Chatiryworld

Baby's first bookshelf

He may not have multiple changing bags to match all my outfits, an all-singing all-dancing baby gym and entertainment centre, or scratch mitts, but Bagl does have a bookshelf all of his own. We've bought him a couple of board books (The Baby's Catalogue of course) but the rest are from our collection.  Jon's a bit more willing to share than I am, my mum will have to have a word with me about this! I'm also planning that one of Bagl's first trips out will be to Aberdour Library to join up, maybe he needs a Belle and Boo library bag to carry his books in? (Actually we already have a cute book bag that I bought to give as a present and then couldn't stand to part with it.)

I'm planning on blogging about the books we read with Bagl, I've dabbled a bit over the years with blogging about children's books but actually having a child should spur me on a bit - I hope.  I'm very much of the mindset that you can't introduce books too early and the children's work I did at Leeds Libraries is the only thing I really miss about being a public librarian.  Yesterday The Guardian published an article on favourite authors to mark the first anniversary of their children's book site, which is a fantastic resource.  And if you want to read a great blog devoted to children's books, Playing by the book is most definitely one of my favourites, and includes loads of links to other similar blogs.

Seven Stories to the Sage

Last weekend we popped down to Newcastle and Gateshead.  My brother Dominic is a violinist in the National Youth Orchestra and they had a concert at the Sage (sadly as far north as they play).  We decided to make a day of it by also going to one of our favourite places, Seven Stories.  If you have children, or any interest in children's books and illustration, you really should get yourself there!

We went mainly to see the Puffin Books exhibition but also saw one of Anthony Browne's work (Willy the Wimp was a family favourite when I was a kid) and went Chaffy hunting.  I'd never heard of Find Chaffy before, but it's a really funny book, a little bit like Where's Wally? but with a story and more entertaining.

After lunching at the Cluny, wandering around Ouseburn and dinner with my dad and Dominic, we wandered over the Millennium Bridge to the Sage.  I'd only ever admired it from the outside but it's a fantastic building with lots going on.  The concert was absolutely amazing, they played a piece by Judith Weir called We Are Shadows and Mahler's 10th Symphony. I was a very proud big sister, and took a sneaky photo at the end...

What's your library worth to you?

There's been a lot in the media about library closures.  I can't comment on the politics of it but as a librarian I obviously think that public libraries are a Good Thing.  They are so good that last year I borrowed 62 books worth nearly £1,000, wow!  I'll be honest and say that I didn't always enjoy working in them (I work in a specialist library now), but they do offer some amazing services - I'm just not the person to provide them!  This Saturday sees a day of action all over the country to support our libraries.

I've read a lot of articles in newspapers (well, ok, mainly the Guardian, my paper of choice) and have picked up some recurrant themes from the, er, comments (I don't like newspaper comments because they're usually awful, but I can't help but look at them).  A lot of people think their local libraries are crap and don't go.  I wonder how recently they've been in, and if they know that just because their local library doesn't have a book, they may still be able to reserve it from another library within their council area for a small charge, or even for free.  There's another group of people who seem to think that libraries aren't necessary because books are so cheap these days.  I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of people out there who wouldn't agree with that, ever tried living off benefits? Libraries aren't just about books anyway.  Do you like reading newspapers too?  Go and see if your library service allows you free access to News UK, you don't even need to leave the house to use it and it lets you read thousands of articles from nearly all the main British national and local papers.  That's just one example.

This got me thinking about the worth of the library books I've borrowed.  A couple of years ago I realised I was buying a lot of books that I wasn't going to read again and so gave away.  Although I like the idea of keeping a book as a kind of record of your enjoyment, when you rent and have moved a fair amount in the past few years, you start to get a bit more ruthless with possessions (please don't think I'm anywhere near being a minimalist though!).  Buying books to give away after a year seemed like a waste of money.  So I decided to ramp up my library use.  I've always been a regular user but I started using it for the majority of my reading.  If I really loved a book, I bought it.  If I wasn't bothered by it, I'd only borrowed it, so no money wasted.  When I first started doing this reserves cost 60p each from Edinburgh Libraries, a charge I was more than happy to pay.  They're free now, which is amazing, although I kind of feel a bit guilty as I could afford the 60p.  But then maybe others who couldn't are benefitting from it more now.

