are responsible for it, but it no longer belongs to you.

Photo Credit: Saint Huck via Compfight cc

I wish that world leaders could think about words this way. I wish those calling for war could consider that, in their need to ‘win’, they are throwing their own people on a pyre, and I wish they could be made to care that they are destroying lives and blighting the future. What good is it to stand triumphant over a smoking, blasted landscape? I wish those responsible for leading the world’s faithful could be more considered in the words they use, and the labels they choose to apply to others, and the interpretations they make of holy texts and scriptures. I wish people – those people with the loudest voices, and the largest platforms, and the greatest amount of words at their disposal – would use them more carefully, respecting their power, and being mindful of the consequences. Skewing the thinking of a people is not simply a game, or a way to win influence – it is dangerous, and something which can easily flare out of control, and it is wrong. It is also the easiest thing in the world to do, if one has the words and there are ears willing to hear.

I wish people would value doing right over being right. I wish they’d sacrifice the pleasure of shouting the loudest or the longest, or having the final word in an argument, or feeling like the one whose words are law, for the good of those who cannot speak.

This is why I am passionate about education and literacy. I believe people should be given the tools to distinguish between what they are being told, and the truth. I believe nobody should be forced to become reliant upon one source for the information they need to live their lives in peace. I believe people should be given the tools to make up their own minds, to come to balanced conclusions, to enter into rational discussion, and to understand that even though different peoples may speak different languages, the words are all the same.

All anyone wants is to live in peace, in relative prosperity, and to feel that they are safe. All anyone wants is to send their children out to play in the morning without fearing that they will never come home. All anyone wants is to have the dignity of a livelihood that is unthreatened by shells or tanks or rocket fire, or illness or militias or crushing rule. We have created a world where those who do not believe the same words that we do are ‘wrong’, whether those words relate to a god, or a political system, or an economic structure, or a history that may not have happened exactly as we have always been told. We have taken the greatest tool we have for bringing us together and turned it into the most efficient way of keeping us apart; if we’d had a blueprint for making everything wrong, we couldn’t have done a better job of it.

Words are powerful. My words, and yours. It is never too late to start using them.

World Book Day!

Thank the gods and little fishes – it’s World Book Day 2014!

Image: mumsnet.com

What a marvellous idea, don’t you think? A day devoted entirely to the celebration, promotion and enjoyment of reading and books and stories. A day when children can go to school dressed as their favourite storybook character and the whole day is storytime (well – not really. But you know what I mean.) A day when children like me (or – er. Children like I was, when I was a child. Shut up!) come into their own and get to revel in their book-nerdiness. A day, in short, when I wish I could be little again so I could go to school and enjoy the day properly. It’s not so much fun when you’re dressing up by yourself. And when you’re a grown-up.

Anyway.

Partaaay!
Image: ovenbakedtradition.com

Part of the sheer brilliance of World Book Day is the fact that every child is given a book token to the value of €1.50 – which will, hopefully, be spent in local bookshops! – and, every year, a book is written specially for the celebration. This year, in Ireland, that book is Mary Arrigan’s ‘The Milo Adventures’, which looks like a fantastic read. The token can actually be exchanged for one of eight books which are specially priced for the day, or as part payment for a more expensive book, and – either way – it’s a wonderful gift to every young reader in the country. Amazingly, though, according to the World Book Day website, three out of ten children in Ireland don’t own a book, and that makes me sad. Every child should have access to books. Every child should be encouraged to read, and think, and dream, and write their own stories. Every child should be supported in their desire to engage with books. World Book Day is such a wonderful way to start that process, and I wish it had been around when I was little.

Not that I could have been any book-ier. But I would have loved it, all the same.

