Horrid Henry

Author: Francesca Simon
Illustrator: Tony Ross
Ages: 5+

Caution: Some parents may find Horrid Henry books too horrid for their children, with bad manners and horrid words.

I love Dennis the Menace. I simply adore Tom Sawyer. I have to admit, I do really enjoy naughty children stories. There is something extremely appealing and cute about Krishna after he has nicked all the butter. If it weren't for the naughty kids, you would never have those awesome stories to tell their wife and kids later on! (did I get my double negative right?!?).

My elder son's naughty tales run for pages together - locking neighbours inside their house, rubbing out neighbours' carefully drawn kolams, pressing the elevator buttons from the top floor just when people are about to exit the lift in lower floors, thereby making them travel all the way up (and down and up again * 4 at least). But the little one is more of a conformist ( we call him the Rules Ramanujam of our house!). Still, his conformist ideas would sometimes include flushing brand new mobiles down the toilet, posting bread and Chapatis in the DVD player, pulling out springs from all pens and hiding them in the freezer, washing machine, Mum's boots and other such "safe" places..

Also these days it is a constant fight to act as the "good boy" in front of mum and more important, framing the other one as being wicked. And when I wonder if I am making some mistake in bringing them up, I am reminded of all my fights with my sister and all my cousins and realize it is just an enticing part of growing up, a rite of passage into and out of teens.

Which is why Horrid Henry is such a huge success. I personally haven't read even one, I find them a bit too silly ( Alas, senility is eating into me already!). But I have a major soft spot for them, because it was the first ever book that was independently read by my elder son when he was 5. And since then, he has never stopped reading! He has got every single one of the books, many signed by Francesca Simon, the author. Even now, I find him delving into one of these and it is a collection he proudly displays in his room!

Francesca Simon has also had the books translated into many languages, and is one of the most read Children's authors. She has also won awards and accolades for Horrid Henry books. Horrid Henry books always figure on the libraries' Top 10 lists of borrowed books.

The books are very concise reads, with 4 crisp episodes in every book, short enough to keep the newly independent reader engaged and wanting more. The settings are the ones that kids immediately associate themselves with - classroom, fair, school trips, plays, lunch breaks, dinnertime with siblings, sleepovers, making secret clubs and everything else equally childish. And are almost always about the fights and chaos and the usual telling off that ensues.

The characters have alliterative names ( Moody Margaret, Sour Susan, Perfect Peter etc) and loathsome traits! Horrid Henry is the bad big brother and Perfect Peter is the annoyingly perfect and smug younger brother. You can pretty much guess the stories from this. Amidst all the chaos and name calling, there is a steady flow of nice words for kids to pick up (some words I picked up from Horrid Henry and the Zombie Vampire - scuttling, lisping, puny, lurched, craning, unearthly). I wouldn't expect a 5 year old to know these words and when the kids keep reading the book again and again, they end up registering the words as well along with their meaning.

Perhaps it is the brat in every child and hence a vicarious satisfaction of being a rebel for a while that makes them want more of Horrid Henry, as they never seem to tire of Henry's bad traits. And I have seen that it is the anti-hero Henry that kids adore, not the ever-so-perfect Peter! Even if Henry uses all the dirty tricks in the book to bully his younger brother and ends up paying for it, the children still side Henry.

The books have been made into TV Serials and you can find loads of episodes on Youtube.  The schools even use the books to discuss PSHE ( Personal, Social, Health Education) topics and find it rather easy to refer back to these characters and discuss good and unacceptable behaviour and the aftermath. It is almost like the lessons in Mahabharatha, on how NOT to be!

The complete list of books released so far can be found here.

Horrid Henry.  Horribly Hilarious!

We're Going On a Bear Hunt

Author: Michael Rosen
Illustrator: Helen Oxenbury
Ages: 2+

My little boy came home with a handful of scratches yesterday. Hands full of scratches and scrapes, to be precise. He had been jostled against his more agile classmates in the post-break scramble to class. Having proved to his mates that he was a brave young man with a "Bah, no pain at all" face, he came home whining like the wee boy that he actually is. As much as I cuddled and comforted him, I also quite frankly told him it was going to burn and pain for a while before it went away and that he would have to be brave and bear it. He immediately said " Oh I know! The pain. It's like the bear hunt, Mum! - We can't go over it, we can't go under it. Oh No! We have to go through it!".

It was one of those special moments when your patient efforts bear the most beautiful fruit of understanding and acknowledgement in your little one. I was so moved, touched by his reasoning. I knew then that all the time I had spent reading to him hadn't been in vain.