I've recorded all the books I've borrowed and bought here on the blog, so the other week I thought it would be interesting to find out how many books I borrowed last year, and what they would have cost, discovering the value of my library to me.  It didn't take long to work out, and I discovered that in 2010 I borrowed 62 books worth approximately £976.91 (I had to guess a couple of prices).  You can see what they were here.  I took the full price from Amazon.  I've noted what I didn't finish (I lost my reading mojo towards the end of the year and am just starting to get it back), and which ones I bought or plan to buy

I don't want to claim that I saved nearly £1,000 by using a library last year.  I probably wouldn't have bought a lot of those books and borrowed them anyway, and if I had bought them I would have been looking for them on special offer.  Where I've borrowed hardback editions I'd probably have looked for paperbacks when it came to buying.  But I think that being able to borrow nearly £1,000 worth of books for free is pretty damn amazing.  If you have a look at the spreadsheet you'll see that a lot of them were books that came out last year.  I took out Nigella's Kitchen within a few weeks of it being published.  Libraries aren't just full of old tatty books that are falling apart.

I can afford to buy books.  But I choose to get most of them from the library, it saves me money and creates less waste.  Plus every book I take out helps prove to my local council how much my local library is used and needed.  If you want to find out more about why public libraries are so great, and experiences from library users, get on over to Voices for the Library.  Also check out John Kirriemuir's Use libraries and learn stuff blog (that's where the above image came from), he's brought together some good stuff and writes well.  And then go and help your local library's usage stats and take a book out.  You might be surprised at what you find.

Postcards from Puffin

I saw Postcards from Puffin in The Grove Bookshop when we were visiting my mum.  A few weeks later, and I have my own.  This is a wonderful little treasure, a box of 100 postcards featuring classic Puffin book covers.  Here are some that I owned:

I inherited Little Women and The Secret Garden (what about this edition?!) from my mum, and the others were given to me.  A Necklace Of Raindrops was republished a few years ago, it's a lovely book of magical short stories.  I owned several more books represented in the box but with different covers.  I also recognise a fair few that belonged to the library, school or friends.  I also discovered a Noel Streatfeild book I had never read.

It's a really beautifully produced item, made to look like a book (of course) and a ribbon to help you lever out the cards.  Of course I'm not going to use them to send as postcards, they can remain as treasure in the box.  There are a lot of activity books represented in there as well, such as the alphabet book above. 

There is also a book, Puffin By Design , about Puffin Books that I'll hopefully be able to get out of the library soon.  In the meantime, I've got 1001 Children's Books out, I saw it featured on another blog ages ago and have been wanting to read it ever since.  Plus, the wonderful Seven Stories has a Puffin exhibition on until June.   Hmm, one of my brothers is playing with the National Youth Orchestra in Gateshead in April, we should be planning a little trip I think!

Seven Stories love song

A few years ago we went to the fabulous Seven Stories children's book museum in Newcastle.  That time was to celebrate my birthday by going to see an exhibition on childhood favourites Janet and Allan Ahlberg.  Over the past few months Seven Stories has been hosting an exhibition on Judith Kerr, another favourite.  She is most famous for the Mog (who first appeared 40 years ago) books and The Tiger Who Came to Tea .  It's only on for another week but if you can get to it, I highly recommend that you do.

Seven Stories is a museum aimed at children but when it comes to their exhibitions, it doesn't matter how old you are, there's enough information and displays to satisfy an adult's desire for knowledge, whilst at the same time bringing the books alive for children in really innovative ways.  I love children's books and enjoyed coming up with event and activity ideas when I was a public librarian, but I doubt I would have gone for the theme of Mog's dreams and set up a giant cat basket with Mog costumes for kids to dress up in and then dream like Mog.  A small 1930s classroom set up to help describe Kerr's childhood looks sweet enough, and then you realise you're allowed to open the desks and inside each one are items from each country Kerr's family lived in when escaping from the Nazis.  And don't get me started on the toy kitchen complete with a Tiger who has come for tea.  I also had no idea that Kerr had designed textiles either (scroll down a bit to see the bedroom set).

We whizzed round the Lauren Child exhibition and also went and had a nose at the Artists Attic.  This was where we both wished we'd borrowed a small child for the day.  It was a Friday, and there were a couple of school groups in the museum but there was one small boy who basically had the attic all to himself (and his mum, and Jon and I looking round it and gushing).  It's basically a big space set up for readings and talks but there are also loads of books to look at and spaces to curl up and read them.  There's a storytelling chair and train set.  And in one corner, loads of dressing up clothes and a mini theatre where kids can put on their own shows.

As if that isn't enough for a great day out there's a good pub next door, the Cluny, and next door to that, Ouseburn Farm, complete with a cat that sunbathes on top of the rabbit hutches.  I understand that Ouseburn the area is worth an explore, we'll maybe do that next time.

Fostering a love of books

(Note, the following may not work on stuffed animals.)

Pip at Meet Me At Mikes has written a wonderful post today, How to Grow Book Worms, passing on tips she's learned as a mum of booklovers.  There are even more ideas in the comments.