Ireland is a great country in which to be a young reader. We have the amazing CBI, or Children’s Books Ireland, which ceaselessly advocates for children’s books and quality writing for youngsters, and we have the office of Laureate na n-Óg whose job it is to promote and encourage children’s books, all the way up from picture books for the earliest readers to wonderful tales for teens (and ‘teens at heart’.) As a country, Ireland is famed for the quality of its literature and for the cultural value placed upon stories and storytelling, and we are blessed with an abundance of storytellers, for all ages. I love that the entire month of March is dedicated to the promotion of books and reading, focusing on today’s celebration (thanks to the Booksellers’ Association), and as a writer, reader and former bookseller I am extremely excited at the thought that, all over the country, people will be sitting down to read today – perhaps people who don’t ordinarily read – and I really hope that they’ll catch the story bug. Nothing has given me more joy in life than my love for words, and I’m excited at the idea that today – perhaps right now – a child somewhere is feeling that joy, the buzzing happiness that comes with being caught up in a story, the total immersion in a world of their own imagining.

Exciting!
Image: iowatribob.com

Opening up a mind to the endless possibilities of story gives access to landscapes which go on forever, skies as wide as imagination, worlds upon worlds full of dreams. It truly is, as far as I’m concerned, the best and most important part of a child’s education. If a child is encouraged to read, they’re encouraged to think, and if they’re encouraged to think they’ll be curious, and if they’re curious they’ll learn. If they learn, they’ll bring beauty and joy to their world as they grow, and they’ll pass on that broad-based love of life and words and ideas to the generations that come after them. There is a story for every child, and a child for every story – and it’s up to us as adults to bring the two together.

Oh, World Book Day! How I love you.

Go and read a book today. Go on. Particularly if you don’t normally make the time to read. Treat yourself today in honour of World Book Day and, if there’s a young person in your life, please do treat them, too. Read to them, if that’s appropriate. Show them how much you love the words, and help them to love ’em too.

In my humble opinion, there’s no bigger favour you can do for a younger person, and no greater gift you can give.

Image: everhear.com

 

It’s the Little Things

Lots of things in life bother me. I’m one of those people where ‘the river runs close to the surface,’ if you know what I mean; I am emotional, and sometimes I find myself shedding a tear where other people would go unmoved. If I’m honest, I like this aspect of my personality, though I know it upsets my loved ones at times. I like the fact that I feel things deeply, even though it’s painful; it makes me feel connected to myself, and to others.

Image: 123rf.com

At the weekend, I was standing at traffic lights waiting for a chance to cross the road in safety. Facing me, coming in the opposite direction, was a set of young parents and their two boys, probably aged about seven and five. I’m not a parent, but I’m more than aware of how boisterous and energetic children of this age can be, and these two little boys were no different from the average kid. One of them started pressing the ‘Walk’ button repeatedly, as children do, and the other was prancing about from foot to foot, singing a little song to himself. Just as I was thinking what cute children they were, I witnessed a show of anger from the parents that left me reeling. The children were shoved and shouted at, and the boy with his hand on the ‘Walk’ button had it forcibly removed. The singing child was yelled at and told to shut up. As they started to cross the road, one boy dawdled, his attention caught by something in one of the idling cars, and his father grabbed him and shoved him across the road with what I felt was unnecessary force, shouting at him all the way. In no point was the child in danger – the green ‘walk’ signal was lit, and the cars were not moving. The physicality was extreme and unwarranted, I thought. I glared at the man, and said, very clearly, ‘there’s no need for that!’ as we passed one another on the road – he ignored me, of course. I hardly expected anything else. I’m fully prepared to accept that my actions may not have been appropriate; it’s not for me to say how anyone else raises their children, and I know that. Having said that, I watched the two little boys as they reached the far side of the road; from being the curious, singing little things they’d been at the beginning of this scenario, now they were both crying and angry. The whole family was furious with one another, and it radiated from them like steam from boiling water.

I walked home feeling so sad at what I’d seen. It stayed on my heart all day, weighing it down.

