Let's go Visit the Library

Rain apoplectically spluttered against the windows of the library, while outside a grey wind whipped wet skeins across the dark puddled Red Top where two boys kicked a bright orange ball.

‘But it’s so boring when it rains, Mr D!’ whinged Jemima as though as Dean I were in some real way responsible for this wasted lunchtime as well as for the microwave melt down last week and the primary kids on the Red Top at lunchtime for their Walkathon. The computer labs are full of kids, or if full of primary kids the corridors nearby are full of moaning kids…

‘It’s so not fair that they get to use the computers now when it is our lunchtime…’ Hey, remember the C in our name, guys?

The library has more students than usual and the seductive atmosphere of the place with its wild variety of displays that constantly change, sheltered booky corners, huge comfy chairs for sideways sitting and studying of magazines, squashy cushions to pummel a hole in for reading in comfort, new Bridget Rileyesque rugs scattered throughout the shelving to make leaning against a stack a pleasure…I mean, the place should actually be stuffed to the very roof with kids! And then there are the computers…

As an English teacher, on wet lunchtimes I thank JK Rowland for helping children to rediscover the vanishing art of reading and the vanishing pleasure of reading. A good proportion of the 400 million copies of her books that have been sold were bought by children themselves rather than by grown up children or by adults for children. But I think she can also bring closer the thrill of actually creating text (which then can get read in an authentic way.) To have the invention of written language at your fingertips, alone of all the animals, and then have the thrill of inventing people, moulding a relationship for them, dialling in, say, parental concern, bad weather, a misunderstood rendezvous and Halloween, and then letting your protagonist loose in that scene of your creation? The excitement is infectious and reminds me of the time I sat in the co-pilot’s chair in a Swissair flight simulator in Kloten and was able to dial in storms, cross winds, dusk and the approach to Hong Kong…just thrilling! How could all this power and potential not go to your head? And then you can write alternative endings and get them voted on or have your friend finish your story at a key point, or experiment in a safe environment the construction of a couplet in iambic pentameters just like Shakespeare did. Or if you are scientific you can create an outrageously complex but memory effective rhyme scheme after experimenting just how long a human can carry the memory of a stressed line ending in their head. And how exciting that you can repeat the adrenalin kick time after time as your characters weave in and out of the challenges you manufacture, and you cannot ever overdose!

‘Yeah, but she’s, like, an adult I mean she’s grown up…’ implying it’s alright for her, it’s easy.
‘Mr D, this is so just not going to happen…’ Well, SE Hinton was a woman and a teenager and wrote ‘The Outsiders’ at the age of 16 and got it published, and it was filmed with Rob Lowe and Matt Dillon and Ralph (‘Karate Kid’) Macchio. It says some pretty relevant things, too, for teenagers, and for parents, about coping with what life throws at you...So go on, kids! Just ask the Librarians where you can publish your creative writing on the web for feed back!I can’t wait for it to rain again at lunchtime.

Posted by The Dean's Blog at 12:12 AM 0 comments