Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance. Now, Children's Books Ireland this week warned that children are missing out on a lifetime of reading because the government doesn't fund school libraries properly.
Well, someone who's passionate about encouraging children to read is children's author Patricia Ford, who was previously, until very recently, the former Irish Children's Laureate. And Patricia's new book for children is called The Island of Bees, which is illustrated by Paddy Donnelly. And she's here with me. Lovely to have you here.
Thank you, Clare. It's great to be here.
So you've spent three years in this role as laureate and you hear all of this around screens taking over, children not reading.
Chapter 2: Why are children missing out on reading?
What is it really like out there from your point of view?
I find it very worrying for parents. I think I feel really sorry for parents of young children at the moment. I think they feel under terrible pressure not to have their children on screens. And yet the whole world is on a screen all around them. It's unnatural, including the parents.
So very slow to lecture people about being on screens and their children being on screens when we're all on screens. Yes. But I did feel very strongly when I was laureate in ANOG that we, the book community, have to step up. And by book community, I mean the parents of small children and their teachers and the writers and the librarians. We have to compete.
It's no good saying, oh, mine won't read. They're always on the screen. We have to fight for it and we're going to have to fight for it. When I went out in the first year as laureate, we took a bus from Malin to Mezzan. We took 26 writers and illustrators. Every school had bunting up. They were out on the road to meet us. I wanted it to feel like the circus was coming to town.
And I wanted that so that children would see that books are cool, that there is something there for them. Because like all drugs, once we get them reading, they're hooked. There is no problem after that. We have to.
It's all about what they see, though, isn't it? It's all about what you model as well in the house. They have to see you with a book.
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Chapter 3: What was Patricia Forde's experience as the Irish Children's Laureate?
They have to have books around them, which is why Children's Books Ireland is so keen for these school libraries to be well funded.
Children's Books Ireland are very keen that we meet children where they are and where they are is in school. That's where we'll definitely meet them. So for people who say, oh, well, you know, we have the public libraries, they can go there. You can go there if mommy and daddy will bring you or whoever takes care of you. You can't go there on your own steam if you're six.
So in school, we can get books into their hands.
And you see the public library and they're all brilliant. They're great resources still. Well, when I was growing up, every Tuesday night we went to the library. It was a ritual and it always happened. Never fail. And we got our books. But you see, we live a different life now.
You've got two parents working and all the extra extracurricular activities, which we didn't seem to do as much of when we were growing up. It's very difficult to carve out that hour and a bit to do that.
It is. And you definitely have to give up something to do it. Also, like you said, children have so many other things going on, you know, like sport and music. And I do think we've made them too busy sometimes. Mm. And I worry about creativity because I know I became a creative kind of person because I was bored there for most, if not all of my childhood. You were forced to do stuff yourself.
I was one of six girls. And really, if you told my mother you were bored, her answer would be great because there's hoovering to be done. So we didn't we didn't confess to being bored, but we were bored. And when you're bored, what do you fall back on? You know, you fall back on your own head. That's all you have. And in your head, you make up stuff.
And out of that, I think, comes all kinds of creativity.
Yeah, it's a great way to look at it. But then having access to books in every school, it's just really important because if you have a free half an hour and the books are there and there isn't a screen, you'll Go for the book because you've got nothing else to grab.
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Chapter 4: How does screen time affect children's reading habits?
It's very prevalent, I think, in France about falling over art. That we shouldn't have to go looking indoors for art. We should fall over it. We shouldn't have to make a plan or an appointment or book a ticket. We should walk down the street and fall over art. And I often say to parents at home, one thing I found was really good is to leave books on the kitchen table,
in the bathroom, wherever, that they might fall over them. So that you're not saying, oh, read a book. It's there. They're curious beings. If they see something interesting on the cover, they might open it. And I think it comes from growing up in Galway, where we had a lot of street theatre with mockness and stuff. So if you went down the street, you never knew what you might fall over.
And I think it's a great way to think about it, to make books part of the house, have them there. Now, that's easy to say, I suppose, for people who can afford to buy them. But the library is there as a catch all for everybody.
It's free. Go get the books. And you can go to secondhand bookshops now. There are plenty of them. Charity shops. Yeah. And grab them there for, you know, 50 cent or whatever. And now your book, The Island of Bees, which is beautiful. I mean, look at that just jumping off the page. Well, well done, Paddy Donnelly, who illustrated it. Paddy is your collaborator and friend.
Is that right? Collaborator and friend. Although people don't realise with picture books, there's very little collaboration. Paddy and I didn't speak to each other during the making of that book. I've never spoken to any of the people who illustrated my books while we were doing them. You know, you have this picture that we're in a room going, and then we'll do this. It's not like that at all.
That's exactly how I imagine it. I write the text. I sell it to the publisher. Then the publisher finds an illustrator. And then the art editor in that house will deal with Paddy. And the text editor will deal with me. And it's actually a good idea because they're kind of like the referee. Otherwise, it could come down to personality.
