The Guardian's Blog, page 80

Most disturbing children's poetry: your examples

A selection of children’s poems has gone gone viral on Twitter after they were published in The Los Angeles Times. Is your child the next Sylvia Plath – or more of a McGonagall? Our readers have been sharing their verses with us – here are some of the best

Goodbye to innocence? Comedian Shelby Fero, known for her quick and brilliant wit on Twitter, shared the following pieces of children’s poetry published in the section Creativity Corner of the Los Angeles Times this weekend. The poems read:

Seashells are shining. Seashells are like ocean waves. Seashells beam at night” —Christopher, aged 9

Parakeets are loud. On Friday, I take them out. They are so pretty.” — Skylar, aged 8

The fire is red as blood. I watch the flames go up in the air as I taste the sadness of the people whose houses have burnt to the ground. I turn back, but all I hear is the bursting and explosion of flames.” — Gabi, aged 9

@shelbyfero @todd_coleman pic.twitter.com/IxWKqsoSPv

@shelbyfero @alexgriendling This is my 8 year old daughter's. Romans in school, WW1 war poets at home. The darkness. pic.twitter.com/wh12fDauZc

@GuardianBooks pic.twitter.com/UBKUCkuRvG

@GuardianBooks I'm guessing my childhood poem was making a strong social statement #pollutionoffarts pic.twitter.com/X54JsdNuch

No-one knows where he lurks

But he’s only after the birthday girl

@GuardianBooks Here's the hand-written original. pic.twitter.com/363G7uG6ue

This from my then 7 year old daughter, she was asked to write a gory poem. It may help to know that she hates One Direction.
Ingredients
Guts of a human found in a cave
Heart of a slug found in a drain
A live slug found in a garden
Hand of a human found in a grave
Six legs of centipedes
Throat of a human
Brain of a rat
Fur from a wolf
Half a spider
Head of Niall Horan
Guts of Niall
Method
Twist the rat brain and boil it. Cut the slug in half. Rip Niall's guts in two and put them in Niall's neck. Add a pinch of cinnamon.

This is by my 10 year old daughter:

"If only, if only
Things could always go our way
It could be even and fair
Instead of the fools making us pay
And what friendship is ours

When I was 11 I had a guitar playing best friend and I wrote her some words to fit her music.

Verse:
A little old lady is sitting there alone,
She needs someone to talk to so she reaches for the phone,
Her hand can move no further, she feels a pain inside.
And a few minutes later the old woman died.

At the grand old age of 7 I wrote a poem about my Mum, it went:
'My Mum has long black hair and when I am bad she goes spare'. I was so disappointed when it wasn't put on the wall with the other children's sweet little poems about their Mums (I think they were for Mother's Day). For the record my poor Mum was (and is) a very mild-mannered soul who rarely 'went spare' 

Black dog stares with eyes so red
Salivating mouth the jaws of dread
Running through quicksand
Not going to make it
The devils on my back
I wake up screaming

My son aged 12 at the time.

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Most disturbing children's poetry: share your examples

A selection of children’s poems has gone gone viral on Twitter after they were published in The Los Angeles Times. Is your child the next Sylvia Plath - or more of a McGonnagall? Share their poems with us in the comments, or on Twitter @GuardianBooks

Goodbye to innocence? Comedian Shelby Fero, known for her quick and brilliant wit on Twitter, shared the following pieces of children’s poetry published in the section Creativity Corner of the Los Angeles Times this weekend. The poems read:

Seashells are shining. Seashells are like ocean waves. Seashells beam at night” —Christopher, aged 9

Parakeets are loud. On Friday, I take them out. They are so pretty.” — Skylar, aged 8

The fire is red as blood. I watch the flames go up in the air as I taste the sadness of the people whose houses have burnt to the ground. I turn back, but all I hear is the bursting and explosion of flames.” — Gabi, aged 9

@shelbyfero @todd_coleman pic.twitter.com/IxWKqsoSPv

@shelbyfero @alexgriendling This is my 8 year old daughter's. Romans in school, WW1 war poets at home. The darkness. pic.twitter.com/wh12fDauZc

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Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?

Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them

Read more Tips, links and suggestions blogs

Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.

Vogelmonade reflected on a discussion initiated recently by AggieH:

Which verb should be applied to describe the rewarding experience of reading certain books which deal with harrowing, horrible human experiences, since “enjoy” doesn’t really do the trick? I’ve often run into that problem myself.

