Sunday Buffet

The Children’s Bookshow

Merry Sunday pals!

So following on from last time we had a Sunday buffet together, Pie has finished making her lino cut. Isn’t it brilliant?

I haven’t finished my print yet because I have been away for a few days with The Children’s Book Show. I am hoping to finish my print today.

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Photo Dump 🍂

The pumpkin patch, Peggy is smellier than ever, and the story I was working on at Emily’s story workshop.

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Children’s Book Show

This is my fifth gig with The Children’s Book Show and I love them. They are a charity who do amazing work for children in deprived areas up and down the country. Great work Children’s Book Show!

Here’s what happens:

They bring a huge crowd of school children (nine hundred this time) to their local theatre, often for the first time in their lives.

Us authors and illustrators do our stuff. Most of my shows have been with the poet, Owen Sheers, who wrote a book that I illustrated a few years ago. He reads while I draw live— and other fun stuff.

The Children’s Book Show

After the show, as the children file out of the theatre, we put a copy of the book into each child’s hand. Some of them don’t have books at home and can’t believe they are allowed to keep it. Others are suspicious that we might want them to pay. ‘It’s free. Yes, it’s for you. You can take it home. Yes, free! No I don’t want your packed lunch in payment. Oh go on then, just the Kitkat.’ (Joking I don’t accept Kitkats)

Here’s a sad fact from the CBS website: 1 in 5 children aged between five and eight in England do not have access to books at home.

I have been visiting schools since about 1998. I visit all sorts of schools, from very expensive private schools, with their own stadiums and school dinners that wouldn’t look out of place in a fancy hotel, to schools in deprived areas where there are buckets under leaky ceilings and teachers who have to pay for books and art materials from their own pocket. I have met teachers who provide toast every morning before lessons start because children arrive at school hungry.

There are more children with special educational needs, less classroom assistants, and more noise and chaos.

There are more children looking exhausted, more children with old and grubby uniforms, more greasy hair and dirty fingernails: all signs of poverty. This isn’t bad parenting, it’s caused by the politics we live in today.

‘Schools are finding beds, providing showers for pupils and washing uniforms as child poverty spirals out of control. School leaders said that as well as hunger they were now trying to mitigate exhaustion, with increasing numbers of children living in homes without enough beds or unable to sleep because they were cold. They warned that “desperate” poverty was driving problems with behaviour, persistent absence and mental health.’ The Guardian

I can see it when I visit schools, I can see it in the faces of the little children. I hear it from the stories they tell me or the drawings they make.

This is not right. It makes me angry.

I’ll round off the Sunday Buffet with some fun things I promise, but this is where my head is at the moment.

Thank goodness for The Children’s Bookshow. If you’d like to help them to do their amazing work, tap the button below.

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Anyway, on a lighter note, I thought you might enjoy our bookshow taxi driver experiences:

One taxi driver was a very large man. His jumper didn’t reach below his belly button and his jeans were seriously low rise. Not in a good way 👀.

He got cross when we tried to close the taxi boot. He rolled his eyes and told us it was AUTOMATIC - twice.

When we got the next taxi we were still feeling bruised by the skimpy jumper driver, so we didn’t close the boot in case it was AUTOMATIC. But sadly we judged wrong and he drove off with the boot open.

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Podcasts and telly I am loving

Celebrity Traitors - Alan Carr is a delight!

Louis Theroux chatting to Steve Coogan and then Michael Palin

Psychology in Seattle - Progress Makes us Miserable — has civilisation ruined our lives?

Crash Detectives - so good! I am a sucker for all those ‘Police, Camera, Action’ type TV shows.

The Pitcairn Trials - a true crime podcast

Uncanny podcast - Daily tales of terror for the Halloween season

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Story Structure Workshop

I did a picture book workshop with Emily Howarth Booth last weekend. She was talking to us about story structure, using films as examples. She described how lots of stories fit this structure:

Thesis (the protagonist has a view of themselves/ the world)

Antithesis (the protagonist meets an obstacle, maybe they meet someone with an opposite view)

Synthesis (The protagonists mixes both beliefs together to make them a wiser, more rounded person— or in a picture book maybe a wise and more rounded bear)

I don’t know why this hasn’t occurred to me before but I got very excited when my brain made the following link: it reminds me of psychotherapy.

You grow up with a story, a way of seeing the world, maybe your family taught you a particular way of seeing yourself. Then later you have challenges, maybe a big crisis and you end up in therapy where you learn there might be another way of seeing the world or yourself. Hopefully you can synthesise it all into a much healthier, more nuanced story, one that makes life easier.

I can highly recommend Emily’s workshop, I wrote a picture book in a day! I will make some edits and stuff, but essentially, it’s done! Emily will be running her workshop again in November. There are just two spaces left, so be quick! Read more about it here.

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What are you up to today?

🎃 I will plonk the pumpkins we picked at the patch onto the mantle piece. 🍰 Pie made a cake last night, we will scoff that. 🍽️ Gerry is promising a roast dinner and I have a lino print to finish. Should be a good Sunday!

Tell me your Sunday plans.

Love Helenx

P.S.

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