Flybraries take to the air
> British children’s author Dame Jacqueline Wilson has teamed up with budget airline easyJet to get children reading onboard
BRITISH children’s author Dame Jacqueline Wilson ( right), 71, has written more than 100 novels, including The Story of Tracy Beaker series, and has sold more than 40 million books in the UK alone.
Her latest book, Wave Me Goodbye, is about 10-year-old Shirley, an evacuee who is thrown into uncertainty when she is sent away on a train with her schoolmates during World War II.
Wilson’s novels place difficult issues such as family dysfunctions, divorce, mental illness, and bereavement into first-person narratives that young readers can easily understand and relate to.
But Wilson is aware that some children find books intimidating. So she is spearheading a campaign to get children reading during the holidays.
She has teamed up with budget airline easyJet to fill planes taking families abroad with ‘flybraries’ – passenger seat pockets containing children’s classics chosen by Wilson.
“Children aren’t reading as much today, for the obvious reason that they have so many other things to occupy them,” says Wilson. “Every child now plays some kind of electronic game.”
She says that schools can sometimes add to the problem “because the school curriculum is so crammed, there is very little time for any kind of reading for pleasure”.
She adds: “When children pick up a book, often teachers ask them questions to make sure that they’ve read it and understood it. Well, I think that just kills the whole thing dead.
“At school, we used to have story time, normally at the end of the day, when we just listened to a story being read aloud to us. It was fun. That’s what it is all about.”
She has picked Peter Pan, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, The Railway Children, and The Wizard of Oz to populate the flybraries.
Like Wilson’s own works, the stories she’s chosen don’t shy away from harsh realities like loss or loneliness.
“Rather than to point children in the direction of modern children’s books, I wanted to choose tried-andtested books that have never been out of print,” she says. “If you can get children reading, then they will be readers for life.”
Wilson also reveals about her difficult early life with “parents who argued every day, about practically everything”, and talks of reading in childhood as escapism.
She was a voracious reader and wrote her first ‘novel’ at the age of nine – 21 handwritten sides of paper.
“The first proper book I read was The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton,” she says. “By the time I was about 10, I had a little collection of paperbacks and children’s classics. My father used to tell me to take my head out of books and go and do something useful.”
The first adult book Wilson read was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
“My parents didn’t have many books, but there was an old copy of Jane Eyre. [From] the moment I started reading, I was riveted.
“I hadn’t realised that sometimes adult books started with the main character as a child.
“And here we had a little girl sitting in a window seat, and it just seemed very real to me. I couldn’t stop reading it, I was blown away by it and it’s still one of my all-time favourite classics.”
As a child, Wilson read and reread Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes, and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women – but omitted them from the easyJet libraries for fear of alienating boys.
“It’s so silly because children can be put off reading books that they would love for the silliest reasons. I think you have to be quite canny about [enticing them],” she says.
The Railway Children is her alltime favourite children’s book for reasons that have followed her into adulthood.
“I just love E. Nesbit’s work. How she understands children. I
sitting in a window seat, and it just seemed very real to me.
“I couldn’t stop reading it, I was blown away by it and it’s still one of my all-time favourite classics.”
As a child, Wilson read and reread Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes, and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women – but omitted them from the easyJet libraries for fear of alienating boys.
“It’s so silly because children can be put off reading books that they would love for the silliest reasons. I think you have to be quite canny about [enticing them],” she says.
The Railway Children is her alltime favourite children’s book for reasons that have followed her into adulthood.
“I just love E. Nesbit’s work. How she understands children. I also sympathise with the fact that the mother writes for a living and finds it hard work. And whenever she sells a story, they have buns for tea.”
Wilson has a daughter, Emma, whom she had when she was 21, around the time she started writing novels and regularly contributing stories to magazines.
“You want to be a good mum, but there are deadlines to meet. Luckily for me, my daughter was a bookworm and the sort of child who was happy to read, write her own stories, or draw while I worked.
“When I’d finished or sold a story, we’d often actually have buns for tea. I took that from The Railway Children.” – The Independent
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 – Dr Beni Rusani – Lang Leav
– Azalia Zaharuddin (Ed)