Did I “enjoy” Red Azalea? It really is not the right word. I felt depressed while reading it, I increased the dose of my antidepressants, but I was rewarded amply, I gained valuable insights into the inner workings of a human society, into the psyche of a girl confronted with brainwashing, sexual repression and an armada of adversities. I learned something about humanity, human nature and society, and about myself. It was certainly captivating and moving, a great read, but enjoyable in any usual sense of the word: nay! We will have to continue looking for the right word for books like that.

Margarita Engle writes beautifully illustrated, prose poetry for young people, often writing about true and inspirational personalities in Cuban history. Here she tells the story of the younger years of Juan Francisco Manzano, who was kept by his slave mistress as a kind of pet, having him perform recitals and punishing him for making her sad. Some of his original works were smuggled out of Cuba to England, where they were published by abolitionists anonymously. Engle’s work is a touching tribute to the talented poet and an invitation to explore the work of Juan Francisco further.

At last. I have finally completed Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives. Possibly the most boring book I have ever read. 570 odd pages and if you were to ask me to summarise the plot, I’d have to think back to decide if there actually was one. Should make for a good book group discussion this coming weekend, if anyone else has actually managed to read it. Hopes are not high. So many quotes on the jacket proclaiming it to be a masterpiece, I think I may go and look up some reviews to see what I apparently missed.

I have one to two hours of walking to and fro, I do a lot of errands and get in exercise, and have decided to audiobook as much as I can, so I fired up my old iPod 60GB and started downloading. There is a lot available but I am focussing on short stories. [...] I only audiobook when I am doing something more or less mechanical with my body but not my mind so I am in no danger of overdoing it. I just can’t sit down and listen.

.@GuardianBooks #CurrentlyReading Stoner/John Williams. Breaking my heart; every bit as good as hype. Next up... pic.twitter.com/tvG27utUp0

Not quite the end of January and I feel I’ve read two novels that will appear on my favourites list of 2015. Canada’s newest literary fiction genius, Michael Crummey, has written a wonderous, lyrical, dark story in Sweetland. He avoided the trap of phonetically writing dialect (a bit of a pet peeve of mine), yet has still captured the lilt and cadence of Newfoundland’s coastal population. This novel depicts a way of life which is disappearing in Canada. For that alone it must be read. But, the characters, particularly the main character Moses Sweetland, make this novel a journey of hope, bewilderment, love and pain. [...]

The second novel I finished is Descent by Tim Johnston. It takes place in the Rocky Mountains when a family of four takes a vacation there and the daughter, soon to be in her first year of college, goes missing. The book is not only about the suspenseful disappearance but also about what happens to the family as they look, and look and look for her. [...] The characters are woven together in an intricate pattern.

Why do you read? I just tried Sara Paretsky’s, Hardball and bailed out after ten pages. I’m not going to delve into any critical analysis. I simply think we read for different reasons at different times. I don’t read for entertainment. Does this put me in a decided minority? I have no idea. I also have zero interest in denigrating anyone’s reading habits. Stalin isn’t looking over our shoulders. I just can’t read something that is in essence nothing else but a way to kill time.

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Roald Dahl becomes sage of US measles outbreak

Open letter written by author of Matilda and BFG after death of his seven-year-old daughter urged parents to immunise their children

In the context of the US measles epidemic, it might not be in the best possible taste to report that Roald Dahl went viral over the weekend. But that’s what happened when commentators picked up on a cautionary letter he wrote following the death of his seven-year-old daughter from the disease. Two of Dahl’s best-loved novels, James and the Giant Peach and The BFG, are dedicated to Olivia, who died in 1962 – but it was a heart-breaking plea the author wrote a quarter of a century later that caught the imagination.

“Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything. “Are you feeling all right?” I asked her. “I feel all sleepy, ” she said. In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead,” he wrote.

“The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her. On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles.”

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The book that judges you by your cover

Take a (careful) look at the facial-recognition book cover that won’t open if you’re sporting a judgmental expression

We all know not to judge books by their covers, don’t we? After all, just look what happened to poor old The Bell Jar a few years back (although I love these dumbed-down classics , especially The Brothers Karamazov with its “three boys, one girl, one BIG choice!” tagline).

Here, then, for those who persist, is the ultimate solution: the cover that judges you back. Thijs Biersteker of digital entrepreneurs Moore has created a book jacket that will open only when a reader shows no judgment. An integrated camera and facial recognition system scans the reader’s face, only unlocking the book – in the prototype, filled with creative work for the Art Directors Club Netherlands annual – when their expression is neutral.

