How to help a reluctant reader

It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally had to admit that I live with a reluctant reader. The signs have always been there and have included fiddling with Nerf guns during reading homework, taking excessively long pauses during reading homework, opting to watch Stampy videos instead of bedtime stories, and choosing to dress as a Clone Trooper from Star Wars for World Book Day.

It’s his teachers I feel most sorry for. Many a parent evening discussion has revolved around eager teachers desperately attempting to find out his interests in order to engage him with books. It’s not for lack of trying on their part or mine that Toby doesn’t really want to read. He just doesn’t.

10 things the Mother’s Day cards don’t acknowledge

It’s lovely that motherhood has a day to celebrate it but Hallmark platitudes don’t always get to the heart of what it is to actually be a mother.

Here’s my list of things that the chocolates and the flowers and the three shelves of pink merchandise at Tesco sometimes fail to recognise:

Costume ideas for World Book Day

World Book Day gets bigger every year. On the one hand this is excellent news. Anything that gets people, and especially kids, talking about and sharing books is fantastic. However, the dressing up thing can be a bit of a drag for time-poor, unimaginative parents with stubborn children.

This year, Toby’s school is fully embracing the fancy dress theme, encouraging all children to dress as their favourite character from their favourite book AND bring in a copy of the book too (so that should put a stop to all the Batmans and Supermans that regularly turn out).

Regular readers of this blog (that’ll be the two of you then) will realise that we are no strangers to a book in our house. Toby could have picked from a vast selection of characters from a wide range of books. So what was his response to the brief?

My sort-of favourite books

As part of the office banter on a free-spirited Friday afternoon a new colleague started asking everyone what their favourite book is.

I couldn’t answer. I gave a few titles that jumped to the forefront of my mind under duress in a lukewarm attempt to join in but I didn’t feel my answer was all that sincere.

You see this type of question can be unconsciously teasing out whether you might be someone’s “type of person”. When someone asks a question like that it can often be a shorthand way to identify your educational or intelligence level, your social class, or your cultural parameters.

Why I love libraries

One of my early career goals was to be a librarian. I was probably six or seven when I set upon this dream, and it didn’t last long. I think I simply enjoyed the way libraries made me feel: calm and safe and full of possibility.

I took my first trip to the library, aged five, accompanied by my dad. Getting my first library card felt like an important rite of passage. If my memory serves me correctly, the card was a small pink envelope thing with a slip of paper that the librarian recorded all the borrowed books on. Or something like that.

Why science matters if you’re a parent

Science: legitimate playing for grown-ups

I didn’t get along too well with science when I was at school unless you count scraping a grade C in Higher Biology as academic success, which I don’t – particularly as it all left my brain the minute the exam was finished.

Anyway I’d always defined myself as more of an arts-type of person long before I could even have given science a chance. In short it never really captivated my interest.

What might have helped would have been some sort of friendly introduction to the subject that made it creative, fun and relevant before I started studying them at high school. Otherwise when the time comes you’re just confronted with a series of seemingly pointless experiments, confusing formulae and terrifying terminology that will bore you rigid if they’re not explained properly or made interesting.

The Beatrix Potter guide to being a bestselling children’s author

Those slender pocket-sized animal tales by Beatrix Potter certainly had a place in my childhood but I don’t remember having a strong attachment to them. Of course by the 1980s Peter Rabbit was an established icon so it’s difficult to remember a true impression of these books without being influenced by what is already known about these stories.

 

Fast forward 30-odd years, more than a century after Potter’s first book was published professionally, and my five-year-old is discovering joy in these stories from himself (thanks to someone giving us a second-hand edition of a Beatrix Potter collection). Despite the old-fashioned, sometimes clumsy language (that I really don’t enjoy reading aloud), Toby was quite taken with the antics of Peter Rabbit et al. I, too, discovered a Potter story that I’d not previously heard of, The Tale of Mr Tod, which earned countless re-tellings at bedtime. He still enjoys these stories now, two years later.

So I was delighted to learn that a previously un-aired Potter story, discovered in the archives two years ago, is to be published 150 years after the author’s birth. Better still, Kitty in Boots (because that is what it is to be called) is to be illustrated by none other than Quentin Blake – someone who I hope will be as memorable as Potter 100 years in the future. Blake’s illustrative style is of course very different to Potter but his gift for interpreting stories and characters visually will certainly help this tale resonate with contemporary audiences.

Five alternative Scottish poets to enjoy on Burns Day

Among the many things I’ll take to my grave will be the first lines of some of the more famous Robert Burns poems. For this I can thank the Scottish state school system and its annual ritual of making kids learn Burns poetry and recite them for a panel of judges on or around Rabbie Burns day on the 25^th January.

It sounds quite torturous, doesn’t it? But in actual fact I quite enjoyed doing things like that at primary school and it turned out I was quite good at it (not exactly a useful life skill though) winning certificates for renditions of To A Mouse and the rousing Scots Wha Hae if my memory serves me correctly.

Toby and his Burns certificates.

 

I was slightly tickled to discover that some 30 years later Scottish schools are still encouraging this tradition. However I’ve noted with mixed feelings that the kids are no longer given Burns poems but alternative Scottish poems with more familiar themes and topics. These choices still encourage and teach Scottish language but are perhaps less impenetrable than some of Rabbie Burns’ work.

While I think it’s important to familiarise children with challenging material from history, perhaps by introducing Scottish poetry in more accessible forms, a more positive relationship with the genre and the language can develop. Toby has certainly enjoyed learning and speaking these poems, fully embracing this new Scottish vocabulary. He’s come second in his class at reciting them too and I’ve always been impressed with how hard he’s worked to memorise the material. This year he’s really striving to win.

Me-time reading: The Book of You

It’s that time of year, isn’t? When all good intentions are readily abandoned in favour of all those more comfortable habits, which quite frankly make you you.

The wine is opened. The granola is substituted for the instant gratification of toast and jam. And as for those morning runs. . . Well it’s been a bit chilly, and surely that power walk to buy booze counts? Ok, so maybe that’s just me.

It’s understandable that we feel the need to reassess some of our habits after the over-consumption of Christmas but maybe we’re demanding too much of ourselves to expect a date on a calendar to serve as a catalyst for any extreme change in our habits. After all, we don’t all wake up on New Year’s Day suddenly free of all the emotional baggage or behaviours that have, over a lifetime, become entrenched in our psyche. As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Ice skating: the ultimate parenting challenge

After several days spent indoors assembling new Christmas presents, clearing out space for new Christmas presents and squashing down the cardboard packaging of new Christmas presents it was time to make a break for it.

We left the house.

Better than that, we did something active and something festive. We went ice skating at an open-air ice rink. It’s the sort of pursuit that looks so effortlessly romantic in the movies, and Toby certainly looked the part emerging from his bedroom dressed in a Christmas jumper, gilet and Russian hunting hat.

I did have some reservations. I haven’t skated since I was about 14 and I don’t recall being particularly gifted at it. I hoped it would be a bit like riding a bike. I hoped we weren’t going to end up in A&E.