'A well-waxed paper door slides open......'

I have few memories of my early years in school but I can remember being placed in a class separated from other classes by moveable screens in an area that obviously doubled up as several teaching areas within the school hall. I can also vaguely remember my teacher, who seemed to to be a huge woman with a moustache. And one of the clear memories that I have is that after I had been in the school for  a few weeks my mother visited the teacher to ask why I was not yet able to read! This was very much in the days when parents' evenings and questioning the teacher were unheard of so I assume that it was something that my mother felt strongly about. Whether it bore fruit I have no idea, but by the time I was seven or eight I was an avid reader. I can still remember sitting in class a year or two later speeding through the higher levels of 'Wide Range Readers' – stories about cavemen discovering fire, King Arthur and his knights or Hereward the Wake.

An early read in 1953-54

I don’t know if it was my mother’s influence but as she was an avid reader then I assume it was. We were a very humble, even poor, family. There were  no great shelves of books in the house but mother read everything – the Daily Mirror, books that she borrowed from others or bought cheap on the market and I suppose I picked up the bug. When Christmas came along I always knew that books would feature large in my presents – and I read them. Some of those I still have and occasionally take them down from my bookshelves, look at the scrawly name I wrote inside the cover, smell them , and read what mother had written 'To Tony with love from mummy and daddy Christmas  1954' it says in the front of my copy of 'Children of the New Forest'. I can still remember getting this – I would have been eight or nine – and at the same time I got a copy of 'Treasure Island'. Two thick volumes - one with a rich red binding (now very faded!) and the other with a bright yellow cover - and I can vividly remember sitting under the Christmas tree devouring the words – many which I didn’t really understand – but being transported into a magical world of pirates and roundheads and cavaliers. I can still hear myself saying to my mother, 'What does this word mean: p-r-u-d-e-n-t?' - as I read Captain Marryat’s wonderful story of the New Forest and the Civil war.

I moved onto other children’s favourites – 'Biggles', 'Just William', classics such as 'Oliver Twist' and 'David Copperfield', 'King Soloman’s Mines' and the like and the effect of all of them was that as I read – usually lying with my head hanging over the edge of my bed and the book on the floor, with the landing light providing some light – I was transported to worlds far removed from the drab back street of two up two down houses in which I lived. I was Biggles shooting down the dreaded Red Baron or a jungle explorer  or I was walking along Yarmouth beach with David Copperfield and Peggotty to  her brother ‘s  upturned boat beach house or I was with Sherlock Holmes and Watson solving some dastardly crime!
   

By the time I became a teenager I had read many of the classics and had moved on – if that is the right description – to more modern stuff. Mother was an avid reader of Dennis Wheatley novels and I followed her – reading tales of black magic and historical novels of the French Revolution. I enjoyed war stories – 'The Dam Busters', 'The Wooden Horse', 'The Colditz Story','A Town Like Alice' and the like. I could spend day after day of the school holidays absorbed rather than going out with friends.

One of the books that
made me what I am

And then, I discovered better stuff! Whilst doing A levels I was given a copy of  'The Grapes of Wrath' and was  immediately hooked – and  for the first time realised that books can not only be enjoyable  escapes but bring powerful messages. 'Germinal', 'Of Mice and Men', 'Animal Farm', 'Brave New World', '1984'............. were raced through with a mixture of enjoyment,  passion and rising anger. I became 'an angry young man' and began thinking of all the inequalities and wrongs that there were and are in the world!

Since then I have read a wide variety of stuff. I am not an expert, no literary genius or critic. I could not easily define what makes a good book or what gives it literary merit. I often read blogs and book reviews by those with greater qualifications  than mine and am impressed by their erudition. But, I simply want a good story – be it fiction or fact – written in a style that I can deal with, which makes me think and which above all transports me to another place. This I suppose is very personal – what might transport me may leave another cold – but what I do know is that it is books rather than films that have the ability to make an impact on me. Few if any films have had an emotional impact on me - many books have.

