215. Lessons in lost

Are these books really suitable reading for tiny people?

On her third Substack anniversary Rebecca shares her shock discovery that early educational resources for children are actually training aids to getting lost.

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Dear Reader,

Lost is surely a familiar theme to most of us. I feel I have more experience in the craft of getting lost than any of my peers with an even half-decent sense of direction, so it’s not all that surprising that I don’t much enjoy stories about anyone unable to find their way home.

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I was visiting my parents’ house after a huge thunderstorm recently, and on my way to close the gate at the end of their driveway I spotted a colourful square almost entirely blocking the storm drain on the main road.

After waiting for a gap in the 60mph traffic I carefully leaned over to release the object, getting my arms very wet as the collected water emptied into the gully cover with a big slosh. Reader, it was a book.

A pulpy, pocket-sized paperback would have been no match for that weight of water, nor the right shape to block the drain as perfectly as the colourful square had; no, this was a board book for tiny children, its thick cardboard pages with bright glossy pictures and simple words perfectly designed for growing hands, eyes and brain power.

The damp, delaminating book was covered in mud and road debris. As such, not every word was legible, but given that a large portion of the volume was missing, I already knew the story was incomplete even before I started to read.

It wasn’t safe for me to photograph the book where I’d found it, so here it is on my back lawn at home.

Straight away I was horrified.

Now there are…
…two
Two little dinosaurs – all the others gone.

GONE? Other little dinosaurs are gone? More than two? Are they LOST? How is this book suitable for children?

And Reader, it gets worse!

Now there’s only…

ONE? This dinokid is ALONE out there! Okay, so most the book is missing – so perhaps that is why I was unaware of the surely obligatory PARENTAL GUIDANCE notification on the front cover?

⚠️

This is the stuff of nightmares!

TRIGGER WARNING
⚠️

This post will resume once Rebecca has had a lie-down and a cup of restorative tea.

Thank you for your patience.

Rifling through a box in a secondhand shop recently brought me the reward of two Level 1 books in The Ginn Reading Programme’s Reading 360 Little Books range. On seeing their titles – Where is it? and Lost – I came out in a cold sweat and felt very sorry indeed for their target audience.

Lost begins with a picture of a cockerel dressed in a yellow jacket with a white collar and white buttons. He’s standing at a crossroads in a landscape with roads branching off into the distance, and he’s looking, well, lost.

He asks a smiling, overdressed pig for help. You see, a quickly-emerging theme of this tiny book for tiny people seems to be to ‘ask a friendly stranger’. Reader, don’t we all know that baddies hide in plain sight? Page 3’s purple pig might not, dear cockerel, have your best interests at heart.

However, in this case, not being at home is more of a problem than the risks presented by approaching a stranger for help. It seems that home, for our cockerel friend, has the greater value.

In due course, the pig grabs a map from his rucksack for both creatures to have a look at. ‘Here is my home’ announces the cockerel, and points his wing feathers at a picture on the map of a house. The two creatures flag down a yellow car containing a couple of well-dressed bears, and off they go together.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

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Reader, how sensible is it to introduce children to the idea that they might get lost? My rational brain tells me that it’s a good thing for confidence and safety awareness, but I find the whole idea of getting lost so incredibly triggering that I’d rather leave any as-yet unlost children in happy ignorance of the concept.

I’m fortunate to be able to say that home has always been my safe place, and the enduring and comforting pull I feel towards it is directly proportionate to my level of panic when I fear I might not get there.

My childhood reading always happened in safety, surrounded by love and support. My parents could afford to feed us so didn’t send us out, like Hansel and Gretel, to fend for ourselves. I enjoyed the excitement of Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers and St Clare’s stories in shared girlish empathy with their characters, yet secure in the knowledge that I was never going to be sent to boarding school.

Later on I enjoyed J K Rowling’s magical canon, in which I learned early on that Harry Potter was desperate to not be at home. Orphaned at a young age, he lived in the cupboard under the stairs at the house inhabited by his grotesque guardians. For Harry, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was exactly the escape he needed from his horrendous home life.

In my own childhood, all the magic was at home. It was the land of lost which left me lacking; the fear of never making it back to where I was – am – loved.

✨❤️ 🏡 ❤️✨

It will perhaps come as no surprise to you that as a writer with a need to discover the full story about a story I needed to see an unsoaked, complete copy of the book I’d found in that storm drain…. if only to check for that prompt for parental guidance¹ which I mentioned earlier. 😉

I duly ordered Ten Little Dinosaurs by Mike Brownlow and Simon Rickerty from a secondhand bookseller. Delivery was estimated for long before my holiday, which meant that I would be able to have a good look at the book and finish writing this post about it before I left.

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Didn’t happen.

That’s right. LOST in the post. 🙄

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Over a week later, after an absolutely super mini-break, I was at last in a position to be able to read the pristine beginning and end of the delightful volume. This time there was no mud to wade through, and I even found that all loose and soggy ends were all nicely tied up.

☺️

I love a happy ending, and in the case of the two books I’ve explored here, I’ve been relieved to read two very pleasing conclusions. By the last page of Ten Little Dinosaurs every one of the dinosiblings had been reunited with their mummy, and at the end of Lost we see the cockerel finding his home thanks to the kindness of the suspicious smiling pig and the bears in the car.

There are more lessons to be learned, though. The final page of Lost shows all four characters sitting around a table, where using a downright flimsy-looking wing the cockerel is pouring tea from a teapot.

This looks so precarious that I am not in the least surprised that everyone apart from the cockerel is pictured with their eyes closed. I can only imagine that the next book in the seriously questionable series is entitled Avoiding accidents at home.

Love,

Rebecca

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A BIG BIRTHDAY THANK YOU! 🎈

June 11th marked the third anniversary of the publication of my first post here on Substack! Those three years have felt both like no time at all and my entire writing life all rolled into one, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I know that I haven’t been posting as regularly as I used to, and nor, to my even greater regret, have I been reading and commenting on the posts of other writers nearly as much as I’d like. I’ve been rationing my energy carefully, which, among other things, means not being in front of a screen very much at all.

Yet even though my presence and participation in the Substack community is not nearly as obvious as it used to be, I’m still here, and I continue to value this platform and its readers and writers. You – we – are the bees’ knees. I’m so happy that you’re reading this, and I’m sending so much love.

Thank you. I appreciate you.
❤️

Returning readers of ‘Dear Reader, I’m Lost' will know that I have an ongoing writing relationship with

Terry Freedman

of

Eclecticism: Reflections on literature, writing and life

in the form of regular, light-hearted correspondence. It’s my turn to reply to him next time.

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1. Yeah. It doesn’t exist. And that, dear Reader, is a disgrace.