CHILDREN’S
IF YOU WANT TO
CLOUDBURST by Wilbur Smith and Chris Wakling, Piccadilly Press, £6.99, (ebook £3.99)
ADVENTURE writer Wilbur Smith moves into fiction for older children with the first in a series of novels aimed at aged nine plus.
Smith teams up with novelist and travel writer Christopher Wakling to tell the story of the next generation of the Courtneys, a family Smith has been writing about for 50 years.
Set in modern-day Democratic Republic of Congo, it tells the story of Jack Courtney and his two friends Amelia and Xander, who get to come to DRC when his parents travel there for a gorilla conference. But when Jack’s parents are kidnapped by mercenaries, he and his friends must venture into the jungle to try and find answers.
One of the biggest things blocking them is another branch of the Courtney family, mineowner Langdon and his son Caleb. While some of the older Courtneys have turned to conservation, we see that others continue to try to strip the land of its resources. This is an exciting and realistic story, full of bandits and poachers and amazing wildlife.
MANY young children may be more anxious during the coronavirus pandemic, and calming them before they go to bed is important. But how best to do it? Mum and musician Lotte Mullan turned to ‘disguised’ mindfulness for kids when trying to get her threeyear-old son to bed, and created Calm Kids, a series of six mindfulness stories to tame busy-minded and energetic toddlers.
“Calm Kids came about as a means to calm my feral toddler so he’d get to sleep,” she says.
“I tried more traditional mindful exercises, but as a wild three-yearold he couldn’t have been less interested in sitting still and concentrating on breathing in and out. I had to find a way in with humour and the kind of slapstick silliness that appeals to toddlers.
“The characters captured my son’s imagination enough for him to be oblivious to the fact that he was being lulled into a light hypnosis for slumber. I’m happy to report that said feral toddler is now somewhat tamed and goes to sleep at 7pm for 12 hours.”
The stories, available free on streaming platforms, are read by Lotte and well-known voices including singer/songwriter Sophie Ellis-Bextor, who reads Dezzy The Grumpy Dragon (calmcollective. lnk.to/Dezzy), and Game of Thrones actress Bella Ramsey, who voices The Greedy Unicorn (calmcollective.lnk.to/Unicorn).
Mum-of-five Sophie says: “With five children in our home, bedtime can be madness. You never know what an evening might bring and it can be so different from one day to the next. I read Dezzy The Grumpy Dragon to Ray, Jesse and Mickey before we went into recording and they adore the story.”
Lotte sneaked mindfulness techniques into the stories with the help of neurolinguistic psychotherapist Martin Weaver, who she worked with on the mindfulness album Calm Collective, and she also included specially-designed music to lower the heart rate.
She adds: “Bedtime can be a battlefield with toddlers. Luckily, there are lots of simple activities you can do to, if not tame them, then at least help them calm themselves (and you) down for a restful sleep.”
Here she outlines seven ways to calm a toddler through bedtime mindfulness:
ASK THEM HOW THEY FEEL INSIDE
WHEN they’re tired, children can become hyperactive, springing into life just as 7pm rolls around.
If they’re over-tired their body produces more cortisol and adrenaline to keep them awake. Encouraging them to zoom into how they feel inside their body (‘becoming present’) can help those tiny twitching limbs unwind.
Try it together: Stretch out your mouths and yawn like lions, see who can open their mouth the widest. Reaching your arms up to the ceiling, see how tall you can both be, before flopping back down.
ENJOY A LAUGH
HUMOUR is an important communication tool and when we’re laughing our flight or fight response is turned off, which is vital for sleep. Try it together: Enjoy telling jokes or pulling funny faces.
A current favourite in our family is saying the name of an animal with your mouth closed tight and then the other person, through giggles, has to guess the name of the animal you’re saying.
Lotte Mullan, creator of Calm Kids