So then of course, I had to blog it!

We're going on a bear hunt, by Michael Rosen, is a very catchy poem for children. It is about a family that decides to go on a bear hunt and their rather adventurous trail into the bear cave. And the rush back home when the bear comes after them. Told as a poem with nice repetition, adjectives and onomatopoeia (just did Grammar with elder son heh heh), it gets the children's enthusiasm up to infectious levels!

The family has to tackle wavy grass, oozy mud, splashy river, a forest and a snow storm before they could get into a cave and see a bear. But when they do see one, they are scared out of their wits and they go running back again through all of the same things and into their bedroom, with the bear in  close pursuit. Once tucked safely in bed, they decide they would never ever go on a bear hunt again.

The bear gives up the chase and goes back home. I actually like the last page picture of a rather sad looking bear ( you can only see the rear, but it does all the talking! ;o)). It kind of gives you a feeling that the bear is rather a timid one that maybe only wanted them as friends, not dinner! And perhaps it was sad of being rejected thus and made its lonely walk back to its cave. Awwww....

And if you hear Michael Rosen reciting it, the infection quotient truly multiplies many times over. You know I really have a soft spot for egg-eyed people ( sorry if that appears to be the worst ever equivalent of Muttai kann, in Tamil!), and Michael Rosen's eyes certainly top that category. Even better, his eyes do all the talking and singing for him! You should definitely check it out here.

As always, here is an online reading of the book.

Here's an animated version.

This is a poem that me and my little boy sing almost every day while walking through the woods to school. The vagaries of British weather means that we have gone through most of what is in the poem, sometimes all on a single day! Sans the bear that is. And perhaps with an odd fox thrown in for a good measure :o)

We're Going On a Bear Hunt. You have to go through it!

Tea Break - English Breakfast

Get your gut into action after breakfast with this lovely tea, a blend of Assam and Ceylon teas.

Well, the writer's block? It's for real.

Not that I claim to be a writer :o). But the block thing is sadly true.

You know you sometimes get an epiphany when you're working your way through dirty dish piles. Or quietly folding away clean laundry. Or perhaps lingering in a really hot shower (which you would never step out of, had it not been for the existence of a water meter). All of a sudden, too many things start making sense and these wonderful, bloggable ideas float in your mind: pellucid bubbles lifting away ever so gently. And  you're so happy and start counting the dozen or so blog posts that could materialize from that bubble stream. But by the time you are done with whatever you have been doing and open the laptop to create those posts, the bubbles have long popped without any trace of having ever existed. :o(

Don't EVER count the bubbles before you blog! Sigh!

And there has also been this major distraction to my blogging ( rather, not blogging!) penance. In the form of a bag from Coimbatore that my friend has been luring me with. Shapely sweets in inviting colours and celestially enticing savouries all decked up and garnished and dancing in front of my inner eye (Daffodils now replaced with Jalebis and Murukku). Hence my mind has not been retaining the calm that I badly need to pen the posts. Must dash to her house, collect the distraction and banish it by feeding it to my gastric juices ASAP!

Anyways, there is this wonderful kids' thing coming up in London, the Imagine Children's Festival
where the children can get to meet many renowned British authors who write for children and young adults. My elder son has been so keen on meeting Anthony Horrowiz ( of the Alex Rider series' fame) and Derek Landy ( Skulduggery Pleasant, the undead detective!) , but unfortunately the shows got sold out the day the booking opened. We still do plan to go and have a look around, maybe get our books autographed if lucky! The festival ends with the "Red House Book Awards for Children's books" and the nominated books are sold in Red House website for a lot less than the cover price and are a good bargain, as ever.

That brings up nostalgic memories of the International Book festival in Edinburgh, where super famous authors and debutant writers come down from all over the world. We would go there every day just to see our favourite authors, lounge in the bookshop, queue for autographs and eat, drink, walk, talk books. What a sight to behold that was! Also, the book stalls would sell a small bunch of autographed copies of books by the authors visiting that day and you'd be so lucky if you managed to pick one. Other than the Horrid Henry books that my boys got personalized autographs in ( for themselves and friends), we now also have autographed copies of some very good children's writers. We would get back home tired, but extremely pleased with ourselves and our achievements for the day.

Beautiful Edinburgh! Apart from my hometown, this is one place that I would be missing for a long long time, I guess. What a lovely place to live!

( at least 20 sighs later...) Must probably get back to being lazy.  Edinburgh it would be, for the next Tea Break!

