The Secret of Happy Ever After (61 page)
The Jungle Book
, Rudyard Kipling
Chalet School
series, Elinor Brent-Dyer
Mrs Pepperpot
, Alf Prøysen
Madeline
, Ludwig Bemelmans (not necessarily in French, although that adds a certain
je ne ces quois
!)
*
Children and Dalmatians are optional
Read on for an interview with Lucy Dillon . .
.
The books from our childhoods seem to form very powerful, evocative memories. What are the books you most fondly remember from your childhood, and why?
Looking back now I realise how lucky I was growing up in the 70s and 80s in the middle of a creative boom in children’s fiction, and with an English-teacher mother who read a book a day, and also ran the school library. I read, and was read to, all the time, so I probably only spent about 50% of my waking childhood in the real world. As well as the classics like Enid Blyton, E Nesbit and Arthur Ransome (which I gobbled up, living in the Lake District), I have vivid memories of all the Roald Dahl books,
Pippi Longstocking
, the Pullein-Thompson sisters’ pony books, Judy Blume (v racy!),
The Worst Witch
, which predated Harry Potter by quite a long time. . . The ones that stick in the mind most, though, are the Roald Dahl books like
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
and
Danny, Champion of the World
; I suppose that’s partly because they’re incredibly vivid narratives, written in Dahl’s instantly recognisable style, but partly because they were read to me at bedtime, when words seem to sink in deepest. And also, maybe, because they’re classics that engage an adult imagination just as much as a child’s.
Is there a character or story that you particularly identified with?
Jo March – I wasn’t a tomboy but I had one sister, and loved scribbling away in the attic, like her. I knew exactly how she felt on discovering libraries in her aunt’s house - those bookworm butterflies of excitement at all the different worlds hidden in the shelves. That was the first book I longed to ‘go into’, button boots and cotillions and all. My lifelong fascination with American baking – grits and muffins, pies and biscuits – started with the Marchs’ dinners, and Katy Carr’s tuckbox.
Was there a hero you dreamt of running away with and marrying?
I wish I could say Mr Darcy, but my first crush was on sensible Julian from the
Famous Five
series. He probably grew up to be a very sensible accountant with sensible shoes and a Volvo, but at the time I thought his quick thinking and good manners were splendid. Soon after, I went through a Greek mythology phase, and rather fancied Hercules (setting the bar quite high there for future boyfriends), but then I found a tatty copy of
Gone with the Wind
and it’s been all about Rhett ever since.
Was storytime an important part of your bedtime ritual as a child? Is it still?
It was always the highlight of the day. My younger sister and I had a bedtime story every single night for years and years – my parents took it in turns to read to us, and I think they enjoyed it as much as we did, although we learned the stories very quickly and knew if they were trying to cut them short by ‘abridging’. There’s nothing more soothing than dropping off to the sound of someone’s voice, letting the pictures bloom in your imagination as sleep rolls in – I think that’s why children’s books take root so firmly in our memories. Listening to someone read, rather than reading yourself, seems to let even more of your imagination loose, especially when the setting is unfamiliar: I have extremely vivid mental images of the European children’s stories like
Mrs Pepperpot
and
Emile and the Detectives
, for that reason. Now I listen to Talk Radio on a sleep timer when I drop off, which isn’t always quite so soothing.unfamiliar: I have extremely vivid mental images of the European children’s stories like
Why do you think bedtime storytelling has become such a tradition?
Storytelling has always been an important part of the human cultural instinct, the sharing of stories between one generation and the next, and it’s one of the reasons that children’s classics endure for so long, because there’s real pleasure in revisiting them as an adult. Modern life is busy and also visual; sharing a slower, aural experience, in which imaginations connect by telling stories that the parent or grandparent loved when they were the same age as the child, is special. It’s almost like
Tom’s Midnight Garden
, in a way – the ‘ghost’ of the parent’s own childhood comes back to life again in the same story. It’s lovely to think of all the children who grew up on Harry Potter dusting down their editions in twenty years’ time and sharing them with children and grandchildren; I read the Potter books as an adult and a big element of their charm for me was the echoes of so many familiar story traditions hidden inside.
Animals, especially dogs, feature prominently in children’s literature – and indeed in your novels. Do you think that animals can sometimes help the human characters in stories express themselves better?
It’s an interesting point! I think, looking at it with a grown-up reader’s eyes, that often the animals in books are aligned with the children, as co-conspirators in the magical non-human world – the innocent child can see and understand the animal much better than the adults can, and the animals reward the child’s honest trust by sharing some secret with them or saving them from the consequences of the adults’ stupidity. Animals (OK, dogs and horses) don’t have very vested interests beyond being warm and being fed, but in return they give disproportionate amounts of loyalty, courage, and love, something humans usually end up learning from in children’s books.
Although, having said that, I’m a real wuss when it comes to animals in books; from Black Beauty onwards, there’s a huge pile of stories that I’ve never been able to finish, thanks to the constant shedding of tears. Even Michael Morpurgo is too hardcore for me. We had to read
White Fang
by Jack London when I was at school, and I never really recovered.
You show that the pleasure of sharing a story isn’t exclusive to childhood: Anna’s visits to Butterfield’s to read aloud bring the resident’s great joy. What do you think it is about this activity that so draws people in?
Reading aloud is such a positive community experience – it builds an instant relationship between the listeners, and opens up a whole map of different discussions, such as their interpretation of what everyone’s just heard, or their related experiences, or perhaps their memory of reading it themselves for the first time. When I was researching The Secret of Happy Ever After, I found a lot of inspiration in The Reader Organisation, which works to promote reading in communities; they run ‘Get into Reading’ sessions all over the country, particularly among groups who’ve lost their connection to literature, either through blindness, or lack of reading skills, or other social or mental problems. The website is www.thereader. org.uk and it has lots of interesting information about joining or starting a group, as well as glowing testimonials from happy readers!
As the Reader Organisation’s work demonstrates, reading aloud has many positive therapeutic effects beyond basic entertainment; for example, it seems to help dementia sufferers to access different areas of their memory, by retreading familiar old narrative ground. It’s a gentle way of making a connection with an elderly relative; if you struggle to find the right conversations to engage each other, why not offer to read from a favourite book for half an hour? The Reader Organisation has produced
A Little Aloud,
an anthology of easy-to-read, inspiring-to-listen-to selections from different genres of literature, for all age groups. I really recommend it.