I'd always thought that imaginative play came naturally to small children but then I had an experience when I worked as a Sure Start Community Librarian.

As part of the Family Support Team, I helped out at Stay & Play sessions - we had sand play, water play, sit-on cars and tractors, as well as dressing-up boxes, a play kitchen, dollies and soft toys and small cars and animals.

One day I noticed two small boys pushing small cars around - they just pushed and bashed them off each other and pushed again, looking to me at a loss as to what to do next. So, I got a little play bus and people and 'drove' up to them. I made a little queue of the people and had them go on the bus one by one, 'asking' each one where they were going (Morrisons, the swimming pool and the library apparently!).
Then I drove the bus around and dropped them off...

The boys watched intently, then when I left, began to play the same game.
What interested me most was when I returned the next week I saw the little boys involved in a complex imaginary game with the bus, the people and their cars.
They were making the play people say, "hello" and were obviously pretending that there were other people in the cars.

It really struck me that they had seemed to need that small prompt from me to get them going (though likely they would have done this at some stage off their own bat).

It did make me think about my own childhood (which was FULL of imaginative play and story-making - whether I was the hero or my dolly was). Had I had such prompts?

Well definately I had - I could even remember them...

My mammy used to send me on 'errands'. She would touch my outstreached palm with her fingers to 'give me money' then send me off down the hall on my little tricycle to buy things. It probably gave her a few minute's rest from my constant chattering! I would 'get' the things on my bike and then report back.

This certainly informed my play when I was older/outside - I was always 'someone' on my bike - some drama was playing out in my head (even if I only drove up and down the path from the gate to the back door. Reader, I was often McClowd -  (weirdly on horseback) off to solve some crime!!

My mother's other game with me was 'shoppies'. It may have been possible at that time to buy play stuff (and I think I remember having a little toy cash register at a later stage) but at this point Mammy just washed out used tins, cereal packets, washing-up liquid containers etc to set me up with stuff to sell.

I can just about remember her coming to my shop (again with the imaginary money). I don't think we even bothered with small coins or anything at this stage - possibly I was so young it would have been dangerous. Certainly I remember using ludo tokens in my cash register later on when I was  alittle older).

I DID have an tiny old cupboard of my grandfather's - it had a small drawer that was perfect for the 'money' and a little door inside of which I kept purties (old lipsticks, odd earings, little shiney things I'd collected). Though all the stuff for sale was real size and didn't fit in so was displayed on a shelf nearby.

I suspect that my mother set me off and then I played away by myself with pretend customers - and I possibly combined it with tricycle journeys...

And speaking of journeys - a final game I remember from when I was very small, was my mother lining up the kitchen chairs (and possibly my own small pink chair) to make a bus. She would sit my teddies and dollies on the chairs and I would be both bus driver and conductor. I'm sure she asked the various 'passengers' where they were going - but it's so long ago my memories are vague. All I remember is that it took time to sort everything before I sat into the driver's seat and 'took off'.

These memories definitely suggest that even if I didn't need a prompt as such, my mother started me off and that set me up for hours of imaginary fun.

My childhood experiences, along with my love of reading (which in time infomed so much of my play) definately informed the thinking behind Lulu Loves Stories.

Lulu brings quite a haul of books from the library, then reads one each night.
Each story prompts her play next day - she is a fairy, a pilot, a mummy, a tiger, a farmer and a builder. Then she takes a leap - her Daddy makes up a story about a girl with magic shoes and Lulu believes that her shoes are magic too.

My own Dad was an expert in making up stories. While I loved his stories of the Fianna and their heroics (especially the Bodach of the Grey Cloak for some reason - though it's very brutal), and the tales of his own childhood, what I loved was the stories he made up... about our cat, about the crows that lived in the trees opposite.

And when he tired of my demands for 'just one more', he would start, "Once upon a time there was a little girl called Anna..." These I did NOT like - the little girl was very very well behaved and did what she was told and went to sleep after only one story!

But these along with the tales of his own childhood must have instilled in me the idea that anyone - even little ordinary me - could be the hero of a story, most especially their own story. And that's why Lulu Loves Stories is dedicated to him (along with Martha, an old friend from WGARCR days who first suggested I work at Sure Start).

