Happy new adventures

The Earth has moved around the Sun for another whole year.
May 2014 be full of new adventures for you.

From the page to the stage

What children’s books have you seen adapted to the stage?

There have been plenty of classics such as The Magic Pudding or The Water Babies, but what about shorter picture books. What does it take to make the leap from bedtime story to stage show?

The English production of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt recently toured Melbourne. The popular story can be read in a few minutes, but on stage it becomes a raucous, physical journey that is helped by crowd interaction and fun songs that keep it romping along at a good pace. A simple story perfectly reworked for the theatre, there should be more of it.

What other picture books would you like to see on stage?

Thin red line

Found this thin red line hidden at the bottom of a summertime garden.
Accident or design? We had wind and rain this week, so I like to think it was nature doing the yarn bombing this time.

Yarn Bombing

The street art movement of yarn bombing has spread worldwide in the last few years. Recently it filtered through to the school around the corner. The local kids may not knit or crochet, but they made up for that with imagination and flair as they stormed their school with wool.

Book Champion: Mattia

Mattia is seven years old and lives in London. He speaks English, Cantonese and Italian and his favourite book is Twist of Gold by Michael Morpurgo.

Baker Smith: Can you tell us what the book is about?
Mattia: It’s about these two children and their mum and there’s a potato famine in Ireland where they live and their dying mum has to stay behind. Then they travel to America on a boat and life is really hard and loads of people want to help and two of them die trying to help them.
BS: What’s a potato famine?
M: It’s when there’s not much food around.
BS: So they decided moving to America was a better option?
M: Yes.
BS: Tell us more about what happens when they arrive in America?
M: They can’t find the house that their Dad made for them because he went before they went. Then finally they go to this woman and she knew where their Dad’s house was and she told them it’s got the biggest chimney of all. So they were able to find the house.
BS: Did they all live together in the house after that?
M: Yes. But the dog who went with the Dad died two weeks before the children came.
BS: Oh, it sounds like a bit of a sad story? Did it make you cry?
M: No! Except the last bit. It was a hard life.
BS: How long ago was the story set?
M: It’s just a story, it’s not something real.
BS: Do you have a favourite character in the book?
M: Well not really. Because there’s hardly any characters in the book. There’s only two main characters.
BS: Do you remember their names?
M: Sean and Annie.
BS: They sound like very Irish names.
M: Yes, they’re Irish.
BS: Do you think you’d like to go on a boat from Ireland to America?
M: No way! They hardly had any food or water.
BS: Sounds very hard. Would you prefer to fly in a plane from Ireland to America.
M: Yes!
BS: And would you recommend this book to other children to read?
M: Yes. I think about 9-10 years old kids should read it.
BS: Sounds like a long book. How many pages does it have?
M: 300 pages.
BS: 300 pages! That’s phenomenal. Well done.

Chatterbox 13: Magic

Cami: I’m going to magic you. Zim!
Me: But nothing has happened.
Cami: It’s just pretend.
Me: Can you do some real magic?
Cami: I’m doing pretend magic. Yes, something needs to happen.
Me: Do some real magic then.
Cami: Magic you. Magic you. Turn Daddy into a little fairy. Zim!
Me: Oh.
Cami: No, that’s not right. Magic you. Magic you. Zim! Turn Daddy into a fairy pirate!
Me: That’s more like it.

A Crafty Day

A cardboard box can hide a fox
and possibly a bear.
A ball of string’s the perfect the thing
to tangle here and there.

Paperclips hung in a strip
can decorate a room.
Rubber bands on hands expand
and twist or flick and zoom.

Paper sheets with folds and pleats
can loop de loop the sun.
And drinking straws can draw for sure
blow ink and see it run.

Chatterboxes and Cootie Catchers

A mother showed me her daughter’s folded paper version of an age-old game and asked whether I had seen it before. She had made them herself, while growing up as a girl in Shanghai. A Fortune Teller, Whirlybird, or Cootie Catcher in the United States (for catching cooties) and a Chatterbox in Australia, the game has a long history. I hadn’t seen one for a while, but according to the book, Studying Girl Culture: A Reader’s Guide, girls in Japan were first observed playing this simple playground pastime as early as the 1600s. Social trends come and go, amazingly though, this simple one remains. It moved from the East to the West from generation to generation of young girls and in Melbourne 2013, the game is still alive and well.

Chatterbox 12

Conversation with a six-year-old.

Issy: Who are the Beatles?
Me: Four guys who made music together
Issy: What are their names?
Me: John, Paul, George and Ringo 
Issy: Are they still alive?
Me: Two are alive and two are dead
Issy: Is Paul dead?
Me: Everyone thought Paul was dead. It turned out he was just tricking.
John and George are dead
Issy: How did they die?
Me: John got shot and George got sick and couldn’t get better
Issy: The Beatles are GREAT!

Kids + play = happy

This week is Children’s Week in Australia. It’s an annual event established around 17 years ago. I can’t say that I have ever paid much attention to it. Officially designated occasions come and go, often getting lost in a sort of designed by a committee nothingness. In this instance, the idea that the week ‘celebrates the right of children to enjoy childhood’ struck a chord. Isn’t that right a given? The thought that kids would have to fight for the right to a childhood is reason enough for this week to exist. Kids + play = happy = learning = good outcomes for all. It’s not hard to do the maths.