There’s a poem called ‘Children Learn What they Live,’ which played on my mind for most of the rest of the weekend. It begins: ‘If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn; if a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight; if a child lives with fear, he learns to be apprehensive.’ I’ve often read this poem and it has always been clear to me how perceptive and true it is. It makes me wonder how a parent thinks treating their child with aggression can lead to anything but pain, or how they think that a child is going to grow up as a happy, contented and secure adult if they’ve felt bullied and belittled all their lives.

Before I continue, I want to make it clear that I’m not suggesting that the family I saw was abusive, or anything like that. Every family has its bad moments, and perhaps I simply happened to be there at the wrong time for this particular family. I’m also not saying that children shouldn’t be corrected when they misbehave; teaching a child how to negotiate the world with respect for themselves and others is a vital part of parenting, and discipline is part of that. For the record, I don’t believe in physical discipline of children, but I know opinions differ on that. I feel, too, that correcting a child’s misbehaviour with appropriate discipline is different from using them as punchbags for an adult’s own feelings of anger or upset or frustration; the latter is inexcusable.

Of course I would love to see a world where no child would ever know aggression, whether it’s verbal or physical, but we’re all aware of how realistic that dream is.

Image: 123rf.com

I have a huge amount of sympathy for parents who, under pressure from every corner, find raising their children difficult; it’s not easy to find the money and the time and the energy to parent energetic, never-sleeping, inquisitive little people. There are going to be times when tempers boil over and anger reaches flashing point and things are said which will be regretted later – but it’s really important to express this regret, and ‘mend the fences’, and reassure the child that they are still, and always, loved. Love is such a little thing – such a short word, and so often bandied about – but at the same time it’s the single most important thing a parent can give their child. I’d go so far as to say it’s the single most important thing one person can give another.

I would love to see a situation where every child was afforded an education, the chance to learn how to read and write fluently and confidently, and the knowledge that – no matter what – they are loved. Imagine the generation of happy, compassionate and intelligent people we would raise.

Imagine the difference it would make to the world.

Image: 123rf.com

 

 

 

 

It Has Been a Long, Long Time…

So.

This past weekend – which, for my husband and I, comprised Sunday and yesterday as he was working on Saturday – we pretty much had an internet blackout (besides my brief blog yesterday), and we read. He read a book which he loved – ‘The Forever War’, by Joe Haldeman, and I read three books, all of which were utterly unputdownable. My brain feels like it spent the weekend immersed in double cream; this morning, my head is spinning like a drunkard, high on dreams.

It has been a long, long time since I sat up late into the night, desperately needing to finish a book, wiping away tears with one hand and frantically turning the pages of a story with the other. Last night, that’s exactly what happened. Last night, I was reading ‘The Book Thief’, by Markus Zusak.

If you haven’t read it already, then I strongly recommend you drop whatever you’re doing (it couldn’t possibly be as important as reading this book), and get your hands on a copy, and read it. I’ll even allow you to download it to your e-reader, if you must, though I’d much prefer you had it in the flesh, as an object of beauty in your hand. If you have read it, then I’m sure you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Image: tumblr.com

I can’t even… there’s no way I can even talk about it yet, because it’s too present in my head. Do you know what I mean? I’m still living in the book. I’m living in the basement of Himmel Street 33, huddled under the dust-sheets, waiting. My brain’s too full to process the brilliance of this novel, but as soon as I am able I will write about it, and I will – I hope – convince you, if I haven’t already, that books have the power to change the world.

The other books I read this weekend were ‘ACID’, by Emma Pass, and ‘Wonder’ by R.J. Palacio. Here are their lovely jackets – and, in case of ‘Wonder’, a little slogan which pretty much sums up the book:

Image: nosegraze.com

Image: blog.waterstones.com

I fully enjoyed both of these books, too, and I’d heartily recommend them both. Reviews will follow in the next few weeks, once my brain has had time to let the stories settle.