I remember clearly my first play date (though we didn’t call them that) to a classmate for an hour or two after school. They had stairs (which was exciting because we didn’t) and her mother seemed to me even at that young age obsessed with cleaning! The house was more like a hospital ward and I remember being afraid to touch anything! My other friend was the opposite – her house was totally chaotic with lots of children and laundry piled up everywhere.
 
I don’t remember eating at either house – that was for later, longer visits (I was only about 4). And it was really on these longer play dates (and especially sleepovers) that I began to realize that how my family lived was not universal – I began to realize that what, how, when and even where we ate was not universal across families.

Looking back, I think this is a big realization for young children – a next step of separation and differentiation not unlike the developmental stage when a very young child begins to realize they are a separate person from their mother.
 
And so I wonder whether that is also at the root of the clothes swapping that went on at these sleepovers…
My grandmother’s house was near my school and I usually went there rather than home at the end of my school day. My mother would usually be there and we would wait there for my Dad to pick us up on his way from the school where he taught. My mother was good friends with a family across the street and I would often play on the street outside their house while I waited.
 
Even here (it wasn't a proper play date – we didn't go in the house and just played together on the street) I remember we would swap shoes while we played tag or hopscotch on the street. I was always keen for this game as I most often had sensible laced brown shoes (tough and suitable for passing on to my younger brothers!). I longed for the likes of the Mary-Janes most of my friends wore and delighted in wearing them even if only for an hour or two – though they were understandably reluctant to wear mine!

On a proper sleepover, of course you could completely swap clothes.

Like Lulu, my first sleepovers were at cousins’ houses. When I was very young, they were mostly with my cousin Cathy - the daughter of my mother's sister. Like me, Cathy was an only girl – we both had three brothers (Cathy’s were all older than her, mine were all younger than me! Our families crossed over in the middle with us) and so sleepovers afforded each of us the chance to gain a sister.

I was probably wearing those brown ones and shorts and T and was very envious of Cathy and her strawberry dress and silver sandals!

So of course I had to have some clothes swapping, some experimenting with other possible identities at the core of my sleepover story.
 
I found it funny when I sent the text to Yolanda at Charlesbridge and to the illustrator, Ros Beardshaw, both mentioned that their daughters were totally into swapping – and like my child self I began to realize that this was not an experience unique to me!

That set me thinking – if sleepovers are an occasion to realize that how your family is, is not universal, could the clothes swapping thing a way of further exploring that? Exploring other possible identities perhaps? I’ve not been able to find any writings on this, but the more I think, the more I’m convinced that that urge to try on another child’s clothes while on a sleepover is really experimenting with other possible versions of yourself – yourself imagined as part of this family, perhaps.

Ros Beardshaw really rose to the challenge and we planned that not only would Lulu and Hani swap clothes completely at the centre of the story (below), but from the first moment they are alone together, Hani puts on Lulu’s red and blue bracelets and Lulu wears Hani’s yellow one.

When they wake up in the morning, they manage to have swapped PJs during the night!

And in completely self-indulgent moment, I asked Ros to do a special thing for me. So, in a lovely secret moment, if you look carefully at the final scene (right) Lulu is going home in Hani’s yellow strappy sandals!

50 years on but who cares - I finally got my wish vicariously through Lulu!!

So, we are all gorging ourselves on information at the moment - trying to work out what actions to take to protect ourselves, our families and friends, and our communities from this virus. It's hard to believe that simple soap and water is probably the most efficient way to kill the virus (see the science here) and that keeping apart will stop us from falling apart.

It traces the 'civilizing' of manners in Western Europe since the Middle ages, looking especially at books of manners.

I read sections of this book again last week and wanted to share. The level of detail with which advice is given on intimate bodily functions is surprising - to say the least!

This, from 1619 is rather lovely:

There is plenty for us to take note of when it comes to sneezing and coughing. (Handkerchiefs were unknown at this time and in later years, a luxury of the richest only. In 1599, after her death, the inventory of Henry IV's mistress was found to include five handkerchiefs.) In the absense of a handkerchief, people usually blew their noses into their hands or their sleeve.