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Choose February’s Reading group book: Recent favourites

This month we’re keeping it simple. Just tell us your favourite book from the last five years, and we’ll stick it in the hat. But no special pleading

What is your favourite book published in the last five years? Let us know in the comments below, I’ll put the nominations into a hat in a few days time, and then we’ll all read it together.

Easy.

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Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds helped me get over heartbreak

Appreciation: the prolific author’s blockbusting tale of doomed love and Australian wilderness was perfect escapist reading

There are many books I have loved, but there are just a few that feel like part of me, whether it is because I read them at certain pivotal times, or because they so startled me with their brilliance. As a child, the Dark is Rising books by Susan Cooper (I still want to be Will Stanton). As a teenager, Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country – I had never read anything so beautiful or different. And a bit later, Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds, which I found as I clambered out of my first real heartbreak.

Reports this morning that she has died, aged 77, throw me back to that time of misery and tears (and let’s face it, a fair amount of melodrama), and to the utterly consuming world of Drogheda and the Clearys. To the “black soil plains” and the harsh beauty of that sheep station in the outback, and, of course, to the doomed love of Meggie and Ralph.

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TV books programmes: if nobody watches them, make better ones

The novelist Robert Harris was right to call the BBC’s lack of a books show a ‘disgrace’. There’s plenty the corporation could do to make a popular literary programme on TV

With injury, there is always a little insult. When a BBC spokesperson, responding to Robert Harris’s complaints at the Costa book of the year ceremony about the absence of a dedicated book show on its television channels, pointed out that the corporation was responsible for introducing readers to books by way of adaptations such as Wolf Hall and The Casual Vacancy, one might feel that Harris’s comments – in which he called the absence of a BBC TV books show an ‘absolute disgrace’ – had been somewhat misunderstood.

While Hilary Mantel and JK Rowling, their publishers, agents and the book industry doubtless benefit from book adaptations, the BBC’s motive in putting them on is not altruistic. It does not broadcast these adaptations to benefit poor, garret-bound writers, nor because it thinks the publishing industry is struggling to connect with potential readers, nor because it worries that amid the hubbub of rapid-fire entertainment opportunities, the novel is becoming marginalised. It does it because the best novels - whether classic or contemporary, comic or tragic, philosophical or political or romantic - are masterpieces of narrative and entertainment. The BBC is in the debt of writers of such novels as Parade’s End, Mapp and Lucia, South Riding, Death Comes to Pemberley and The Night Watch for providing it with such brilliant and captivating source material.

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What’s in a name? How to christen a literary character

Whether it’s James – slang for a heel – or Quintilian Lightsaber Mordor Cantaloupe, a name does a lot of the heavy lifting when creating an identity. Better get it right

“GANDHI!” the young Icelandic woman yelled at the top of her lungs, “STOP BITING DARWIN! STOP!”

Gandhi – a massive Greenland dog tough enough to take on a bear – was apparently trying to gnaw the leg off Darwin, the team leader. Darwin wasn’t having it, and a moment later one of them accidentally barged into Mandela and very shortly our romantic journey via dog sledge had devolved into a metric ton of canine warfare. It must have seemed like a clever idea at the time to name the team after great thinkers and peacemakers, but as the battle went on, by turns ferocious and merrily amoral, the shouts of the handlers became less and less funny, and finally seemed very sour indeed.

Ian Rankin's Rebus to make another comeback

Will the dogged cop ever get a chance to enjoy his retirement?

Pity poor Inspector Rebus - Ian Rankin won’t let him go quietly into retirement. While his fans may be delighted, they can hardly be surprised. Scotland’s favourite detective has already made three comebacks since he closed his first final case in Exit Music in 2007.

He was rediscovered five years later working as a “civilian” on cold cases in Standing in Another Man’s Grave; then came Saints of the Shadow Bible, followed by a collection of short stories last year, while Rankin was supposedly taking a year off. In one, written for the Royal National Institute for the Blind, a tour of a haunted house - given to Rebus as a retirement present by his colleague Siobhan Clarke - draws him inexorably back to the pathology lab, where he encounters his old colleague Dr Curt.

‘You’re supposed to be retired,’ Dr Curt said.

‘I am retired,’ Rebus stated.

‘I should, perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am Hercule Poirot.’ The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved. ‘What a lovely name,’ she said kindly. ‘Greek, isn’t it?’

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