What books can you remember from childhood that were important to you? Where do i start . . .? Books have been part of my life ever since my Granny taught me to read before i went to school. “Sinking into a book” was delicious. Completely absorbed in another world – the world woven from words. How vexed my Mother would get when I failed to emerge from my latest library book to respond to her call. I can still ‘see’ the cover of my first book, “Hilda the Pantomime Horse”. The cat was called “pizzicato” and I was so proud of myself being able to decode such a long word. Then there was the “Thirteenth orphan”. This story featured a little orphan girl who turned out to be the long lost daughter of her adoptive family – well, I think that is the plot. I can still remember the illustration of the orphan standing in the abandoned crib in the nursery beneath the portrait of the lost child. And I recall children in the story traipsing through a magical wood treading on sorrel. ‘Sorrel, what’s sorrel?’ I had no idea and was very puzzled.
“Once upon a time there was a little girl called Jane who lived in a house with her mummy and daddy and her baby brother John. . .” I loved the bedtime stories about me that my Father told. . People have always told stories. Oral tradition goes way way back – long before the invention of the Printing Press meant that it was possible to tell stories by writing them down.
The leader of today’s workshop was Jackie from Jacqson Diego and she started by asking us to go though a series of warm-up exercises. Then she gave each of us a coloured pen with the instruction that no-one else on the table we sat at was to have a pen of the same colour. A simple way to encourage us to mix. A couple more warm-up activities then Jacquie asked us to discuss our earliest memories of books that were important to us. R started by telling us that her choice was ”My Naughty Little Sister”. C chose “Heidi” by Johanna Spyri. Oh yes! I could not get enough of Heidi and I also read “Heidi Grows Up” and “Heidi’s Children”. Of course A.A.Milne’s name came up, but I do not recall who it was who chose “One Hundred Acre Wood”. And was it the person on my left who mentioned “Black Beauty” by Anna Sewell? I definitely would find it easier to remember names if we wore name badges! RR’s choice was “Anne Frank’s Diary” – a much more sombre and serious, yet inspiring true story. M explained her choice was “Thumbelina” and we chatted for a while about how dark Fairy Tales could be.Then S told us about “Tom’s Midnight Garden”. Delving into depths of memory stirs up images of more books but Jacqui moved the session on and gave us each a piece of paper, instructing us to divide it into eight sections. We were to select a story and write down the basic outline in eight parts. At this stage we did become a tad confused. Some thought that we were supposed to take one piece of paper, passing it round the table to each add a section. Others thought that each person had to write out their own story. It did not actually matter. What Jacqueline needed was stories in eight strips which were then torn up, shuffled and re-allocated to each table. We had to arrange those new strips into an order to ‘tell a story’. That was fun! We arranged and fe-arranged, with much discussion.Eventually we settled on the order and it was time for lunch. Jacqui explained that after lunch we would be illustrating our stories in some way. Regrettably, I had to miss the afternoon session owing to a prior engagement. But I knew how I was going to ‘illustrate’ our story. I was going to write it down.

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