So, thirteenth century advice from Bonvesin de la Riva, in (De la zinquanta cortexie da tavola) includes:

My personal favourite from Ein spruch der ze tische kert in the fifteenth century is this:

Our ideas of Medieval banquets often look like this:

in fact this was a time of privation by our modern Western standards - people generally had their own knives, but shared not only bowls and plates, but often spoons. And, of course, there was no concept of germs.

Dishes of meat were generally brought to the table, usually everyone cut themselves a piece and took it in their hand or put it on a plate or slice of bread, then passed it on. Stews or soup however meant that in many cases, people took a mounthfull then passed on the bowl AND the spoon.

A whole raft of manners were needed to cope with this situation. Tannhauser's thirteenth century poem says:

I should think so!

And from De civilitate morum puerilium by Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1530:

OK, so what has this got to do with Covid 19 I hear you ask.

Well, it's when you read these extracts that you appreciate Elias's comment on communal eating: "this necessitated special precepts at table - politeness required that one blow one's nose with the left hand if one took meat in the right." We still have the expression today, 'cack-handed' - to mean awkwardly done / done as if with the left hand. The left hand was the 'cack hand' (from the Latin cacare or the French caque) - the hand used for (as modern dictionaries more sensitively phrase it) 'ablutions'.

So, thinking about that, I've taken a Medieval approach to my shopping - I go with a 'clean hand' and a 'cack hand'. Somtimes I put a disposable glove on the cack hand - if only to remind myself of my method AND to stop me touching my face - but usually I don't bother.

So setting out, I leave my hand bag, phone, purse etc at home or in the car. I put my paper list and credit card in my clean-hand pocket. When I arrive at the grocery, it's basket (or trolly handle) in the cack hand: list in the clean hand.

I park the trolly or set down the basket when I come to what I need. Then I open any refrigerator doors/touch handles, take my item and put it in the basket/trolly with my cack-hand, pick up the basket with the cack-hand and continue onwards until I come to the till.

Clean hand in pocket (out of the way), I use my cack-hand to place all the items from the basket onto the belt/counter. If I can, I also place them in my shopping bag with my cack hand (it helps if you have a bag that sits square).
I take my creadit card out of my pocket with my clean hand, tap it and put it back in my pocket.

Then off I go. If I'm wearing a glove, I remove it carefully and put it inside out in my cack-hand pocket - recently I've not bothered (see below).

Once home, I go straight to the bathroom (having left the door open so I don't have to touch the handle) and wash my hands. Then I put away the shopping. Then I wash my hands again.

So, I'm quite serious about this for a few reasons...

First, I understand that the virus has to get from inside an infected person to inside me. It's all about person-to-person transfer and it has to get inside via my mouth, eyes or nose - it can't get in through my skin which is actually an amazing barrier. The virus is not really in the air except in the few feet in front of an infected person - so keeping physical distance and reducing the time spent near others is the most important thing.

After that, everything else is just an extra precaution.

Generally, surfaces have only tiny traces and not enough to infect me (someone would have to be infected, then cough all over a surface and then I would have to lick it for me to pick it up from a surface). But the viral load may build on some surfaces like the handle to the fridge. It can't get in through the skin in my hands (skin is AMAZING) but I do need to try not to touch the handle and then my face.

So most of this is about keeping me super conscious so I don't touch my face thereby getting any trace I pick up near my mouth.

You see, I see ladies with gloves and masks get to the till then rooting around inside their handbags (with their gloves) for their wallet. I see them get the wallet out and then take out a credit card, pay and return the credit card to the wallet with the gloved hand. Then they put the wallet back into the bag - next to their lipstick/sanitiser/hand cream and PHONE... all the time feeling super secure because they are wearing gloves...

I see men (being the brave hunter-gatherers) wandering around with gloves on, then pulling out their phones, putting them TO THEIR FACES to check with their wives and girlfriends which brand of xxx they meant... putting the phones back in their pockets (for later!) but feeling OK because they are wearing gloves.

It makes me want to scream!
So take the Medieval approach I prithee, cack-hand/clean hand... with my apologies to my left-handed friends.

Anna

P.S. I am trying to use this time to update my website and especially to copy articles I've written for others and group them so they are easily accessible. At the moment it's chaotic, but do come back another time when it's all slick and wonderful and working and have a browse. (You'll have to refresh the page - I did not know that!)

