Alice Again
Preparing for the Summer School at which we discussed Alice in 2010, I find my thinking about children’s literature has changed. I will put the powerpoint here at some point after the class, and I...
View ArticleGruffalo Hunting
Well now, this is an interesting project: Gruffalo hunting is the new Bear Hunt… Outdoor nation makes some important points about children (and parents) and their thinking about outdoor exploration,...
View ArticleSoporific
I was asked today for the meaning of this word. I have absolutely no problem supplying a definition – and equally no problem in being asked by a student to provide it. This is not a moan. What I’m...
View ArticleThe True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean telt by hisself
Just some quick thoughts as a sort of review of David Almond‘s book, published by Puffin, 2011, which I used with my Y3 students reflecting on the literary representations of learning to read. It...
View ArticleWolves, dogs, werewolves and stories
In a break from marking I was intrigued to find this image come up for me on Twitter (from Kathleen McCallum on Twitter but it’s on @nickswarb if you follow me). I am unsure – party because I don’t...
View ArticleCalleva Atrebatum and all that
It hardly seems worth putting links to the claims and counter-claims that have followed Michael Gove’s irascible statements about Blackadder views of World War I. Perhaps the best (and genuinely...
View ArticleDo they all live in the same wood?
Building on the real question posed by a four-year old reading Red Riding Hood, I would want to explore the nature of the landscape in which ‘fairy tale’ characters from Western European traditional...
View ArticleFeral
I am as deep into George Monbiot’s Feral as he is in ling, or wrack, or any other dense vegetation he encounters as he travels through the book. His view of nature and landscape is only dwarfed by this...
View ArticleDiversity?
A personal post to acknowledge the repulsive skirmishes around what Malorie Blackman may or may not have said about diversity and representation in children’s literature. Her point that there is “a...
View ArticleExpect scuffles
The short but clever blog post from Gareth E Rees http://www.unofficialbritain.com/the-united-kingdom-of-the-remembered-dead/ raises some interesting questions about public landscape and memory, using...
View ArticleAre we lacking in stories about real kids?
Abigail makes a good point in Like a Real Life where she asks “why are children’s picture books hardly ever about children?” She raises the issue of anthropomorphism in a slightly different way: are...
View ArticleAncient Darkness and other landscapes
Sitting at the end of a hectic day in the prestigious John Henry Brookes building at work, having handed in the exam paperwork and completed another piece of documentation for the treadmill of quality...
View ArticleFatherhood I
One of the joys of the team here at the moment is the real energy there is towards research. and looking outwards to more fluid forms of communication such as blogging. Mat Tobin, for example, has...
View ArticleRed Riding Hood’s Reality Check
I’m due to give a talk next week, and someone – not unkindly – asked if it would be my “Jack Zipes Shitck.” And actually I’m rather hoping not. What I will be doing is looking at Werewolves – and why...
View ArticlePas Devant Les Enfants
A spat of sorts came and went in the Guardian and places where they tweet last week over A Song for Ella Grey, and Lynne Reid Banks’ reaction to its marketing – or placing it among “children’s books:”...
View ArticleDura et aspera
I hear, from time to time, echoes of other people’s jobs and lives with young children. It is usually a welcome insight into children’s lives that, because of its piecemeal nature, is unlikely to have...
View ArticleA Return to Green Knowe
I want to come back to a previous post, in which I reflected on adult perspectives on children’s literature by asking what certain adult characters might have made of their part in a child’s story....
View ArticleSchool Based Training: more dura et aspera
There is a myth about teacher training (well, tbh there are thousands: this is but one!) that somehow the completion of an ITT (ITE) programme from a BA/BEd, through a Masters-led PGCE or...
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The landscape of the Dad
Patriarchs live in deserts. On what modern readers might see as the positive side, they produce water for the thirsty, food for the hungry, and field forty years’ worth of “Can we go back?” and “Are we...
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My Outdoor Learning
Last weekend (the final weekend in Oct 2016) I went outside. Not to the allotment, and not to the Kalahari: a sort-of-adventurous outside for a 59-year-old academic who was a great hiker in his early...
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