Story Cove - Online stories

Some years back I was searching online for stories for my younger son. It was the time when he was entering into terrible twos and every meal would need exquisite preparation. The meal in itself was just basic, it was the amount of toys and diversions and stories that needed to accompany the meal that needed all the preparation. Every diversion would not hold good for more than 3 mouthfuls, after which the tactics would need to be dramatically changed.

Back then, I never had the heart to get him into a high chair and simply let him stay there with his food doing whatever he wanted with it for as long as he wanted. Maybe it would have helped him, but I somehow thought that a Mother's feeding ( not even spoon, just hand) was a more natural way of lingering a bit more on the special bonding that forms during nursing. Well of course quite soon, around his third birthday, I stopped all the feeding, just promoted him to the table to sit with his brother and he picked up quickly and became independent immediately. Stories still remained a part of table routine for a little longer, though.

It was during one such frantic preparation search that I hit upon Story Cove.  It required a free registration which was a quick process and then I tried the very first one,  Anansi and the pot of beans with my boy. It became an instant hit. The jingles were catchy and the children loved it. The story was nicely told and the kids made me cook beans for days together! We then ventured deeper and realized all the stories were equally good. There was no violence, nothing hurting, it was completely safe and positive and with some learning in most of the stories as well. I remember sharing this site with friends and family back then, and everybody had something good to say about them!

The stories are mostly old folk tales from various continents retold in a simple way with added animation. Most of the stories are also accompanied by lesson plans and activities that have some good information about the animals featuring in the story etc. The stories are also available as books, which I am sure would be just as lovely. I checked out today and found out that it is also available for sale on ebay in UK. But the children have outgrown these stories, so I guess I'll never have the chance of seeing these books!

If you have children aged between 2 and 5 or even 6, Story cove is certainly a site to try. If you, like me, have kids who ask you to just tell them a story ( not read, not show, just tell), you could prepare yourself quite well with these :o). It was a welcome break for me, my boys always want me to make up "Pillayar Murugan Adventures" on the go. There's only so much an Enid Blyton book could do in terms of helping in cooking up an adventure in 5 mins, so in between such imagined adventures, Story Cove tales served as welcome substitutes and the kids would love listening to them, particularly Anansi stories.

Happy reading and story-telling!

 

Where the Wild Things are

Author: Maurice Sendak
Ages: 3+

After my last post about the graphic and scary illustrations and demons in stories being like similes and metaphors for man's negative qualities, I was somehow reminded of this wonderful book that we used to enjoy reading a lot - Where the Wild Things are. I somehow forgot the author and asked my elder son if he knew. He went, "Oh! That's the book President Obama read to kids, it is by Maurice Sendak. Did you know he died last year? Did you know he was Jewish? And he wrote the book in 1963?".

That was information overloading for me. I quietly went to wiki to check out the facts, and they were bang on. It turns out that they had a special assembly about Maurice Sendak in school and listened to President Obama reading the book out to kids. Nice gesture by the school, I thought.

Imagine this situation. You get angry over a silly thing and then you keep on sticking to the angry mode, mainly because you've rather started revelling in it. You do and say things that you would regret later. You want to stop it, but you are enjoying the vent and rampage. And you continue brooding and sulking until the point where you realize it doesn't make sense any more. You actually long for the other person's attention, you want to be laughing with them and be normal again. That last bit of letting go isn't quite easy, as your indignant ego tries to pull you back into the anger. Finally, when you snap out of it, you find that a mega cuddle and smile puts everything back on track and you're back to normal.

Children go through this, too. They act wild sometimes and when they get told off , they sulk and stamp around for a bit too long, until they realize their mistake and quietly come behind you, eyes begging for a hug. A cuddle and a kiss and they are instantly transformed into tame puppies waiting to be pampered :o).

Max, the boy in this story, is like that. One day he exceeds his naughtiness levels and his annoyed mother calls him a wild thing. Max shouts at her that he would eat her up. So he gets grounded with a " No food go to bed" order in his bedroom. I guess he either sleeps off and dreams, or perhaps does an angry role play with his toys and the play tent that he sets up in his room. The room transforms into a forest and he sets sail in a boat to a land where the wild things are.

Now these things, they are wild, they have gnashing teeth and claws and look monstrous, but there is something really timid about them. Some pages have just illustrations and no text, but the pictures tell the story even better. Max tames all of them by looking into their eyes and then he becomes their king. They go on a rampage and create a great ruckus, until Max gets bored and sends them off to bed without food. Then his anger fizzles out and he feels really lonely and longs for home. But the wild things don't want to let him go. He finally somehow manages to come home to the smell of food ( of course mums seldom mean what they say!) in his table and he happily eats away.