First published by IBBY for IBBYLink 37

I learned to read very early and was a voracious reader – I don’t know what age I was exactly, but I must have been quite young to be such a fan of Enid Blyton’s collections of short stories about Mr Pinkwhistle! I was given The Naughtiest Girl in the School as a present and, because I didn’t know how such books worked. I read it the same way as I did Mr Pinkwhistle – choosing a random chapter to start off with then another… It was incredibly confusing and the ‘stories’ didn’t make any sense and were all about a girl called Elizabeth, but I couldn’t work out what was going on! I must have read about four chapters before I realised that it was one long story and had to start at the beginning and read all the way through – which was rather spoiled by the fact that I’d already read the penultimate chapter!
 
Once I got my head around it, I really enjoyed this new format and getting my teeth into longer stories – more Naughtiest Girl stories followed, then the St Clare’s series, Malory Towers, the Five Find-Outers, the Adventure of Spiggyholes, the Famous Five and Mr Galliano’s Circus[i]. I just ate them up.
 
The books were full of girls called Felicity and Gwendoline and Penelope playing lacrosse, eating cress sandwiches and drinking ginger beer. Growing up in rural Ireland in the 1970s, I had never met anyone called Gwendoline or Penelope and I had no idea what cress was. I was shocked that the children were allowed drink Ginger Beer as I assumed it was alcoholic… but I adored the books anyway and read and re-read them endlessly.

Then I was given a book called Flight of the Doves (1968). It’s about a boy called Finn and a girl called Derval. The children run away from an abusive uncle to find their granny in Galway. Well, when I came to that bit, I was so excited. Galway! I’d heard of Galway - it was real. I might even have been there. To this day I remember how the world shifted on its axis as I read this book. Suddenly the world inside the book was real and tangible and meaningful. Children like me were IN it. I read the book more than 40 years ago - I’d even had to search Google to get the title - but I can still remember clearly that the girl cut her hair and pretended to be a boy so people looking for the children wouldn’t recognise her and take her back. I remember a bit where they were helped by a Traveller family and how kind they were. I remember it like it happened to me. Suddenly books were something I was IN!
 
Flight of the Doves was written by Walter Macken and it began a voyage of discovery for me. This was an era before ‘teen’ (and even more so, before ‘tween’) literature. It can still be a tough time for readers – outgrowing their childhood favourites but not ready for adult themes quite yet. Back then it was nigh on impossible to find material for an avid and very able reader in her teens. I went on to read Macken’s The Silent People – a moving adult novel set during Ireland’s Famine. This led to Famine – a magnificent book by Liam O Flaherty and then O Flaherty’s short stories both in English and in Irish.

My journey continued with Across the Bitter Sea, by Eilís Dillon then onto Quiet Flows the Don (Aleksandrovich Sholokov) and a raft of Russian writers.
 

It’s amazing how these early experiences influence and shape your life. I continued to have a passion for Russian fiction and it was my major at University College Cork, studying Chekov, Dostoevsky and Turgenev before I turned away to specialise in the Gothic Novel.
 
This in turn initiated my interest in the publishing industry itself and on graduating I emigrated to the UK in search of work in publishing. I never thought I would end up spending all my working life in Children’s publishing – as an editor, publisher and writer. Now, once more, I find myself back under the influence of that first reading of Flight of the Doves – reliving that feeling of discovering someone like me in a book.
 
It’s a feeling I nurture and keep at the centre of my publishing philosophy as I try to make books that include a range of children. So when I write or publish books with little assertive girls or black boys or naughty frogs or grumpy bears, it’s not to fight racism or strike a blow for feminism or counter disabled stereotypes or promote empathy - though, of course, I hope it will do all those things. My driving force is to make sure all children see themselves IN books. Books show children the world and they need to see themselves in books to know they have a right to be in the world. I know that – Walter Macken taught me.

Woke to glorious sunshine on Saturday - you could be in Greece! Had lunch out the back:

Then off to pick some blackberries - sméara dubha.

