Saturday 15 December 2012

The Gift Of Giving, by Pippa Goodhart

Let me tell you a story.

            There was once a child who went to a small village school. 
 
She was a happy child, but rather unsure of things.  All her friends learned to read quite quickly, but she got stuck for years in the earliest stages of learning to read.  It was only after her mother taught her to read one summer holiday when she was about eight or nine that this child really began to enjoy reading, even though she’d always loved stories that were read to her.  Reading at school went on being mostly a chore of trying to read increasingly hard ‘reading books’, but the child’s mother read her Laura Ingalls Wilder’s ‘Little House In The Big Woods’ at home, and the child felt keenly that Laura was her friend, and she longed to know more about her.  One by one, further books about Laura came out, and were bought for birthdays and Christmases.

            One day when that girl was in her last year at that village school, a young man came to help in the school.  He was called Tom, and all the children loved him.  One summer day Tom ‘did something very kind’ (to quote from ‘Dogger’ – I am trying to link this to picture books, honest!).  To celebrate his birthday and finishing his exams, Tom invited a group of children from the school to his room in Trinity College’s Great Court.  He gave the children tea, and he and a friend played loud blues tunes on a piano, and everyone played party games.  But then, and best of all, Tom took the children down the road to Heffers Children’s Bookshop, and he let them each choose ANY BOOK THEY WANTED as a present!! The children couldn’t quite believe that anybody would give presents on their birthday, or that they were really allowed to choose whatever they wanted.  The teacher didn’t approve of every child’s choice, but THEY GOT THE BOOK THEY WANTED ANYWAY!    Perhaps you can guess that the girl chose ‘Little Town On The Prairie’ by Laura Ingalls Wilder so that she could read the next bit of Laura’s story.
 


            Well, the years passed, as years do.  The girl went on to a big scary school that she slowly got used to.  When she became sixteen she got a Saturday job in the big Heffers Bookshop in Cambridge.  She worked there every Saturday and school holiday, and then in university holidays.  Coming home from university, she would often read one of her Laura Ingalls Wilder books to make her feel really at home.  After university the girl went back to Heffers for a full time job, and this time she was put to work in the Children’s Bookshop; that very same bookshop of the magical back-to-front birthday tea party day of her childhood.  With her staff discount she bought new hardback copies of all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, but she never did throw away the old paperback ones, even when she moved house and had clear-outs years and years later.

            For five years the girl, who was now a young woman, worked in Heffers Children’s Bookshop.  She met publishers and authors and illustrators, she read lots of books, and she enjoyed getting the right books and people together.  Then she fell in love.  She married a man living in Leicester, so that’s where she moved to.  She became a mother of three lovely daughters, and she began to write her own stories.  One book got published, then more and more until the writing was enough to count as a job, and she was happy. 

Every Christmas the woman’s local Leicester bookshop had a Giving Tree where you could take a label that said something like ‘Boy, aged 3, wants a book with tractors in it’, and people would then buy a book for that child.  The books were for children who attended a family support centre.  It became an important part of Christmas; the woman and her daughters carefully choosing and buying the right book for a child they didn’t know. And each time they did that, the woman thought of how special that gift of a book from somebody who didn’t need to give her anything had been to her all those years ago, and she hoped very much that it would feel as nice as that for the child she was buying a book for.  She told her children about the young man who had once bought books for her to celebrate his birthday.

            A quarter of a century later, that girl and her husband decided to move back to the village where she had grown-up.  They built a lovely house (with lots of shelves for books), and they moved in.  A few months later the woman wrote a blog about a book (no, not a Laura Ingalls Wilder one, although she might well have done http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2012/11/writers-choice-368-pippa-goodhart.html ), and then something wonderful happened.  An email arrived from somebody called Tom.  Tom had read that blog, and it had made him wonder, was the woman who had written that blog the Pippa he remembered from Grantchester School back in 1969, forty-three years ago?  She was!  And she is, and she’s me, of course. 

Believe it or not, Tom remembers the home-made gifts of cards and paper flowers stuck on a box that we made him as a thank you at the time.  So the gifts in both directions were treasured.  Tom’s unexpected book gift to me was one of the things that nudged me into the life I now lead, and it taught me how wonderfully and surprisingly generous people can be, even people who don’t have to care about you at all.  

