Launching the Rocketship

I visited the Rocketship for the first time today. It’s a
new bookshop for children, though it has a shelf of Salisbury authors and,
since I am a Salisbury author, I took some copies of Mr Blackwood’s Fabularium along. I think anyone who wants to write
ought to start by reading to children, ideally between the ages of six and
nine. That way you tune your ears to sentence rhythms, sense whether the narrative
pace is right and whether the dialogue rings true. You get instant feedback from
a young audience and you can learn a lot from it. The best children’s writers
have, I am convinced, tested their work in this way.





Two series of books, which I loved reading to my children,
are ideal for this purpose. The first are the Captain Najork books by Russell
Hoban, beautifully illustrated by Quentin Blake. There are, unfortunately, only
two of them: How Tom Beat Captain Najork
and his Hired Sportsmen
and A Near
thing for Captain Najork
. Hoban was a complete original. His books, whether
for adults or children, are quite unlike anyone else’s. (The Mouse and His Child must be one of the darkest children’s books
ever written, and his adult dystopia Ridley
Walker
is unforgettable.) The other fictions I want to commend are the Frog
and Toad books by Arnold Lobel. There are four of them and all concern the
adventures of the exuberant Frog and the melancholy Toad, who form a kind of
Tigger/Eeyore pairing. (It may be heresy to say so, but I think Frog and Toad
books are much better than Winnie the Pooh.) They are told with the utmost
economy, with understated humour and with real delicacy of feeling. They are
really the story of a friendship. As a fan of the BBC sitcom Detectorists, it struck me that the real
subject of that, too, is friendship. In fact, the more I watch it, the more
similarities I see between Andy and Lance and Frog and Toad. Did Mackenzie Crook,
who wrote it, know the Frog and Toad books, I wonder? I like to think so. One
of the Frog and Toad stories ends: ‘Then Frog and Toad ate a big breakfast. And
after that they spent a fine long day together.’ Substitute Andy and Lance, and
the last sentence could conclude many a Detectorist
episode.





God bless the Rocketship and all who sail in her.


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Published on March 14, 2020 06:35
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