Made some home-made granola based on my good friend Suzanne Bloom's recipe and some blackberry compote as developed in this very kitchen by Marijn Woudstra - ready for the morning!

tBut the weather is always changing in Kerry, especially here in Glenmore - close to sea and mountains... we often get this eerie mix of brigh sunshine and ominous clouds. It was enough to make me turn for home...

though not before I'd got my perfect photo of a Fuscia - a native of South American but growing wild here since it was introduced (due to the Gulf Stream). Think I'll use it as my Twitter avatar for a bit...

)After a long two days travelling, it was nice to get out for a walk (in fact I HAVE to get out for a walk if I want to call anyone as there's no phone or mobile connection at our house). It was a 'grand soft day' with the lightest of mist. The fuscia are still in bloom after a sunny summer...
and the furze are holding out.

You can easily forget about the abundance of autum in the city - but here, even in the drizzle, the berries are ripening... honeysuckle is scenting the air, rose hips are almost ready (I can't remember what my mother used to make from them - I'll have to research) the berries on the Mountain Ash are like corn-on-the-cob and even the briars are wonderful.

I remember why Gerard Manley Hopkins was a favourite poet...

               Glory be to God for dappled things –
                  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
                      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
               Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
                  Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
                     And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

                All things counter, original, spare, strange;
                  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
                     With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
                 He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                                       Praise him.

So on moving day we were shocked to discover that the developers across the street had decided to do even more digging. We had permission to park outside our house - but now that the developers had created a one way, that wouldn't be possible...

But the amazing young men who arrived to do the move parked in the space outside the house, leaving the road clear and even a smige of foothpath - a sneeze would have brought the whole adventure to a premature end!

Our kind neighbours cooked us lunch and we said a sad goodbye. Then we packed the car - with kitty-crate and computer (that's all that would fit) and headed for Wales.

Poor Kitty is generally an outdoor cat, roaming the nearby gardens and only staying in when the temperature drops below freezing. Eighteen hours in the car was just too much! By the time we stopped to pick up a few groceries, she was gone into a daze... finally, in a traditionally misty afternoon, we arrived.

,I usually only blog here about books and related matters, but I was so uplifted by the AfroCelt concert I went to in Reading on Saturday night, I wanted to write. And, as I thought about what I wanted to say, I realised that actually it has a bearing on my 'book life' as it were...

I don't like to use the word 'diversity' very much - so often it's used by white people when they talk about 'others' - but you can't get away from the word when you're watching AfroCelt - they epitomise it in being a group of musicians from around the world creating the most amazing sound.
It's not 'fused' - you can hear clearly all the different original traditions at once - but together they do produce something new and amazing and exciting.

I think the reason I was so uplifted (not just from the amazing music itself but from the experience) is the fact that all of these people working together and creating this amazing new thing are a fabulous example of how much richer we are when we embrace and respect each others' traditions and when we celebrate what we achieve together...

This was in contrast to the direction the UK seems to be moving at the moment, and specifically the horrible comments I'd been reading the few days before on Emma Dabiri's Twitter feed claiming (in a nutshell) that Irishness cannot include anyone who is not white and being particularly nasty about people of mixed heritage.

There was a lot of talk about 'purity' in this thread - and I guess it wasn't a surprise that the comments came back into my head while I was watching a Punjabi-Sikh (from Slough - big up Slough) accompanying an Irish fiddler playing a reel...

Because while people claim that 'music is a universal language', there is much talk of purity in musical circles too - most especially in the area of folk or traditional music. On my last visit to Kerry I joined a great local trad session, but I was curious at the amazement at a local young flute player. Adopted as a baby, people were amazed at his facility to play Irish music - even though he'd been adopted into an extremely musical family - as if there was an Irish traditional music -gene.

I have no doubt that there are genes for musical aptitude, and I'm sure if this young boy was living in Russia, he'd be playing Tchaikovsky. But there isn't a gene for national music and it shouldn't come as a surprise that someone born elsewhere but growing up in a rich musical environment should be a skilled practitioner of a local tradition. When we talk of people being 'naturals' we somehow set up a situation where a tradition cannot be learned but has to somehow be inherited.

The thing about Afro Celt is that each musician is superb exponent of his or her traditional/native instrument and musical tradition. They are all amazingly skilled. And whatever about this talk of universal languages, actually even brilliant musicians from very different traditions cannot just roll up and start playing together...