When this came out as a movie, I was very much looking forward to seeing it. But somehow it was never meant to be. Not yet, at least. I read in reviews that the movie is on the mellow side and plays to the melancholic emotions. One of the reviews said "This movie portrays how children can lose their fear only by losing their innocence". Heavy, but eerily true sometimes.  I wonder if this ended up as one of those Disney movies which look like it is designed for the kids, but has all adult emotions tied inside. There's a child inside all of us, but alas! there ain't no grown ups inside kids! The good thing is that the children usually don't make the adult link, they just enjoy the movie as it is.

Max is wild. He is playful and has a vivid imagination. He has fear, anger, pride. He shouts at loved ones and then repents. He longs for love, forgiveness and acceptance. He is like us. He is us. (check your simile and metaphor!).

Here's an animated version in Youtube. And an audio book.

Some of the parents might object to the illustrations and the bad qualities exhibited by Max, and some children may not probably like seeing hideous creatures ( only as hideous as the illustration in the cover, maybe with some extra toothy grins and claws)

Where the Wild Things are. Right within us!

A little word about Mythology

Whoa! In the first place, I did not expect so many people to be revisiting my blog a lot. While I am honoured and very touched, I really have to admit that this has added a responsibility on my shoulders. I actually started the blog as a simple pastime of writing about books me or my children loved reading. But when my dear friend went ahead and ordered a particular set of books for her little one, it got me thinking very deep indeed. And ONLY because it happened to be Mythology stories.

I remember my first history lesson in Year 1, when I was six. It was the story of Rama. And the last question in that lesson was " Who killed Ravana? with a simple answer "Rama killed Ravana". It did not affect me one bit learning it. I took it for granted, I bet my mother never thought about me learning about killings, because it is one of the many things forming the basis of Hinduism ( taught in a Christian school). Not the killing, but the honesty and righteousness and the victory of good over evil.

I remember seeing Vikram aur Vetal, Ramayana and Mahabharatha in TV, all having their share of vanquishing scenes and fights, loads of them. It never affected me or at least, most of our generation. It was simply taken for granted, never analysed or dissected. You walk into a temple, you see gory demons guarding the entrance, you see Gods and Goddesses with their armour and in most cases, standing over the vanquished, heads in hand and skulls adorning the neck. Good destroying Bad. Good wins, goodness is established by God, so God is the embodiment of Good. If anything, back then, I only had a feeling of having a safety net around because God can do away with evil and so protect me from anything and everything.

Even the movies had their fair share of gore, every single one of them. You can't watch a Rajini movie without it. You can't watch a Kamal movie without it, and I do remember watching them since time immemorial, again. I used to hate the fights, but then that was it. Almost all of those movies were U certified. Nobody really questioned.

But I remember, when I was telling the story of Krishna to my elder son, he promptly asked me why Kamsa harmed children. I told him it was because he was evil, and that's why Krishna destroyed him. Then he asked me how could Krishna destroy someone and be called God, when God was supposed to love everyone. And again continued with a " Anyway, if God is God, why should he ever create evil and let evil play around with good, and then destroy evil. If God has created both, then it sounds like he does not have a heart, it looks like he has made video games with all people in the world".

I stopped everything I was doing to explain to him that mum did not have an answer to that. Mum's knowledge was limited, and that it is something he would have to find out for himself, by constant questioning, by reading the religious books later in life. And I told him that in a way it was like this - Mum loves the children. Mum wants the best for her children. Sometimes the children, though they only come from mum and dad, who are good, try misbehaving. They break the trust, they do silly things, they hurt the feelings of mum and dad. Mum and Dad may then ground them, may cut off their privileges, but that doesn't mean they hat the children. They only love them more every day, but want a good life for the children, so they have to teach some lessons the hard way sometimes.

I tried telling him that these demons, fight with evil are all similes and metaphors. God's fight with them is like your inner struggle when you want to sneak an extra chocolate, but finally get over the feeling and choose not to do it. Demons depict fear, anger, hatred, jealousy. All things you always fight against in your mind. You have to destroy them to stay good, without harming fellow beings. That is what all these Mythical stories are trying to teach us. He did take to the simile-metaphor thing well then, he had just learnt them in school and it helped him see the point.

But he still wasn't satisfied. I wasn't either. We still discuss this a lot. And the older he is growing, the more he is learning about the human atrocities, the more he is questioning the existence of the Supreme Power. Auschwitz disgusted him, Hiroshima, Anne Frank's story and Jallianwala Bagh massacre moved him to tears and he came to me saying " Perhaps it is just as well God kills all these bad people. Is it wrong to think so?". I was speechless. I had no answer, yet again. But I knew he has been exposed to the real world. The hatred and cruelty and atrocities that we live with today.

