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A question about pictures in books

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Why do pictures fade away as our reading improves?

Go into a book shop and the magic of children’s books is there, tucked into its special section, layered with illustrations and worlds to explore. However, if you’re not a child or buying for a child, what are you doing there? You must trudge round to the fiction and non-fiction shelves, and choose a book of only words from the volumes of text around you. No pictures for you. No books with little islands for you to rest on and get your bearings. No. No! You would-be-island-hopper, you must choose undaunted, and get to the other side the hard way … word by word.

And what’s on the other side? More books without pictures. All the ones with colour and sketches, doodles and drawings are on the junior shelves far away, almost out of sight. How bleak is that? And what if you choose to swim back again, back to the picture books? Well that’s embarrassing. But, you could, if you really, really, really wanted.

Isn’t this tough reading regime a teeny bit wrong? Couldn’t all books have at least a few pictures? Shouldn’t they tempt us, allow us to enjoy the screen time break, the layers of magic, with no shame attached? Give us a mini-holiday – a mental, emotional, more accessible mind massage?

Just a thought.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Another look at Demon Copperhead

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Today was another day on my course looking at children’s literature. I love the course and the writing we’re being shown.

This morning we were looking at the techniques writers use to reveal their characters. One example, aimed at 9 -12 year-olds, was the opening section from Dread Wood by Jennifer Killick. In a few short pages she describes the gang at the core of the book, introducing them to us through the main character by showing us what he thinks of them. Then she uses the gang’s words and behaviour to tell us more about the main character himself. The descriptions are so skilful and quick that they caught my attention with only a few lines.

After looking at Dread Wood and other examples, we were asked to think about books we’d read ourselves. How did they introduce us to their protagonists?

My book, my only recent read, was Demon Copperhead by Barabara Kingsolver. Not a children’s book, but with a growing child at its core. I opened the book up again and started to look. The voice came at me loud and original – self-deprecating, real, urgent. It’s the voice of the ‘I’ of the story, Demon Copperhead. He’s the “little blue prizefighter” who took me from the minutes before his first breath, right to the end of the book. Branded by his birth as the “Eagle Scout of trailer trash”, and orphaned not many years later, life in his struggling community was never going to be easy. Could have all been miserable, made me walk away, but there was that voice that carried me towards the risk, the race over potholes to the end.

How did Barbara Kingsolver do it? I’m not sure exactly, but she made it look easy. All I have discovered is that it’s not.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Farewell to the house martins – may they return

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This time last week these two little birds were peeping out of their nest, anxiously waiting for food and the power to fly.

Three days later that power had come. We saw the evidence high on window ledge, where one of the fledglings, white chest heaving, scrabbled for a footing a few metres below the nest. We counted the pause in seconds, and then off the little bird span, wings stiffening in flight.

That evening it seemed as if the birds had gone. The following day there was still no sign of them, or if there was we never saw it. We fretted of course.

“Surely too soon.”

“That bird needed more time.”

An anxious blog was prepared, but on the point of pinging it out into the world, the chirruping above the window suddenly started up again, together with the to and fro of food delivery as the birds prepared for the night.

The next day the nest was still full, unbothered by the passing of the autumn equinox.

Then came this morning, and with it the sight of house martins gathered, sharp as arrowheads, below the storm clouds in the distance. It looked as though there were a dozen or so birds, many more than in the nest we’d seen. Like an air squadron in waiting they soared the grey tumbling sky … and then they were gone.

Here’s hoping that next year, at least some of them will make it all the way back again.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023