This morning, I’m almost painfully aware of how extremely lucky I am to be literate, interested in books and able to appreciate stories. Honestly, I truly believe books increase my soul. Every time I read a book I love, I gain another layer, like an oyster gilding a piece of grit into a beautiful pearl. Every book I read makes me better. I can’t express to you how much I love that.

It may not have escaped your notice that I also read quite quickly. In two and a half days I managed to read three books, two of which are quite long. (Actually, technically, I read three and a half books, because I was halfway through another story, which I also managed to finish over this weekend. But we won’t count that.) I remarked over the weekend that reading, for me, sometimes feels like I’m just inserting the book straight into my brain; it’s like watching a DVD, almost. I read so fast sometimes that I wish I could retrain myself, or re-learn the art of reading from first principles, perhaps. I wish I could read more slowly, particularly when it comes to a book as beautifully worded as ‘The Book Thief’; sometimes, I really feel like I’m missing out. I don’t skim – I do read every single word – but sometimes I feel I don’t leave them to sit in my brain long enough to really absorb the full goodness. When it comes to words, I’m definitely a wolfer, not a gourmet. ‘The Book Thief’ has some of the most beautiful phrases I’ve ever read, and it is packed full of brain-jolting images, which caught my soul and made it pause, contemplating. But the pauses would have been better if they’d been a bit longer.

I feel a slower reader would have taken even more than I did from a book as rich as ‘The Book Thief’. A slower reader could have allowed the story and the writing to seep into their bones even more powerfully than I was able to. I’ll have to read the book again (not that this will be any burden) to get the full and proper effect. Sometimes, I find myself consciously trying to read slowly – making myself savour every sentence – but it rarely works for long. My natural pace catches up with me, and I race off again like a greyhound after a hare. I wonder sometimes if this happens to me due to my personal combination of curiosity and impatience – I couldn’t have slept last night without knowing what happened at the end of ‘The Book Thief’, of course. I had to know what happened to Liesel and her family; I had to know what happened to Max. I had to know who survived. There would have been no point in trying to go to sleep before I’d reached the end, and I knew that.

I’ve been reading now for a long, long time. My parents encouraged me to read from such a young age that I was cramming in whole books before most kids have stopped drooling on themselves, and I’ve always been grateful for this. It means I’ve put in a lot of reading practice, but in this case I’m not sure practice makes perfect. Practice makes me go faster, but that’s not always the best way to experience a story.

Have you read any of the books I’ve mentioned here? If so, what did you think? Also, do you tend to read slowly or quickly, and do you have any tips on how to change your ‘reading style’?

Happy Tuesday. And I’m not joking about ‘The Book Thief’. Seriously. Get a copy today.

Shall We Do a Book Review?

It’s Saturday, and it’s a wonderfully sunny day, and I’m feeling mellow. It’s the perfect day to write about some of the books I’ve read recently, I think. I haven’t managed to read as many as I’d like, but every word read is better than nothing, of course.

The other day, I read ‘The London Eye Mystery’ by the wonderful, and much missed, Siobhan Dowd. Her early death in 2007 truly robbed the world of children’s literature of one of its most talented writers. I’ve read and loved her other books (‘A Swift Pure Cry’ and ‘Bog Child’), and also ‘A Monster Calls’, written by Patrick Ness, based on an idea which Ms. Dowd had developed just before her death. I bought this latter book in hardback the second it was published, because I couldn’t possibly expect myself to wait for the paperback, and I’m so glad I made that decision. As well as being an amazing piece of writing, the book itself is a work of art.I thoroughly recommend all of Siobhan Dowd’s books, and perhaps I’ll come back to talk about them all in a future blog post.