Moooooooomin

It's no secret that Jon and I are huge fans of the Moomins (we had a reading from Who Will Comfort Toffle? at our wedding).  There's currently a Moomins exhibition on at the Belgian Comic Strip Centre, and these lovely children travelled over from Finland to sing their song and open the exhibition.  If we weren't already planning to go over to Brussels later in the year I think we'd be on the next Eurostar, but we're going to be good.  Maybe the exhibition will come to the UK.

There's more about the Moomins at The Moomin Trove, and you can also learn about the TV series from the late 70s/early 80s that introduced us both to the Moomins when we were sprogs, over at The Fuzzy Felt Moomins.  If you're passing Tampere in Finland, you can also go to the Moominvalley Museum.  There's also a theme park but I think I would prefer the museum.

Favourite forgotten books

So there I was, reading blogs this evening, when I clicked onto Jane Brocket's latest entry in Google Reader.  Holy crap!  Phoebe and the hot water bottles!  I LOVED that book.  It made me wonder about what other books I loved as a child that I've now forgotten.  A few weeks ago I saw The Giant Jam Sandwich in the Children's Bookshop here in Edinburgh.  Several years ago, on a family holiday in Torridon, I devoured another childhood favourite, Five Dolls in a House .  It was probably about 20 years since the last time I had read it.  I obviously had a thing about doll's house books, I still think of Tottie: The Story of a Dolls' House and Tilly's House (Amazon UK doesn't have the cover image) every so often.

If you were a fan of the Tottie TV series from Oliver Postgate, here's a little clip.  And have any of you rediscovered favourite old books recently?

Upside-down houses and flying through space

There's a great piece in the Guardian Review today by Jenny Uglow, The lure of illustrated children's books.  It's a review of 1001 Children's Books: You Must Read Before You Grow Up by Julia Eccleshare, which I'm hoping Edinburgh Libraries will get hold of soon.  I particularly love the opening paragraph of the article:

'Small children are astoundingly flexible visual readers – they can take in packed scenes just as easily as bold, simple images; they can follow adventures in silhouettes against bright backgrounds and turn without a flicker to the comic-like abstractions of Mr Men. This openness is on a par with their acceptance of magical transformations, upside-down houses and flying through space, and their tendency to anthropomorphise everything, from rabbits to trains and from dinosaurs to umbrellas. They know no boundaries. They also linger over pictures, with a time-defying immersion that grown-ups tend to lose.'

So, so true.  Never underestimate the illustrations that a small child can enjoy.  I always loved packed scenes when I was a child, the more there was to look at and discover, the happier I was.

If you want to know more about 1001 Children's Books, Amy at Sweet Sweet Life wrote a great post about it, which includes lots of images.

Also in this week's review was an interview with Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson.  I had no idea her husband was a paediatrician at Yorkhill.

Wednesday 2nd December 2009

I like has been one of my favourite blogs since I was alerted to it by Amateur Ramblings.  Anne has put together a great shopping guide if you're looking for gifts that are a bit different, many with a good retro British touch, think Tunnocks, Sheffield University Arts Tower and fruit and veg.  There's also the I like bookshop which is full of good ideas if you need to buy presents for people called Jon Nagl and Hugh Leishman.

Chatiryworld also has a book shop but I don't find it as interesting as I own pretty much everything in it, or have bought things as gifts for others.

Loveliness from other blogs

Although I was never into Where the Wild Things are as a child (I don't actually think I've even read it), I think this Max stocking by Pip from Meet Me At Mikes is absolutely gorgeous.

Has anyone ever seen 1001 Children's Books: You Must Read Before You Grow Up ?  Normally I shy away from books like that but Sweet Sweet Life posted about it earlier this week and it looks like a really interesting resource.  Forget being told what books you should read, if you just want to learn more about old favourites, see illustrations from previous editions or discover something new, this looks just the ticket.  Not available from Edinburgh Libraries but I'd definitely like to take a look at it.

On comics

Until a few years ago this pretty much summed up adults who read comics to me.  Before all Jon's comic-reading friends disown me, I will redeem myself by the end of the post.  I was wrong.  And yes thinking that is a bit rich from someone who likes buying children's picture books.

As a librarian I didn't really think a lot of the graphic novels we'd get in to entice teenage boys, I just dismissed them as something that wasn't for me.  Sure, I'd read most of the Raymond Briggs books (still not read Ethel and Ernest though), and I think I had a Maid Marian and Her Merry Men comic book.  I liked reading Hugh's Beano and Broons books.  Not forgetting the years I'd spent reading Bunty, Twinkle, My Little Pony, Barbie, Care Bears and Girl comics.  I also collected Alex books for a while.

