Ripping yarns

For 75 years, National Children's Book Week has been inspiring kids to get excited about literature - and visits by best-selling authors are all part of it. Are you sitting comfortably? Then Shaun Shackleton will begin

FOR most of us, apart from playtime, it was the best part of the day. All your work had been done and marked, your spelling mistakes corrected and your wrong sums redone.

Paintbrushes had been cleaned, craft aprons hung up and the blackboard wiped clean until the next day.

You would sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the teacher as she put on her reading glasses and opened up the week's storybook. And as soon as she started speaking, you would close your eyes and be whisked away to Never Never Land, Narnia or Oz.

Perhaps more than anything, this instilled in future readers the magic of the written word, how great books could be funny, scary, exciting, sad or thrilling and the fact that what your own imagination could conjure up was more powerful than anything you could see on TV or at the cinema.

And that is what Children's Book Week is all about.

'We've been bringing over accomplished authors for 12 years with sponsorship from the Bachmann Group,' said Jane Falla, head of services to education and young people for the Schools Library Service.

'And for three years we've had competitions linked with the authors.'

Children's reading is currently in fine health, with library liaison officers visiting schools and taking book groups.

'They're very popular with young teenagers,' said Mrs Falla. 'The groups are very committed. The idea is it's a relaxed way of getting children to talk and to build on the books they like, leading to other authors and genres.'

She believed the diversity of those visiting during book week was what made them so entertaining.

'You never know how they're going to be. On the whole, we've had very good feedback. The nice thing is they're giving their views and the process of how they write.'

Three top children's authors - Ian Beck, Keith Grey and Jeremy Strong - have been invited over to appear at schools, read out some of their work and discuss the way they go about writing.

My first port of call was Notre Dame Primary School, host to author and illustrator Mr Beck.

Born in Hove, Sussex, in 1947 and taught by Raymond Briggs at art college, he epitomised exactly what you would imagine a writer and illustrator of children's books to look like: white hair, beard and corduroy jacket with a spotted hanky tucked into his breast pocket.

'I not only write books, I also draw the pictures. Do you know what that's called?' he asked the 70-stong audience of Years 1 and 2.

'An instructor,' replied one boy.

'Nearly,' said the author.

'An illustrator,' said another.

The children laughed.

As well as being adept at acting and stand-up comedy, it seems that modern-day authors must also be fully conversant with 21st-century technology. Mr Beck's laptop was all geared up for a presentation and it was on this that he demonstrated to the audience his creative process.

After moving to London at the end of the 60s, he worked as a freelance illustrator for magazines and newspapers, but particularly for the recording industry. In 1973 he illustrated the now-iconic cover of Elton John's LP Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

He talked the schoolchildren through his illustrations. In one for The Owl and the Pussy Cat, by Edward Lear, he pointed out a £5 note and asked whose face he had drawn on it - that of a man with a beard and spectacles.

'Thomas Edison,' said one boy.

'Is it you, Ian Beck?' asked another.

One even offered: 'Is it Jesus?'

Mr Beck explained that it was Edward Lear, the man who had pioneered nonsense poetry.

He rounded off his performance by reading The Teddy Robber, to rapturous applause. Afterwards I asked him about his inspirations.

'When I was younger, I enjoyed the Just William stories by Richmal Crompton and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. When my son, Edmund, was born in 1981, I began to buy books to share with him and this opened up a new world of illustration possibilities.'

Even with competition from computer games, he believes stories and books will always win out.

'Videos and games are an interesting theme. There will always be narrative. With games you either win or lose and then you start again, but they don't draw a satisfactory conclusion.'

Mr Beck enjoys his tours of schools and is inspired by the response he receives from his audiences.

My second author of the day was Jeremy Strong at Hautes Capelles School and this time the audience numbered 300.

Not as skilled as Mr Beck in the technology of the laptop and overhead projector, Mr Strong more than made up for it with an uproarious performance.

From his opening line, 'Is anyone here called Jeremy?', and confiding in them that it usually gets spelt, 'Jermy', to recalling how, when he was an eight-year-old, he rocked his sister's pram so vigorously that he catapulted her out of it, he had the kids in stitches.