Image: trappedbymonsters.com

‘The London Eye Mystery’ was a wonderful piece of storytelling. It introduces us to Ted and his sister Kat, who live in London with their parents. Kat is older than Ted, and tends to be bossy and sarcastic (as older sisters are – I am one, so I know!), but underneath all that she cares deeply about her brother and when he needs her, she’s behind him all the way. Ted, a young boy obsessed with the weather, who wants to be a meteorologist when he grows up and who listens to the shipping forecast on the radio at night when he can’t sleep, is a deeply engaging character. He is compulsive, he has rituals and routines, he thinks extremely logically, he (touchingly) describes how he can’t read facial expressions and how he struggles to understand body language and non-direct speech, and throughout he mentions his ‘syndrome’ without ever telling us exactly what it is. Of course, we don’t need to know exactly what it is; Ted is Ted, and I loved him just as he is. The family is depicted realistically, with all the stresses and strains that come with modern living; they love one another and are closely united, but their home is not always tranquil. The London in which they live is no idealised wonderland, either – the author shows us, in a clear but age-appropriate way, the issues of poverty, drug abuse, mental illness and crime that blight any big city, and in fact these themes have a central (if, perhaps, oblique) role to play in the book.

The story begins with Ted and Kat’s aunt Gloria, and her son Salim, coming to stay with the family for a few days before they emigrate to New York for Aunt Gloria’s work. Salim, who has grown up in Manchester and who has a fascination with tall buildings, has never ridden on the London Eye before, and so the family decide to bring him there to give him that opportunity. All the way through the trip to the Eye, Ted notices things that he thinks are strange, including the frequency of the phone calls Salim receives, and the secrecy with which he conducts his conversations, but he’s not sure what it all means. While the children are in the queue to buy tickets for the London Eye, they’re approached by a man who offers them one free ticket, and they decide Salim should have it. So, at just after 11.30 a.m. Salim boards the London Eye – but he doesn’t get off when the ride is over.

Using photographs, deduction and Ted’s brilliantly logical thinking, the children try to work out what happened to Salim. Ted comes up with eight (later, nine) theories, which they systematically work through, discounting them one at a time after experimentation has shown them to be false. Ted quotes Sherlock Holmes at one point: if, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth; using this logic, he eventually works out what must have happened. The author skilfully throws us a few ‘red herrings’, and even near the end when it seems as though the mystery has been unravelled, it takes Ted and another inspired leap of logic to finally bring the story to a close. I thoroughly enjoyed this tale, despite the fact that I’d worked out where Salim was before it was unveiled. Despite this, I would never have worked out how he managed to go up the London Eye and not come down again – Ted left me in the shade on that score! The means Ted uses to find his cousin, the insights into his thinking process, the descriptions of the family and their interactions – particularly between Gloria and her sister Faith, who is the mother of Kat and Ted – and the growing sense of desperation as time keeps ticking by without Salim being found, mean this is a tense, tightly plotted, dynamic and exciting story with a deep emotional heart. So, it’s just like all of Dowd’s work, really. If you’ve never read Siobhan Dowd, I think you really should. Not only are the stories excellent, but the royalties from sales go towards the Siobhan Dowd Trust, which she set up in the months before her death to aid literacy among underprivileged children. What could be more meaningful than that?

So, typically, I’ve gone on so long that I have no room left to talk about the other books I’ve recently read: ‘Wildwood’ (Colin Meloy, ill. Carson Ellis), ‘Crewel’ (Gennifer Albin), ‘Level 2’ (Lenore Appelhans), ‘The Wormwood Gate’ (Katherine Farmar), and the one I’m currently reading, ‘Robopocalypse’ (Daniel H. Wilson). Thoughts on those will have to wait for another blog post!

Have a great Saturday.

The wonderful Siobhan Dowd.
Image: randomhouse.com

The Idea-Making Machine

I’ve just been thinking about my earliest real attempts at writing, which date back many years. Some of these proto-stories I’ve kept, and some have been forgotten; some never made it out of my head onto paper at all. Most of them date from my teens, and into my twenties, which I suppose is quite late to start writing (even though I’m sickeningly old now, of course, so I’ve had years of practice, regardless). I wrote as a child, too, but these forays into storytelling were more like homages to my favourite books – retellings of stories that I loved, or unnecessary sequels to classic books. As a small kid, I was more of a reader than a writer, really. My first proper attempts to write began with (excruciatingly bad) poetry as a teenager, and it was only when I was in college that I started thinking seriously about writing fiction – and, even then, it was always children’s books I wanted to create. The desire to write YA fiction came to me as a natural development out of that. Ever since then, my life has been defined by my obsession with the written word.