So when Johnny Kalsi (the Slough Punjabi-Sikh dohl-player) said "you need three legs for this one, it's in sevenths" he was really acknowledging the level of difficulty of the collaboration in the next piece. For someone like me, steeped in an Irish tradition, I was loving it, but struggled to keep the beat! And I was in awe of the Irish flute and fiddle player who somehow managed to play some kind of slip-jig to it!

These musicians, all experts in their own fields must have had to be prepared to really listen to each other, to be open to being amateurs and needing to learn about a different tradition.

And the result was so amazing. For me, what is SO exciting about Afro-Celt is that it's not just a blend - you can hear all the different instruments and traditions clearly, but the experience of hearing them together is mind-blowing.

So, if you are saddened by the daily updates on Brexit with their attendant xenophobia and the emboldening of those voices which would argue for pure homelands, check out Afro-Celt and lift your soul.

http://www.afroceltsoundsystem.org.uk/
http://www.afroceltsoundsystem.org.uk/events/

For the current series of concerts they are being 'supported' by the Dhol Foundation.
www.dholfoundation.com

So I'm humming 'All the single Ladies' in my head all week and I can't think why...

Everything is ready for Edinburgh Book Festival...

• magic wand - tick VITAL for under 5s events
• bookmarks with little cats for them to colour in - tick
• my box of goodies with glitter and tape and ribbons to decorate the bookmarks - tick

And then I realised - one of my craft activities is to make a Mary Mary doll. (Lulu loves the poem Mary Mary Quite Contrary - it inspires her to plant flowers and decorate her garden with shells and beads... Lulu thinks that the 'maids all in a row' are little ladies and she makes one herself. I then made some last summer and put instructions for how to make them on the website...

My events at EIBF will be focused on Lulu Loves Flowers and Lulu Gets a Cat - with storytelling and then craft. I ordered some wooden 'bodies' to act as the bases for the dolls but when they arrived they were far too light in colour - Lulu's dolls look just like her and that's important.

SO I spent the last few weeks painting the bodies - now these little ladies are ready to go!

This is a book I worked on in 1995 with the wonderful Margaret Bateson-Hill (and has been recently returned to print by Alanna Max publishers). Margaret had already worked with the Lambeth Chinese Community as she developed her story, and once I'd acquired it, I continued to work with them. They vetted the artwork (and if fact found a major historical error - while the artists had worked from really good quality reference., she'd drawn the emperor's courtiers with beards. Our consultant told us they were always eunuchs, so we had to remove the beards).
We also contacted the community for recommendations: they helped us fine a wonderful
paper-cut artist Manyee Wan whose work we included in the finished book.
I had decided to publish the entire story in Manderin Chinese alongside the English so children could see how beautiful the script was and some children could read it. The LCC found a translator, and put me in touch with people who typeset Chinese newspapers who I used for the Chinese text. So, the Lambeth Chinese Community made a really positive contribution to the project and I feel it was just good practice for sensitive publishers - for me it's been the case for over 30 years.

2) Sensitivity readers to check books for offence

Two points here actually. Firstly I hate the term sensitivity - like we are all some kind of snowflakes! If I set my book in a historical period and, as a writer/editor/publisher, I ask someone with knowledge and expertise/experience of this period, I don't call them 'sensitivity readers' I call them consultants. Though those who coined the expression in the first place didn't mean it in a pejorative way, it is important what we call things and certainly, I think calling them 'sensitivity readers' feeds into the kind of attitude expressed by Lionel Shriver - that it's all about sensitivity rather than accuracy or authenticity. Lee and Low (who I'm sure have also been using readers for a very long time) call them 'cultural consultants' and I think this is a far more sensible term. It also speaks to the attempt by authors, editors and publishers to 'get it right' rather than having the  'unrelenting anguish about hurting other people's feelings' Shriver talks about.

Which brings me on to the second point - the offence bit.
See, as a writer myself and as someone who writes, edits and publishes stories for children
I am concerned about giving offence - I think that as someone who writes/edits/publishes for children I have a HUGE responsibility to them to not hurt them. When I write or publish outside of my own experience, I feel that responsibility even more so – innacurate details/ inappropriate language can give offence / be hurtful or even damaging.