He showed slides of where he works, his gorilla lucky charm, given to him by his daughter when she was a child, and where he gets his ideas.

His book, My Granny's Great Escape, is about a boy's grandmother who runs off with a Hell's Angel because they share a love of motorbikes.

To illustrate his inspiration, Mr Strong showed the children a monochrome slide of his own grandmother in Africa in 1919 - astride her Harley Davison. He explained how other books in the series - My Mum's Going To Explode, My Dad's Got An Alligator and My Brother's Famous Bottom - were all inspired by his own family.

Winky the Squirrel was his favourite picture story when he was a child.

'But I can't remember who wrote it,' he said. 'I also liked Rudyard Kipling.

I loved animal stories.'

Mr Strong began writing 26 years ago and has had 72 books published.

Bearing in mind his hilarious performance, I asked him if he thought humour was the best way to inspire children to read.

'I do. Particularly with younger children, humour is a useful path in.

I get letters from parents saying, "You've got my kids to read". It's very encouraging.'

Does he think that children love reading because of the huge range of great books available these days?

'The British market is probably the best in the world,' he said. 'America doesn't have the range.'

During his performance, one girl asked him what it was like being an author, to which he replied: 'It's one of the best things you can do. Not only are you making something no one else in the world has made, you actually turn into a very powerful person because you can make anything you want happen.'As I walked out of the school, I saw kids clutching pieces of paper, waiting to get his autograph - which, if any was needed, is proof enough of the high esteem in which they hold their favourite authors.

The third author I went to see perform was Keith Grey at St Sampson's Secondary School. Brought up in Humberston near Grimsby in Lincolnshire, as a child he preferred tree climbing and reading comics to reading.

'I loved Judge Dredd and Batman,' he said. 'I'm still a big fan of Batman.'

Still only 34, he has written 12 books and picked up a long list of awards. His work is aimed primarily at young teenagers.

I asked him why he thought more kids were into reading now than when he was young. His answer was simple.

'Potter. I was first published in 1996 and the first Potter book was, I think, in 1998 and I felt the ripples. Certainly more children's authors got published.'

After his first few books, people asked him when he was going to write a 'proper' book, ie, a 'grown up' one. Now that writers such as Roddy Doyle, Jeanette Winterson and Julie Burchill have written for younger readers, he believes that the boot is on the other foot.

'I'm not a fan of all those books but they did bring a certain amount of kudos to children's authors. Phillip Pullman has proved that good literature can be written for kids.

'I'd rather read Pullman than the Da Vinci code. Three-quarters of the way through, I didn't care if he lived or died.'

For his performance, Mr Grey eschewed all the technical wizardry of the first two authors and talked face to face to his audience of Years 8, 9 and 10.

He began by telling a tale about DIY and having to go to B&Q to buy a set of stepladders. He was taken aback by the 18 instructions that came with them.

'Do not use ladder if you tire easily. You could get trapped at the top and starve to death. Do not walk or jog the ladder. I was going to ring up my dad and say, "My ladder's two-speed: walk and jog". Store ladder in a safe and dry place. That's why you don't keep cheese in the bath. It's not until you get to number 14 that it actually mentions setting foot on the ladder. Face ladder when climbing.'

And this, he explained to his audience, was why he liked books: you're thinking for yourself and not being patronised.

'When I was young, I didn't read for my mum and dad or for the school. I could smell a moral lumbering towards me from a mile off. I read for myself. I hope that my own books aren't like that.'

Having won the silver medal in the Smarties Prize (with JK Rowling getting the gold), his books, like those of Ian Beck and Jeremy Strong, look set to become future classics.

As a father whose daughter is just beginning to read, I believe that Children's Book Week is a fantastic initiative and bringing over authors a brainwave. It teaches kids the stories behind the stories, where to get their ideas from and how to implement them - and, as an added bonus, they get to meet their heroes.

Anything that inspires children to read - or even to write their own stories - is a great idea in my book.