As a retired primary teacher I have been involved with reading throughout my professional life and I’d like to think that some of my enthusiasm for books and reading rubbed off on some of the kids I taught over the forty years I was in the classroom. One of the great regrets of the latter years of my career was the way that the enjoyment of reading was and has been usurped by the National Curriculum, SATs and the dreaded 'literacy hour' which ensures that young children in the early stages of reading  'study'  literature. Photocopied 'texts' are poured over, studied and analysed for literary merit and style. That seems not to me to be the objective of the exercise. I wanted children to enjoy reading, to be  inspired and see it as a positive and rewarding activity – not a thing to be ‘studied’ and to get right or wrong.

So many times in my career when I read a story to children, one or more of the class would come to me and ask 'Can I borrow that book when you've finished it?' Or, 'Has that author written any more that we can read?' That gave me a real thrill and I would pass the book on - often knowing that I'd never get it back - but that didn't matter. So many times children - especially boys - who were struggling with reading would ask to borrow a book that I had been reading to the class and ask to borrow it. It was clearly too difficult for them to read but somehow they struggled through and often came out at the end as better readers - and more importantly - wanting to read. I took great pleasure in feeling that perhaps I  had kept their enthusiasm going! But, today, in the 'Gradgrind SAT production lines' that are our schools each churning out level 4 SAT results for the use of successive governments and their league tables, enthusiasm, pleasure, inspiration and the like are not valued. You don't get marks for enthusiasm or inspiration or imagination. You only get a mark for getting it (whatever 'it' is) right.

Books and stories, of course, have another dimension than simply telling a story or giving us some facts. They are  wonderful vehicles for inspiring other interests and learning about other people,  places and times. They can help to pass on a culture or provide a moral framework for children and build an understanding  of what makes people act as they do  – indeed that is why the Greeks had their myths, Aesop his fables and Jesus his parables -  but, of course, this requires that the teacher is able to lead the children to the desired understanding.

One of the most memorable, sad and, I suppose, humorous examples of this happened to me just before I retired. One of the young teachers on my staff came to me one day and asked if I could recommend a book that she could use with her literacy lessons that would also fit in with the history (Tudor England)that the children were studying.  I knew immediately what to recommend – 'Cue for Treason' by Geoffrey Trease – an old book but a rattling good yarn of the Tudor period. I had read it many times to children  and they always sat on the edge of their seat and demanded more as each chapter ended. A few weeks passed and one day a bright eleven year old knocked at my office door to proudly display her work. It was a lovely picture she had drawn depicting the inside of a house – table, chairs, fireplace etc. She explained that the task was that she had to draw the room described in the story. As I looked at the picture, my heart sank. We walked along to the classroom where other children were engaged in the same task. I walked around and I knew my worst fears were confirmed. Artistically, the work was super. I praised  the children and the teacher through gritted teeth.

One of Dickens'
wonderful characters
- Peggotty

You see, the story tells of how the hero is awakened in the middle of the night by his father and older brother. They creep around the small house getting ready to go out and do some dastardly deed (read the story if you want to know what it is!!!!). The book describes the room – fire place, fire, table, stone walls, pot boiling on the fire, chairs etc. And, hanging on the wall a pike '.....used by my grandfather in the war against the Scots. I asked my father are we taking the pike with us to protect us......' says the hero.

All the children in the class had drawn wonderful pictures of the room – they had completed the set task well – but each had drawn a stuffed fish hanging on the wall – a dead pike! No one questioned it. The teacher had told them that a pike was a fish and everyone completed the task! I didn’t have the heart to disabuse the teacher or the children that it was highly unlikely that in Tudor times people carried dead fish into battles against the Scots  or to help with dastardly deeds in the middle of the night  but I did walk back to my office pondering what I had seen! For several days afterwards I mulled over whether I should have a word with the young teacher and explain that the pike was a weapon rather like a spear - in the end I sadly decided to move on! 

So, what has prompted me to write this blog?

My latest 'discovery'

Well, last night I read the final, wonderful words of a tale that had me riveted from the first. I don’t know if it is 'good literature' – although the author has received many plaudits for this and other novels he has written. All I know is that more than any book I have read for many years – perhaps, with one or two very significant exceptions – it totally  transported me to another world for the five or six days it took to read. Today I read a number of professional reviews of the book – The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Washington Post etc and they all agree on its many qualities – and, to a degree, agreed on its short comings – but I’m not too interested in literary criticism. It just worked for me. Difficult in places – I had to have a short break occasionally and come back to it. Occasionally confusing as the characters changed and the names and language reflected this. Complex plot woven in a complex manner.  But, as the story and characters developed I was entranced. It is a book to keep – not to send to the charity shop as read and finished with and then ultimately forget. Today, although I finished it last night, I kept going back and re-reading the occasional section or checking something that I hadn’t quite understood.