You know, when the publisher rings me and says, Trish, Paddy wants to do a bigger picture there. Could you lose a couple of sentences? Now, if Paddy and I were talking over a pint, I might be saying, well, now, listen, make the picture a bit smaller, love. But when it's the publisher, it's easier.
What happens when your characters look nothing like the characters in your mind? Well...
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Chapter 5: What initiatives can the book community take to promote reading?
Tough, really, I suppose, if you're the writer.
But it doesn't happen, weirdly. They are incredibly intuitive illustrators. They get the hints from the text. And I've never really looked at a book, I looked at the pictures and thought, oh, I'm disappointed in that. It's always, you're surprised. You're surprised at what they bring, what they add that you didn't think of. That's incredible.
Sometimes when I read a book that I love and then it appears on screen in a movie or a TV series, I can't watch it for that reason. Because the lead character is a big star who looks nothing like the person who I imagined in my mind and it doesn't agree with me. But that doesn't happen, you're saying, when it comes to illustrations.
No, it doesn't really. They seem to know what's in your head. The good ones, they absolutely know what you're thinking about.
Chapter 6: How can school libraries impact children's access to books?
Now, that was a strange book because I sold it on a false premise. When we're full of full transparency, now we're on the national airwaves. False premise to Puffin. I could have been cancelled, Clare.
I was coming close to the wind.
Go on, tell us the lie. I wrote to the editor at the time when I pitched the book. I said, oh, after they'd bought the book, I said, it's based on an Irish legend. Now, I wasn't telling a lie. In my head, I thought it was based on an Irish legend. A Patricia legend. Well, obviously, but I thought that I learned that story as a child. So it was totally in my head.
And my daughter was studying kind of Celtic Civ and heritage at the time. And she said, I've never heard of that legend, Mum. And I said, no, no, don't be silly. Of course it is a legend. And then she asked her lecturer and the lecturer said, no. Never heard of that. So that I had to write to them and say, actually, it may not be a legend.
Was this a family story or was it something that you invented? No, I think what happened was there are bits of Irish mythology in that book. Like the characters are going from island to island and there's a whole thing in Irish mythology called the Himraim. In English, it's the voyages. So the hero went off on a voyage and they went to various islands.
And every time they arrived, it was something extraordinary, you know, strange animals. And it was kind of the other world as well. And in this book, there's a little girl who's looking for a new home because her home has been destroyed by a volcano. And she's going from island to island. And on every island, there's a reason not to settle there. Mm hmm. So there was that bit of Irish mythology.
That bit was in it, Clare.
But you made up the rest and you pretended it was based in legend. Because sometimes we can have these stories that we hear at home and we think everybody else in the country knows the story, but they don't.
I had a situation one time I was telling colleagues about, you know how people will say they get trapped in a field after dark and they can't leave the field or find the gate until the sun rises. Not one person. had heard of this before. I'm seeing the producer's face. She's never heard of it. I've heard of it.
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Chapter 7: What role do parents play in encouraging reading at home?
You, like you said, deciding in your head what the characters look like. You are the director of that play. You make all the decisions. So I can't imagine that people will miss that opportunity. But that's not to say that we, the adults now, don't need to really roll up our sleeves and work hard. And guard it.
And we should say, Clare, the new laureate has been announced, Laurie Dunlop, who is the amazing Chris Houghton. And people know his beautiful picture.
And we will have him here too, I'm sure, to talk about all of this. Now, a listener says, I myself struggle with reading and focus. My little boy is two and a half and I made the decision to read while I lay with him at bedtime. He gets to bring six board books to bed with him every night. Six. And every night we go through them and we ask questions, etc.
It's incredible how much he relies on them for sleep. He can't manage a screen for longer than a few minutes because he wants to go back to his books. See, that parent, because we all did that when they were two and two and a half and all the rest. And you think at the time, will this hour ever end? I wouldn't be reading six. Well, look, you do what you have to do to get them to see.
But the gift that you're giving that child, because they'll always go back to the books, I think, once you spend that time with them.
And we totally underestimate them as well as readers. Like you watch a two and a half year old. They have for the first time all day, they have autonomy. You're reading, but they're looking at the picture and they're making their own decisions and their own little stories in their heads. And a book is like a play, like every spread is a scene.
And when you turn that page, the curtain comes up again. So if you can imagine a play where every scene, the curtain comes down and then the new scene, the curtain goes up. When you turn that page, the curtain's just gone up on something. Remember, they have no experience of the world, so it's all new to them, all exciting. Yeah, I just think it's a brilliant thing to do.
Patricia, I could talk to you all day. Thank you so much. The book is called The Island of the Bees. It is truly beautiful, illustrated by Paddy Donnelly, although he came up with entirely his own thing, as we have just learned. And the story is a bit dubious as well. The provenance, Clare. The provenance, the provenance. Patricia, thank you so much for coming here. You're welcome.
Lovely to have you here. The Clare Byrne Show. With Aviva Insurance. Weekday mornings at 9. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts.
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