Walk into the self-help section of the Kindle Store or your favourite book store, thumb through a lifestyle magazine, and what are you likely to find?
Many books on parenting. Parents never stop being told what they should be doing as parents! Parenting brings with it an avalanche of advice, social criticism, psychology, and news stories.
Our author Clare-Rose pictured with her mum seems a rare moment in the middle of all the noise.
So, how do any of us as parents grab such moments? What help do single mums or dads need for a quiet moment?
Helping parents to be with kids
Clare’s idea behind writing short books for children is to help find such moments when parents read and talk to their kids. The three books pictured here are all conversation starters.
Creatures
Creatures are looking for children to create stories in which they can live.
Parents help children tell stories all the time. They draw stories out of them as they are dressing and feeding them. They help them form the accounts of what happened that day when they’re driving them home from school.
That’s why we’re publishing the Red Wool Editions Young Philosophers Series.
Appreciating how parents deserve help that is also full of fun for them, must also help children value their own stories. Then there’s only one small step to understanding the humanity within themselves and others.
After all, there must be some reason why we are the only storymaking species on the planet. Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human shows us why we long for creative ways of sharing stories.
Parents sharing stories with their kids, for instance, could be a great way of dealing with the ugly side of newsfeeds and the harmful effects of ‘fake news’.
Positive parenting through conversations
Here’s an example of how a parent might use The Book With No Story.
For a start, the fun in the book comes from Clare tangling up her real-life into her invention of 52 creatures. As a result, she models for children how the characteristics of her friends and family have inspired her imagination.
The whole book is about striving to be a great storyteller and a good writer. However, it’s not set out like a textbook but more like a delightful puzzle. Clare explains this to the children in the resource that accompanies the book:
The photographs you see of creatures are based on real people, some are in my family and the rest are my friends. But that DOES NOT MEAN that the creatures themselves act like the people in the photographs. I love exploring how both my “real life” and my “imaginary life” are different parts of me. They co-exist in the same picture, in the same story. I believe my imagination allows me to interpret my “real life”, helping me to make sense of it.
When You Meet Kasperwish, p.12
The Book With No Story – Activity Book 1
When You Meet Kasperwish is a resource that gives children, even more, help on their writing skills.
Homework Helping Activity Books
Clare reckons that the relationship between facts and fiction is THE topic to talk about with children. Philosophically speaking, it is an essential topic for understanding how they form their view of the world.
Of course, she’s not the only writer to say so. You might recognise these famous lines from Shakespeare giving a similar message.
All the world’s a stage,
Act 2, Scene 5, line 138 on.
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts…
Works of fiction give us a chance to focus on particular human traits intensely. They allow us to express our feelings about really complicated stuff.
INTRODUCING attachment smith
For example, I am the source of the ATTACHMENT SMITH creature.
I try to guess what the author Clare and Illustrator Yong saw in me to create the image and the character description. To new readers of the book who don’t know me, of course, it doesn’t matter.
Nonetheless, I recognise ‘me’ in Attachment Smith. Like me, she has an ageing face, and her hair has a hint of grey. So I know that she is a funny version of myself as I’m growing into becoming a grandparent. Today, little children surround me in my life.
Small books with big impact
As you can see through my image, the use of contemporary collage by Yongho Moon is unique. But it’s not typically considered a style of visual art ‘for children’. But digital technologies makes creating collages a popular artform through photoshopping. We figure, then, that it might be interesting for parents and children to look at the power for bringing images together and make something original emerge pastiche-like.
A bit like positive parenting itself, in which moments of love come together to create a lifelong impact.