Then I met Jon and lived happily ever after.  Oh, and rethought my stance on comics.  As well as being into Japanese animation (had a rethink on that one too), Jon also liked comics.  I just ignored them really, and to be honest, I've ignored most of the ones he owns.  But a few months into our relationship I got flu and Jon came over to see me with a rescue package.  One of the things he brought was the graphic novel Blankets by Craig Thomson.  It was just what I needed, easy to read, good illustrations and made me think - but not too much.  Later, when we moved into together, Jon introduced me to Box Office Poison.  It was the sort of novel I liked, only in graphic form.  I looked out the follow up and bought it as a birthday gift for him.

Maybe comics weren't that strange then?  We both got into American Elf, which is absolutely brilliant and can sum up human angst in just a few illustrations.  We've given the books as gifts a couple of times.  I was obviously wrong to totally dismiss this form of literature.

And then earlier this week the blog of one of my favourite shops/galleries in Edinburgh, The Red Door, posted about the Observer/Cape Graphic Short Story Award.  I followed through as the pages posted piqued my interest, and ended up reading a very lovely story by Vivien McDermid.  Moral of the story?  Careful what you dismiss as 'sad' or 'nerdy', you may just end up enjoying it.

Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache

I can't remember which blog I first read about Harry Eastwood's Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache cookbook, but I put it on library wishlist after reading about it and having a quick skim through in Waitrose.  I remembered to order it and it's been sitting at here at home for a couple of weeks. 

The recipes are all for cakes and puddings using vegetables.  I made the courgette cupakes on Sunday and added the naughty chocolate icing that also appears in the book.  They're very tasty, but nothing spectacular - although the lack of butter in the actual cakes makes them a bit healthier than most.

The book is beautifully styled, really beautifully styled, lots of cakes in gardens and, my favourites, full size cakes resting in doll's houses.  Love that.  But I won't be buying the book, because I cannot stand the writing style.  It's all a bit naughty schoolgirl, and whilst I can tolerate that for so long, I couldn't in this book.  What really annoyed me most was the little paragraphs personifying each cake: 'This fudge is a loveable boy of about nine...', 'This cake is a great-aunt...'.  I really took against those for some reason. 

It reminded me of was what I was expecting Sophie Dahl's Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights to be like.  I got that one out of the library too, months ago, expecting it to be total fluff and badly written.  It wasn't, it was so good that Jon bought it, and his fluff threshold is way below mine.

Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache can stay on the bookshop shelves.  But I am intrigued by the syrup sponge made using turnip...

Unecessary items

Barbara Trapido is one of my favourite authors.  I got The Travelling Hornplayer free with a magazine about ten years ago and read it on a trip to Orkney.  And loved it.  I don't know why I had never read any of her work before as my mum is also a big fan.  But that's beside the point here.

I collected up her other books, mainly through charity shops as I was a student at the time.  I don't own Frankie and Stankie because I just didn't enjoy it as much as the others.  Anyway, today I was reading the latest posts at Design*Sponge, and discovered that artist Alice Stevenson has illustrated the covers for the latest editions of Barbara Trapido's novels.  They're lovely and I want them.

But that's ridiculous and goes against my ideals of trying to spending less, especially on totally unecessary purchases.  I already own them and though they might be a bit battered they're battered because I love them.  When I see my copy of The Travelling Hornplayer I not only see a novel I love but it also reminds me of a great holiday.  I wouldn't get that with a new book, however attractive.

So I won't fritter away my money on them.  I might reread them though, especially since my sister Ellen quoted a passage to me at the wedding.  But those new editions are pretty aren't they?

Anne-with-an-e

I was a massive Anne of Green Gables fan when I was a kid (I reread the first book last year when I was off sick, it was as good as I remembered).  I'm sure I went through phases of longing for red hair (properly red hair, not just the few coppery strands I have in with all my blonde hair, actually the Anne phase probably coincided with my obsession with Sarah Ferguson and her red hair and the royal wedding and all that kind of stuff you love when you're eight), a dress with puffed sleeves and maybe even being called Anne-with-an-e.

So when a scarf inspired by and named after Anne appeared on last autumn's Knitty it went straight on my Ravelry queue.  It remained there until a few months ago when I started knitting it down at my mum's.  I didn't work much on it after then but decided it would be a great honeymoon project (I'll blog about that soon).  I used some yarn I bought at the Handspinner Having Fun in Skye last year, I never noted down what it was but I think there is some bamboo involved.  It's a lovely soft scarf and will be very cosy come the cooler days of autumn and winter.