Moheard's Blog

An invitation to the launch of the 1066 Children’s Book Awards 2011, made me think about children’s reading and the supply of books. Helenswood School has a well-stocked library and a committed librarian in Alison Kingwell. This exciting local book award has been put together by a group of Secondary School Librarians to encourage and promote reading for pleasure and the enjoyment of fiction books by pupils of all ages. Four books have been chosen for 2011 and between January and March 2011 the books will be read by reading groups across the seven 1066 area schools. A winner will then be chosen by the pupils who will vote for their favourite books via video conference between the participating schools. (From: http://www.1066sba.co.uk)

In the audience was a selection of students from these schools, who had some interesting questions for the two past-winning authors there. One was ‘what were your favourite books as a child?’ This made me think about my own reading habits as a child.

At home, we had a small bookcase with sliding glass doors, the shelves containing only a cookery book, the odd reference volume, and for some reason a couple of bibles with fancy clasps. I looked at the books often, knowing that the woman at her new gas stove in the frontispiece photograph of the cookery manual was definitely my own mother. The huge Co-op department store in Lewisham had a small book area where I spent hours browsing, smelling and feeling the books.  I could not resist a lovely thick poetry collection with a red cover, and bought it – or did I nick it perhaps?

Every Christmas my parents always bought me an Odhams book. These were advertised on the bottom right-hand corner of the Daily Herald front page. The Odhams Book of Comics;  The Children’s Wonder Book in Colour; The Children’s Own Wonder Book. Every year, a new title.

The library in my South London grammar school was a serious, dark panelled room full of heavy tomes, some art books I remember, but no fiction to attract our imaginations. In those days there were no ‘teenagers’, so people didn’t write stories for our age group. We were aware of the classic children’s books of course, but we knew nothing of  the gritty adventures of boy detectives, families-in-crisis dramas, or vampires. I think I went from Enid Blyton to Ian Fleming when I was 12. From then on I read mostly adult books – not only fiction such as The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton, and books by Rumer Godden, but titles such as Seven Years in Tibet, and The Last Days of Pompeii by Bulwer Lytton.

Later I discovered Kerouac and Salinger, probably at the same time that we ‘beatniks’ found underground films and Ingmar Bergman in the cinema (actually, only at the NFT). I still have a programme for the NFT around 1959, called Beat, Square and Cool. John Cassavetes Shadows was the height of with-it culture, or so it seemed.

Now there must be thousands of books for children published every year. And who makes the decisions for which books will be read?

Browsing online for Odhams books, I found the actual cookery book my mum had. Just imagine a child nowadays reading this book avidly – the recipes, the black and white photos of unappetising dishes. I loved it!