Tuesday 27 February 2018

We need to talk about Michael Rosen

So what about that Michael Rosen, eh? Lovely guy, I'm sure. Heart's in the right place, no doubt. Sincerely dedicated to propagating his political beliefs, granted.

But - and I tread carefully here - does he really deserve his place in the pantheon of children's writers?

Let me put it this way. If you are feeling despondent about the way things are nowadays, then here's something to cheer up you: you can take it from me that we are living in a golden age of writing for the very young. To be blunt, in the Olden Days they didn't have Julia Donaldson. The Gruffalo, Stick Man, The Snail and the Whale, Zog, Tabby McTat, Room on the Broom - I could go on and on. Any one of these would be an instant classic, but as a body of work they are extraordinary. They have something for everyone, from quick-witted amoralism (The Gruffalo) to reassuring traditionalism (Stick Man), from sensible feminism (Zog) to being-appealing-to-Gordon-Brown-ishness (The Snail and the Whale), all with proper rhyme and rhythm, exciting stories and satisfying twists. And then there is The Paper Dolls: has any book wrought so many tears from so many adults in so few words?

No one else is quite in Donaldson's league, but there are many other talented writers working today. It would be invidious to name names, but trust me there are lots of them. And young children also have all the wondrous innovations of books with flaps and levers and bits to pull and bits to stroke and bits that make noises, many of which are ingeniously and carefully put together by people who obviously understand and care about children.

To all these modern marvels we can add the older treasures that have endured, the Shirley Hugheses, the Tiger Who Came to Teas and the Rosie's Walks. And the AA Milnes, Dr Seusses, David McKies and Maurice Sendaks, and let's not forget the Erics, Carle and Hill.

But somehow, nestling in company with The Very Hungry Caterpillar and unaccountably above The Bog Baby, is Michael Rosen.

Now, I know that some people like We're Going on a Bear Hunt. But (a) Rosen only adapted the words from a song (he added "swishy-swashy" and "squelch-squerch") and (b) you have to admit that at least 90% of the joy of the book consists in the excellent illustrations by Helen Oxenbury, the source of all of the book's drama, interest and mystery. If you think of Bear Hunt with fond emotion, it is probably because you are thinking of that group of children helping each other over the arbitrary obstacles Rosen has thrown at them, the pictures dreamily reminiscent of some golden half-remembered holiday from your own childhood; or else you are thinking of the final wordless scene in which we see the lonely bear at his beachy cave by the edge of the world - in short, you are reaping what Oxenbury, not Rosen, has sown.

Rosen has now written A Great Big Cuddle, a book of 'poems'. Here's one:

You will see that Rosen has again been fortunate in his illustrator. This time it is Chris Riddell, who has put evident thought and effort into each page. But what about the words? Surely "The Button Bop" is a one-off?

No. Here is "Once":

Once upon a plom
There lived a poor little mom
Along with her children three.
There was a great big Gom
A Flom and a Chom
Who all sang, "Me, me, me".

Then the Flom said, "Ping!"
And the Chom said, "Ting!"

... and I just can't bring myself to carry on typing. 

"Lunchtime", by contrast, avoids using made-up words by rhyming "lunch" with "munch" and "crunch" a few times (sample line "Munch munch") before concluding with the resounding couplet "Munchy munchy // Crunchy crunchy". 

"Wiggly Wiggly" begins "Jiggle jiggle, we're all wriggly // Wriggle wriggle, we're all wiggly" and, although I'd like to report that it's a savage indictment of the Trump Administration that ends "snigger, snigger, govern bigly", in fact it ends "wiggly wiggly, giggly giggly". Riddell has provided some charming piglets for this page, but unfortunately they do not obscure the words.

This one I quite liked:

Hello nose!
Hello toes!
Hello shoes!
It's time to snooze!

Wakey-wakey,
Shakey-shakey,
Time to eat
A yummy cakey!

But that's because I made it up myself just now. Imagine reading it printed in large colourful letters accompanied by Riddellesque mammalian entities entertaining a winsome toddler with comical shoes and a baroquely-iced cake, and you will then be having a similar - but better - experience than ploughing through A Great Big Cuddle.

I saw that A Great Big Cuddle won the CLiPPA Award 2016. This fascinated me. What did it beat? What even is the CLiPPA Award? Seriously, was there any competition for the prize?

A bit of googling tells me that the CLiPPA (Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award) "is the only award for published poetry for children in the UK. The CLiPPA encourages and celebrates outstanding new children’s poetry and is presented annually for a book of poetry published in the preceding year." Sounds good, doesn't it?