However, the main motivation behind asking someone who is more knowledgeable or has more experience about a situation I'm writing about, it to get it right, to find an authenticity... to point out a weird note, a slightly off phrase that could break the magic of a story or draw attention to the writing, break the spell - that's what I'm trying to avoid - that off note...

Sadly, I think one of the reasons publishing is recently talking about 'sensitivity readers' is that  Publishing has long been writing/publishing for an assumed white audience. People who know me know that this is a bit of an obsession for me. In that context, a reasonably informed stab at representing any non-white character/voice/situation is good enough as long as it seems OK to the white writer/editor/publisher. Not only that, but editors and publishers can often actively pander to their own notion (and that of their white readers) of 'blackness' (or any other 'other'). This in turn leads to writing by black writers being rejected for not meeting the expectations of white editors / publishers. This is the white gaze Toni Morrison talks about and which was recently referred to by L.J. Alonge in his brilliant article, Writing Past The White Gaze As A Black Author.

In recent years, especially in YA, readers have routinely voiced criticisms of texts which are inauthentic, and this perhaps is why publishers are waking up to the diversity of readers their stories are being read by - and that is feeding the (good) move to consult.

* Little side note, it was interesting to me that in the Toni Morrison video she speaks of asking her Mali friend various questions including finding an authentic name for one of her characters. Publishers may be waking up to checking white writers writing black or other 'non-white' characters, but we all need to be sensitive when writing outside of our own culture/experience.


3) Sensitivity Readers

Though the word readers is used in the plural when talking about this subject, it seems to me from a lot of the comments that in reality people use one reader. And while I understand how hard it is to get multiple readers, that surely has to be part of the exercise - if the intention is to genuinely iron out any glitches versus getting a tick of approval.

Chimamanda Adichie says pretty much everything worth saying on the topic in her amazing Ted Talk The Danger of a Single Story. And I think everything she says also applies to cultural consultants, or just consultants, as I shall now call them. It is unfair to ask one consultant to represent a whole group of individuals and we should remember that what might sound off to someone from a particular class/city/religion in a country, might be just fine for someone else from a different class/countryside/religion. Finding more than one reader might seem a daunting task, but actually it's not - people are incredibly willing to help you make sure you represent people like them accurately.

I was quite nervous when working on my book, My Friend Jamal. I got to know the Somali family who are photographed in the story through my Sure Start Library sessions - we had gone on to become good personal friendsand they were a huge part of the development of the story. It was inspired by the time I spent with them, so I felt confident that I was getting the details right.

However, the mother of 'Jamal' was not a confident English speaker and at very least I wanted to be sure she really knew and understood what I was saying in the story and how the photographs were going to be used. I knew two other Somali families really well and they input to the story too.

In turn, they put me in touch with others - I was nervous that friends might hold back with criticism, so I was delighted when one friend who was part of a Somali women's group kindly invited me along to one of their meetings, introduced me and allowed me to read the story and have the women comment. Since I touched on religious practice in the story, it was very important to me that a range of people commented: some very committed practicing Muslims alongside some who had more secular views. In my experience, people are incredibly willing to help you make sure you represent people like them accurately.

To suggest that anything about this process of consulting and listening and learning has "chilling effect on creativity" is, in my view not just absurd, but provocative and disingenuous. For me it was life enhancing, uplifting and utterly positive. I just feel incredibly grateful for the input.

So, that's where I'll leave it. I think consultants are vital to anyone writing outside of their own experience - but it's important they don't feel the burden of being one voice from that community - whatever it is. As an immigrant myself, from a small rural community, living in the UK, I've often been asked my opinion "as an Irish woman" - I could not even speak on behalf of the women in my own family, let alone community or country! For me at least, consulting and checking and listening is not about “marginalised groups whose feelings must be specially protected" it's about the authenticity of the story.

Finally, I think we need to guard against over reliance on readers - the story is ultimately the writer's responsibility and then that of her editor/publisher... a sensitivity reader can comment, but it should never be seen as some kind of tick of approval or badge against criticism.

Anna

Thoughtful comments please.