I can’t explain precisely why I love stories for children and Young Adults so much – I’ve blogged about why I like to write these sort of stories before, so I’m not going to revisit that topic here. I stand by what I wrote before about the value of children’s literature, and how I hate any attempt to reduce it, or think of it as being less valuable than literature for adults, though. To my earlier comments, I’d add that I really think giving children the gift of literacy and encouraging them to read (and write) from the earliest age can change their whole life for the better – writing them good, solid, enjoyable, exciting stories is part of that gift. I’m passionately interested in literacy (both in childhood and adulthood) and I firmly believe that good literacy helps a person’s overall intellectual development, as well as their self-esteem and independence. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have for improving lives, and by extension society as a whole.

Reading with a parent or guardian at an early age is vital

I am wondering, though, about ideas this morning, and why all the ideas I have seem to belong so readily to the world of fiction for young people. It’s not something I wish to change – not that there’s anything wrong with writing for adults, of course! – but I’m wondering why some writers find their ideas fall into particular genres so naturally. I wonder if I love stories for children because all my favourite stories, the ones that shaped my mind and my reading life (and my actual life, if truth be told) were ones I read as a child, or if it’s because there’s something in my adult mind that still loves the wonder only a great story can create. I do read books written for my own age group (honest!), and I enjoy and relish them, but the truth remains – my favourite books, even now, are those written for children. I don’t think it means I have a less-developed mind than other people my age – I certainly don’t think it has anything at all to do with immaturity. I think it’s because stories for children have a freedom at their hearts, a kind of ability to break the rules that adult books feel compelled to keep, and that’s wonderful. There are books written for adults which have this same sort of feeling – Jeanette Winterson’s, for instance – but it’s a lot more prevalent in children’s and YA writing.

I used to think, when I was younger, that I wasn’t interested in writing for adults because I hadn’t done enough living of my own to be able to write books about grown-up subjects. That’s (probably) not true any more, but my ideas haven’t changed; my mind hasn’t adjusted its sails in search of a new, more ‘literary’ horizon. Even though I’m now as grown-up as could be, and I’ve experienced more already in my life than I thought I ever would, I still wake up every morning with my mind full of other worlds, lost fathers, haunted furniture, baby-stealing goblins, school bullies, spooky old houses, and so on. I’ve always loved fairy-tales and folktales (as well as folk music, which is a hugely rich source of stories), which fed into my study of medieval literature at university; my love of the medieval, I think, helped me to adore the dark, twisted heart at the core of a lot of the best children’s stories, and also to appreciate good fantasy/SF books, too. I think my love for the stories I like to read and write is as natural to me as my hair colour, or the fact that I wear glasses, or my fear of heights. I can’t change it, and I don’t want to. My ideas have their root in the same soil as Yggdrasil, beside the stream where the Salmon of Knowledge was caught, which flows not far from Camelot. These stories are intrinsic to me, and wrapped around my DNA. They’re a treasure.

Wherever my ideas come from, and no matter what sort of form they take, I just hope they never stop coming. I think (or maybe it’s more of a desperate hope!) that the more you use your ideas – the more you listen to them, and make something of them – the more readily they’ll come to you. Not listening to my inner idea-making machine, and suppressing all the budding stories in my mind (as I had to do for too many years) only led to depression and heartache for me. Letting ideas live, and setting them free to see what they’ll do and where they’ll go, brings me huge amounts of joy, and it would be great to think that they might bring joy to others, too. Hopefully, one day, I’ll have readers who look like this:

If that day ever comes, I’ll consider my life well-spent.