SKKF Guest Post by Gabby Dawnay: Books, pictures and memories
Gabby Dawnay, one half of Dawnay and Barrow, will be joining us at the South Ken Kids Festival 2015 and bringing their tales London Calls and Possom's Tail with her! Here she explains her favourite childhood books and the memories they gave her:
I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t aware of books - logically perhaps because memories often start at around the time a child begins to read. But more than this, there is a special alchemy that occurs in a child’s mind when pages of words and pictures move from shapes on paper, to seeds in the imagination. I have memories of the books from my childhood that are more vivid than much else. When I recall individual illustrations, I remember exactly how they made me feel and think. These picture-book memories are sometimes inextricably bound with more general memories of events and places, changing seasons and outdoor spaces, gardens and dim rooms in the house where I grew up...Whether it was reading The Hobbit in deepening autumn evenings in front of the fire, or climbing into an old wardrobe to see if Narnia lay beyond the coats; the books and stories of my childhood fed my hopes and my invention. Books made me dream and imagine and I remember far more about them than any school lessons.
Books can be unsettling, if not frightening companions, too. I was given a mighty volume of Alice Through the Looking Glass illustrated by Ralph Steadman, that I refused to keep in my bedroom because of one particularly terrifying image of a beady-eyed black crow. And I’ve never quite recovered from The Tale of Samuel Whiskers with that claustrophobic little vignette of a helplessly chubby Tom Kitten being rolled in dough by the wicked rats…oh the vicarious thrill of it!
The relationship between words and pictures is one that illustrator Alex Barrow and I like to describe as being akin to a piece of music; a dynamic symmetry between what is said and what is seen. Pictures and text together can be playful, even unsettling, adding extra layers of narrative, humour and meaning; an expression or small detail missed at first, spotted the next time. The two components work with one another to create a harmonious whole where neither is stronger than the sum of their parts. Alice’s world, drawn by Steadman’s pen, became an even darker interpretation of a curious tale - no benign dream but the stuff of real nightmares.
And perhaps here lies the very heart of the matter; children can adventure safely in books. A child may fly to the moon and back, travel into the jaws of an angry alligator unscathed and reach the heart of the volcano without getting burnt. They can try green eggs and ham – if they are persuaded by the power of persistence – and watch a garden grow in the time it takes to reach the end of a story. They might devour the pictures in a book like hungry caterpillars or close their eyes and let the music of words build images in their imagination. Books help children learn accidentally that kindness and bravery are generally rewarded, but not always: that Love conquers all but that life is unpredictable, unfair and sometimes cruel, as the Little Prince and Mermaid will attest to. The potency of books is immeasurable, subtle, stealthy; their magic is intoxicating and addictive. They are an escape and a comfort: a learning tool and a life enhancer. Books make you laugh, cry, believe in possibility because they communicate reality whist offering a means of escape. Sometimes, a single story is enough to put a child’s world to right. After all, Tom Kitten only lost his coat in the end.
With her head in a book…
In the stillness and hush of the carpeted room
In the space between Magic and Rhyme,
By the window that lends a warm light to the gloom
Sits a child who’s forgotten the time…
With her head in a book and her heart in a land
That is made up of legends and spells,
She is holding a world in the palm of her hand
And absorbs every tale that it tells…
Many wonders reside on the pages of books
Resting quietly, tucked up in bed
As they sit on the shelves and collect in the nooks
Waiting each to be picked out and read.
Because here in the silence of library life,
In the rustle of books and their kind,
You will find that the pen is a mightier knife
And that power lies all in the mind.