And the book? 'The Thousand Autumns of Jakob de Zoet' by David Mitchell. An atmospheric and mysterious tale of  ancient Japan, of the East  India Company, of Dutch merchants  and sailors, of Japanese cultural traditions, of love, of  the hardship of the times, of naval battles and of sinister Japanese practices.  It may  not be everyone’s 'cup of tea' -  and I could understand that – but it was mine. With a loose base in historical fact and events it is a wonderful tale of cultures clashing and of the innermost thoughts in the minds of men and women.

When I reached the end I sighed with the final words and an awful thought struck me. Such a wonderful story, Hollywood will turn it into a film and in doing so will completely destroy the book’s magic which is based in its rich language and pictures in the imagination and the mind. It is more than  simply a story it is multi-layered tapestry of people, places, times, emotions, history, culture, language and belief.  And  this is the beauty and the strength of the written word – whether it be fiction, biography or any other genre it is the words that bring  another world to life  -  a world far more beautiful or frightening or happy or sad or raging or exciting or strange or inviting or mysterious than anything Hollywood could conjure up.

Anne Frank - For children and
 adults it is one of the great books
about being human

 For me – and I suspect that to a degree my work as a teacher has a role here – the books that I have read over the many years have become kind of markers in my life. As a child I was reading books that offered me an insight into  another world – very different from mine – pirates, treasure islands, knights in armour, battles to be won, continents to be explored.  They were building my mental picture of the world, its history, its culture, its geography. They gave me clues as to how people think, about good and bad, right and wrong. And later on, when I moved onto the big classics and the modern classics they gave me a background and perhaps an understanding of how people think, what drives them, what grinds them down or inspires them. How could one  read 'Germinal' and not be overwhelmingly angry. How could one  read 'Crime and Punishment' and not feel the same mental anguish and moral dilemmas faced by Raskolnikov. How could one read 'Jude the Obscure' and not feel for Jude and his aspirations which are so cruelly crushed.  And in school, when I read books like 'Cue for Treason' or 'I am David' or  'The Diary of Anne Frank' or 'The Silver Sword' or 'Elidor' or 'The Fib' or 'The Wheel on the School', or 'The Eighteenth Emergency' or 'The Snow Goose and many more -  I liked to think that I was opening up a new world for the kids and from which they could learn.  They would learn something of different times and places and hopefully,  relate to the characters and the situations which, although different, from their own would provide them with the opportunity to think, 'What would  I do if it was me?'

I took it to St Petersburg
 and read it there -
it made a memorable
short holiday 

If education and schooling is about anything it must be about opening up new worlds and allowing the learner to go somewhere they have not been before – be it in maths, history, books, geography or whatever – that is what learning is. I remember sitting in a school staff meeting many years ago –  in the very politically correct the late eighties it would have been. The meeting was being lead by a member of the library service and she was advising teachers on suitable books to have in school to encourage children to read. Her message was loud and clear – they should be reading things that they can relate to, that they know about, things that reflect their world. 'Rubbish' I grunted – 'they should be widening their experience. A child living in a dismal block of flats with a single parent should not be having this scenario reinforced any more than a child living in a mansion should be having his or her life style reinforced as the only option in life. Education through reading has to be about opening up experience and showing other options.'  The proverbial lead balloon dropped in the staff room. I was on a roll now, 'I learned to read and learned to  love reading  by reading about cavemen making fire , knights in shining armour and the like – a million miles away from a Lancashire back street. I wanted to read something exciting and new not simply reinforce what I already knew and had!' It was something I felt very strongly about and the meeting tailed off – minds were  not meeting! I felt sorry for the lady – she meant well, and I could see what she was saying – but she had touched a nerve and that nerve was a key part of me!

One of the great 'growing up'
books - should be on every
 child's reading list!

