Tag: children's books

Red Plaits, Freckles and a Dash of Mischief

The first Children’s book week took place in Australia in 1945. Every year since then, children participated in book week parades, dressing up as their favourite character from a book. This year is especially significant as we celebrate 80 years of encouraging children to immerse themselves in books and find novel ways (pun intended) to engage with reading.

The Children’s Book Council of Australia confers awards to authors and illustrators of outstanding children’s books published in the past year. The ‘long list’ or notable books is announced around February, followed by the ‘short list’ from which the finalists are selected. The books that receive prizes often become best loved classics with children.

Book week parades started out with simple home-made costumes and a lot of imagination. Today, parents can spend a small fortune on costumes, wigs and accoutrements. My favourites, however, remain the simple imaginative costumes. If I could have given a prize this year, it would have gone to a little boy at my school who wore rainbow stockings, a long t-shirt, a hand-sewn felt snake’s head and a crocheted blanket made of colourful granny squares. He was the rainbow serpent! Second prize would have been awarded to the girl in leotards with underpants over it. She was ‘Captain Underpants!’

Teachers almost always join in the fun with costumes of their own. My go to is Pippi Longstocking because she was my childhood favourite character. This year, the book turned 81, a year older than the CBCA celebrations. I loved and envied Pippi. She lived on her own in Villekulla cottage in Sweden with her monkey and horse as company. Her father was a pirate and there was little mention of her mother. She was superhumanly strong, lived by her own rules and adults had no power over her, no matter how hard they tried. Recently, I was amused to read that she has been pathologised- it is now thought that she had ADHD and oppositional defiance disorder traits!  I couldn’t help but laugh at this. Are we about to prescribe her Ritalin?

There definitely is a bit of Pippi in my genes. I think that’s the genius of Astrid Lindgren, her creator. Every child has a little Pippi in them wanting to come out. Some manage it better than others. Of course, our job as adults is to keep the lid on the shenanigans and keep children from jumping off roof tops or attempting other dangerous things. Still, the yearning is always there to break free.

So once again, I embraced my inner Pippi and drove to school with my red plaits, multicoloured stockings and painted on freckles. The only downside was that the teachers recognised who I was but none of the children had ever heard of the one and only Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim’s Daughter Longstocking.  

Die Kinderwelt von A-Z : a children’s encyclopedia

Books were a rare treat in our house. My father only read Penny Dreadfuls he bought at railway kiosks, printed on cheap, sepia coloured paper. They were either short crime stories or westerns. Resembling newsprint, they appeared in two columns in a font that was hard to read. For my short-sighted father, they would have presented quite a challenge, especially as he was reading in a language that wasn’t his own.

I learnt to read Enid Blyton’s Noddy books which were readily available at our school library, translated into German. I read and reread his adventures under my doona using a torch to illuminate the page. Lights had gone out long ago.

I loved losing myself in stories, pretending I was right there with the characters who had become my friends. I was closer to Pippi Longstocking than any of my classmates. I could anticipate her every move and even finish her sentences. She was a braver version of me, an unconventional girl who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.

When a book fair was announced at our school, I begged my mother to be allowed to go. There were two long trestle tables with books displayed face out. My mother, seeing the wide-eyed look of desire, whispered caution in my ear. ‘You can only choose one,’ she said.

Many wonderful stories beckoned but I knew that choosing one could never satisfy. But the thickest book there was different to all the others. It promised to reveal the whole world  A-Z and that was the one I chose.

When we arrived home, my mother took out our sharpest knife and ran it between each adjacent page. It was only then that the contents of the encyclopedia were revealed. I inhaled the smell of the paper and ran my fingers along the cloth spine. I knew I would treasure this book.

On page twenty-five, I found a map of Australia. Back then, it seemed like an exotic place far, far away. I remember looking at the depiction of a spear throwing Aborigine, wheat, gold, and kangaroos. I never imagined I would go there.

I learnt so much about the world around me from this book. Everything from descriptions of wild animals to how motion pictures work and even the symbols used in Morse code could be found between its covers. I read and reread many of its pages for years.

Today, I have several thousand books in my collection. I still delight in their smell and occasionally, I still have to cut open their pages. Books present both a sensual and cerebral pleasure and while there are many books I treasure, the pride of my collection is this quaint old-fashioned children’s encyclopedia. After all, it started my love affair with collecting books.