With a baby on the way, I'm already casting around for the most appealing ways to pass on my addiction.
by: Imogen Russell Williams
When I was three, my long-suffering mother read to me every night from Terry Jones's Fairy Tales, gloriously illustrated by Michael Foreman. The tale on which I was particularly fixated – that of "Brave Molly", who vanquished a huge yellow-eyed monster by revealing it as a cowardly rabbit in a monster-suit ("Oh, please! Don't put me in a pie!") – had to be repeated ad nauseam, until one bedtime I startled her by reciting it back verbatim.
By then I wanted very much to be able to read by myself. The stained-glass, strained-light quality of Foreman's water-colours and the poetic silliness and melancholy of the stories made the whole unknown world of books seem intensely alluring. It was threatening in some ways – Beasts with a Thousand Teeth roamed the streets after curfew, and Monster Trees bearing proscribed blue apples grew in the middle of black forests like thickets of eyes – but there were tastes and sights there that couldn't be had anywhere else: fruit that made you forget your loved ones, witches' treasures, rainbow cats. Like stout-hearted Molly, I wanted to know how that world worked, and to be able to untie the ribbon which shrank the beast into the rabbit.
The books on which I actually learned to read were Sheila K McCullagh's Puddle Lane stories, published by Ladybird, which I remember with intense fondness (in fact, gently distending with an infant of my own, I'm now trying to track down a second set between muttered reproaches to my poor mother for daring to give away the first). The Puddle Lane books still seem unique to me in providing straightforward, easy-to-digest sentences for learner readers (together with longer paragraphs on the facing page for an adult to read alongside) while refusing to skimp on plot and imagination, even in such tiny doses. McCullagh's names alone – Tim Catchamouse (surely the best name ever given to a small black cat), the Wideawake Mice, bossy Mrs Pitter-patter, old Mr Gotobed – were excitingly non-utilitarian, much more satisfying than those other Ladybird stalwarts, Peter and Jane.
In addition, stuff really happened on Puddle Lane. I remember little books imbued with mystery and excitement, complemented by perfect watercolour illustrations, all the more thrilling because I could read them myself. They featured magic boxes, invisible green monsters who manifested from the ears down, a satisfyingly-robed magician and mouse families in need of rescue, even from the beginning of the blue first series. By the time you got onto the purples, the iron boy and the sandalwood girl were pursuing a vivid and dramatic Pinocchio quest to become flesh and blood by bathing in the Silver River (I still remember how terrified I was when the iron boy carried the sandalwood girl above his head through fields of dry grass ignited by vicious red salamanders.) It seems amazing to me now that such memorable books came about as a mere spin-off from the eponymous 80s children's TV show.
I'd like my infant to enjoy the fantastic world of Puddle Lane as much as I did, but fear that I may be maddened by nostalgia into force-feeding the poor mite stuff it detests and wearing leg-warmers in a vain attempt to turn back the clock to 1986 (not to mention the fraught possibility that it won't enjoy reading at all). What's the best learn-to-read stuff available for the privileged small folk of the 21st century? And do you still remember the books with which you learned to read – and were they of the Dick and Jane persuasion, or more wide-ranging and exotic? What was the first book that really made you want to learn?
from: Guardian
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