Why I am saying this is that my post on Little Monk's series spurred a lot of discussions about gore in stories. I have read two of these stories and yes, there are mentions of killings, I don't think you could ever tell a mythology story without them at all, but I never considered them as shocking or disturbing. Maybe because my elder son was 8+ when he read these books ( I do remember mentioning 8+ for this series) and I know he is mature enough to not isolate them as scary or gory incidents and go with the flow of the story.

There might be no fairy tale softness in our mythology stories, but then there is no temple without all the gory similies and metaphors either! The motto of our school was "Fear the Lord and  get Wisdom". I was right against that even then, why FEAR something that is an embodiment of LOVE! But alas, we have all grown up pickled in these thoughts, we all carry it wherever we go. Religion, history and today's news all have killings and quite frankly, it is bound to exist as long as life exists.

All I would say is that if your child is ready enough to watch Anniyan or Enthiran or Karnan or even The Ten Commandments and Benhur ( which we watched as children, arranged by the school!), then your child is ready to read Little Monk's series. If not, maybe you would like to hold on a bit longer! Parents know their children best. While all of my reviews keep in mind the reading age of children, every child is unique and I would leave it to the parent to decide.

However, I do stick to my post, they are nice books with above average level of English efficiency and vocabulary, and my son has enjoyed reading them a lot. From now on, I will certainly consider adding a parental guidance note with the author / ages section.

All the other books that I have so far written about are completely harmless and tame for even babies :o)

And while I am writing all of this, I just couldn't help thinking about the families in the middle-east whose children are right now living through all of the things that we are even scared to mention to our little ones in stories. My heart goes out to them, and only think " Why this bloodshed? Why children? Why at all?". But that is the truth. Not Goldilocks or Snow White. Not even a Spiderman or He-man or Rama. Only Demons.

I sincerely apologize if I have misled anyone with my reviews. I do hope you would continue to enjoy the books as much as we have enjoyed, and yes, I do realize we could have difference of opinions... I respect that a lot, and invite as many discussions and experiences that could make me amend my views with a better understanding.

Thank you all for all of your support without which I would have long resorted to my self-criticism and laziness and stopped blogging!
 

Glenn Murphy and the Science Museum series

Author: Glenn Murphy
Ages: 8+

Let's admit it. There is just NO WAY you can ever succeed in curbing the kids' enchantment with the B-word and all its by products thereof. If you haven't guessed it, I am referring to "the bottom" and the various other B words (and A!) associated with it. It is just every family's safely guarded secret, I guess - these B-word substitutes in multi various languages and associated jokes. Well you can go into denial, but the sparkle in your kids' eyes on the slightest mention of anything related to B would shout "Gotcha!" in your ears!! And the endless giggles that would follow would make you wish you'd morph into an ostrich and bury your head in earth. ( Of course they actually don't do that, you should know that by now, really. Only figuratively speaking...) Particularly if said event occurs in front of just the very people you to whom you were trying to show off your thorough-bred breed :o)

Glenn Murphy certainly understood this. And proved it right by writing his famous Science Museum series books with enough info about all these things.  And also every kind of output from the human body. I bet more boys read this than girls, this fascination has always been a boys' thing, I'd say. Nevertheless, these books are hilariously scientific and the kids simply giggle away without realizing they are learning!

Glenn Murphy is a British-born author residing in the US. He started writing the science museum series while working for the London Science Museum. He says most of the info in his books, which is in the form of questions and answers, have been doubts he had been having in his childhood. His books have since been nominated for various awards and is a winner with children of all ages.

The titles are very "inviting" for children - like "Why is Snot green" and " How loud can you burp" and "Stuff that scares your pants off". Very informative (!) - kidding, they really are and written in a style that manages to keep even the kids with short attention span heartily occupied.

These books have fuelled many "smart" family discussions and I love getting these books for my boys. Needless to say, Glenn Murphy is a mega hero for my little ones!

He has also written a slightly serious book about our carbon footprints and how kids can do little things to reduce the same. Printed on forest friendly paper, this book is bursting with lovely bits of info, most of which apply to adults as well. I found it a very engaging read as well. It also has a set of cards included, one of which is my favourite that reads - People need lights. Rooms don't. Switch off when you leave. This just about sums up the whole book!

Science Museum series. Rip-roaring read ;o)