In fact, Rosen's book shared the prize with One, by Sarah Crossan. One is an altogether different kettle of fish: it's a sort of blank verse novel about American teenagers who are conjoined twins. It's not very UK-ish, judging by the preview on Amazon ("and Grammie's pension // doesn't even cover the cable bill", "Not everyone in the world is an asshole"), which made me wonder whether the CLiPPA's rubric should refer to "a prize for poetry for children published in the UK" rather than "published poetry for children in the UK" (and where does the "Primary" in CLiPPA fit in?). On the other hand, you've got to admire the ambition behind writing that sort of thing, and it very much sounds like the sort of book that wins prizes (do our conjoined twins form a friendship with an HIV-positive teenager? I'll leave you in suspense on that one).

It turns out that there really were other books on the shortlist, beaten by both Rosen and Crossan. One was Poetry Pie by Roger McGough. Here is the title poem. Have a quick read - it'll take you a couple of seconds and it's worth it. You'll see that it's a poem about poems, nicely done. It has mention of rap and hey nonno no, an unobtrusive little allusion to another poem that a small child might plausibly spot and be delighted by ("Ning nang nong"), and it ends, just before the final repeat of its (slightly varying) refrain, with the word "end". In short, it is a perfectly decent poem for a young child written by someone literate. 

So we are forced to conclude that Rosen is even more of a National Treasure than Roger 'Lily the Pink' McGough CBE FRSL. But I am still not sure why.

Tuesday 13 February 2018

Five interesting articles

1. Michael Lewis hangs out with Steve Bannon. "Steve Bannon reminded me of someone, but it’s not until I’m back in my hotel room that I realize who. He was a character from “The Big Short.” He saw the world differently from virtually everyone in his profession, and it led a lot of people to think that he was insane. But he was right and they were wrong, and the rest of the world has yet to come to terms with why."

2. "The core feature of Banks’s universe is that he imagines a scenario in which technological development has freed culture from all functional constraints – and thus, he imagines a situation in which culture has become purely memetic." More here, a nice reminder of what science fiction, at its best, is for.

3. "That the Catholic Church should put Silicon Valley—or any other institution or culture—to shame when it comes to world-changing innovation is not some tantalizing yet naïve prospect. It should be the baseline expectation for any educated Catholic." More here. (Well worth reading this article together with the previous one and then asking yourself the question: what does a functional culture look like today?)

4. "Tim Henman, the frustrated It Boy of English tennis, is still “the first human being called Tim to achieve anything at all."" One thing that a useful book review can do, rather than to tell you how good the book is, is to tell you what it is like to read the book. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Vanity Fair are 5 out of 5 on the book review scale, but that's not everything you'd want to know about them. Sometimes those reviews that say things like 'it's as if Harry Potter grew up and joined MI6, as described by Henry James' are quite informative. Anyway, that is all to say that this review tells you, in an entertaining way, what it is like to read Martin Amis.

5. Can you think of a policy that reduces housing costs, decreases unemployment, increases wages for the lowest paid and decreases inequality? Too good to be true? Well, according to The Economist, one the most pro-Remain papers out there, that's what Brexit will do. The Economist has been to Harrogate, a place that EU migrants came to in large numbers but have been leaving for a few years, and this is what it saw: "Unemployment has fallen to 3.6%, below the national and regional levels, allowing some workers to drive harder bargains. Though real median wages in Harrogate have not changed much since 2014, at the lower end they have risen by 9%. ... Demand for low-end rented properties has fallen. In Harrogate, prices in this segment grew at half the regional average between 2014 and 2017. ... Another strategy is to lure younger and older workers into the labour market. Some businesses in Harrogate are paying teenagers well above their minimum wage of £4.05 ($5.70) per hour, to tempt them into work." So Brexit is bad news for the owners of businesses and property; good news for workers, the young and the poor. You can see why the Labour Party might have difficulty selling Remain.

Saturday 3 February 2018

Some completely different things

1. Interesting (slightly repetitive?) piece by Stephen Wolfram about how to send messages to alien civilisations - and what messages we have already sent. Even if you are not interested in this at a theoretical level, it's worth scrolling down to the pictures: why has humankind decided to send Lego to Jupiter? And what about this, apparently left on the Moon attached to the Apollo 12 lander:

Seriously? There's a chance that the sole record of human civilisation that will remain for aliens to discover is a schoolboy drawing of a willy?

2. Two nice videos, each about 3 minutes long and enjoyable to watch.

3. Man bites dog.

4. This is brilliantly done - all the holiday photos all at once. I was impressed by the winglets moving back and the egg moving round the bowl.

5. These (downloads at the right of the page) could be interesting. They are part of a Royal Society scheme to develop primers to help judges handling scientific evidence in the courtroom. The first two are on DNA and gait analysis. I'm sure they are a good source of authoritative scientific information aimed at the intelligent layperson.

6. Why we should have money that “rots like potatoes” and “rusts like iron”.

7. "Nigel lived for years on his own on uninhabited Mana Island off the north of the country, surrounded by concrete replica gannets." Poor Nigel.