And now, as I have become older  and have more time to read my choice is perhaps more eclectic. I am equally happy with a well written (as I define it!) crime novel such as those written by John Harvey or Graham Hurley  as I am with something which might have more 'meat' – Doris Lessing,  Colin Thubron or Carlos Ruiz Zafron or now, David Mitchell.  And it isn’t only fiction that has this capacity to relate to characters and situations. A well written biography or autobiography can have the same quality. 'Testament of Youth' (Vera Brittain), Richard O Morgan’s biography of Michael Foot, the biography of Lord Longford,  Carl Sandburg’s epic trilogy about Abraham  Lincoln, Duncan Hamilton’s biography of cricketer Harold Larwood and many, many others provide that same quality of allowing us to  see the world from someone else’s point of view – and in doing so, understand and perhaps revise our own perceptions.

Whether a book be good literature or just a good story to be enjoyed is, for me, a bit of a non-question. If it provides an opportunity for the reader to learn about a world and people and how they operate, think, love, hate, desire  and behave then it is, for me,  a 'good book'. Of course there’s more to it than this – many books are filled with banal plots and stereotyped characters. For example, in my view, the current best sellers by Steig Larsson seem fall into that category – why read Larsson when you could read Joe Nesbo? Why read the dreadfully stereotypical and gratuitous Ian Rankin when you could read John Harvey or Graham, Hurley.  But that aside, a good book provides, it seems to me,  a crucial contribution to humanity – the opportunity to imagine. Not imagine in a fairy tale sense (valuable and enjoyable thought that is) but to imagine what it is like for other people with different circumstances to our own. It might be a Graham Hurley detective solving a terrible murder, or the murderer (like Raskolnikov) committing it. It might be Jude in his desire for the higher education that he cannot access. It might be Anne Frank, fearful  in her hidden garret or the six Dutch children who search for the reasons why storks do not nest in their little village in the 'Wheel on the School' or it might be poor Mouse as he worries about being bullied by the school bully Marv Harmmerman in Betsy Byars’ 'The Eighteenth Emergency'. It might be the tyrannical Captain Ahab and his obsession with the whale in a vast book like 'Moby Dick' or just a very short but clever children’s story by Joan Aiken –    'The Serial Garden'. Who could not feel for poor old Mr Johansen when the packets of breakfast cereals are thrown away and he can no longer meet his love of many years before – Princess Sophia Maria Louisa of Saxe –Hoffenpoffen! When I read this tale to children and got to the final paragraphs where Mark’s mother tidies his bedroom and throws away the cereal packets and in doing so condemns Princess Sophia Maria the dustbin the children as a body exclaimed 'Ohhhhhhhh – no!' And, when at the end,  the distraught  Mr Johansen puts adverts in 'The Times'  in a feverish endeavour to track down any old packets of the cereal and so find his old love, thirty children would be wide eyed and want to know if he ever got any!   Or - it might be Jakob de Zoet as he lives out his life and his love in the strange and unnerving culture of the eighteenth century 'land of a thousand autumns'. A book provides that opportunity to get inside the head and the feelings of others. And in  doing so, I believe, makes us more complete human beings – for then we can perhaps better understand our fellow men.

I read Moby Dick when
I was about fifteen -
 I still have 'mind pictures'
 of the wonderful characters!

There is little doubt in my mind that the written word and the ability to read and write is not only the greatest skill we can pass on to children but it is perhaps  the defining characteristic of humanity over animals. The final words of 'The Thousand Autumns of Jakob de Zoet' are: 'A well-waxed paper door slides open.'-  an unwitting  metaphor, I believe, for reading, books and stories.  For they provide  an opening,  a paper doorway that can be passed through to knowledge and understanding. They are the doorway to not only knowledge and facts but to emotions, morals, history, culture, love, hate, anger, sorrow, joy – and any other facet of mankind that you care to mention. The book that I have just completed was, in its very small way such a doorway.

It was once said about Mrs Thatcher that she had no imagination, she could not understand what life was like for others and how they behaved. This, it was suggested, explained her iron lady stance and unswerving policies.  I couldn’t possibly comment on that! – but it seems to me that if you can’t imagine the life of others and the parameters in which they operate then you are missing a significant piece of the human jigsaw and you are a little less human. Books and stories help to provide us all with this piece and in so doing make us more complete beings.