            So the points I want to make are –

1) Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books are not picture books in the usual, large format, more-picture-than-text, sense.  But Garth Williams’ line drawings show vividly the places, the people and the things from late C19th pioneering America; showing more about what the text is telling.  Words and pictures very much work together to make the whole, just as any good picture book does.  It’s lovely to see line drawings coming back into chapter books and novels recently.  Please, publishers, give us more illustration in chapter books, and make them of the best illustrative quality.  Children study those illustrations over and over, and such dedication from an audience deserves the best.


2) Heffers Children’s Bookshop (now newly located at the back of the main shop, and a treat to visit) is currently running a Giving Tree for children at the East Anglian Children’s Hospice.  Many other bookshops run similar local schemes, giving us all the chance to cast a bit of Tom magic this Christmas, hopefully surprising children with a book they want as a present from somebody who doesn’t have to give them a present; making it the truest kind of gift of all.

3) Thank you, thank you, to Tom Deveson.

 

22 comments:

adele said...

This is wonderfully moving and just the kind of story which one ought to hear ALL THE TIME. I am a friend of Pippa's and I know Tom as well and this post is typical of them both. Marvellous! Nice too, to live down the road from Pippa!

Penny Dolan said...

Hear, hear Adele! This is just such a wonderful story of kindness and goodness and a love of books being passed on and on. I'd heard part of it but not the whole as Pippa tells it here.

I remember the drawings in the Laura Inglis Wilder books capturing just the right moment to draw the reader in and "show" them that brave, resourceful world. Life affiming books - and blogpost. Just right for Christmas! So good to hear about the Heffers Tree too.

ps Hooray for Tom who started this all off! (And Pippa's mother.)

Linda Strachan said...

What a lovely story, and great to hear that you heard from Tom who had started you on this journey.

I agree there should be more illustrations in books, and not just in picture books.

Thinking of the days said...

this is such a heartwarming story...and confirms my opinion that book lovers and writers are very generous souls!Like gardeners!

I also agree about line illustrations in books....sitting on the desk in front of me is my copy of A little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.Ity'sw a puffin priced 3 shillings and sixpence. I loved the drawings as a child....all 24 of them.

Stroppy Author said...

Ah, I'd heard the story from you before, Pippa, but not the bit where Tom gets in touch! How wonderful! And I'm glad to learn about the tree in Heffer's - I'll pop along.

What a lovely, heartwarming story.

Pippa Goodhart said...

Thank you all for your nice comments. Yes, sometimes life, and people, do wonderful things. And heroes aren't always obvious.
Happy Christmas!

tomd said...

Thanks to Adele's husband Norm without whose blog Pippa and I would never have 'met' again after forty-three years. And thanks also to Beth Taylor who allowed an untrained third-year undergraduate into her school to read poems and tell stories to the children.

Our grandchildren have loved and read two copies of Pippa's You Choose into wrinkles. I won't say what they might be getting for Christmas.

This week I booked myself into an inner-London primary school to do a ten-day Macbeth project next term. The children have dozens of mother tongues but will join in speaking and acting Shakespeare's words to their families and friends. My old English teacher, now in his eighties, will travel sixty miles in each direction to come and support them.

'Pass it on...'

[Tom Deveson]

Lynne Benton said...

What a lovely story, Pippa, and how wonderful that Tom got in touch with you again! Now that's what I call a heartwarming story just in time for Christmas. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

Geraldine Brenan said...

A wonderful story especially because it reminds me of the illustrations in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books which I had completely forgotten. I could just tuck into On the Banks of Plum Creek now.

Jane Clarke said...

Lovely. And what a brilliant idea 'The Giving Tree' is - I can't wait to tell my bookstore about it.

Paeony Lewis said...

What a delightful blog, Pippa. You and Tom have filled me with warm, fuzzy feelings. Most definitely, 'pass it on'.

I too enjoyed the black and white line illustrations in books and would race to read to the next one. The occasional sumptuous (and tasteful) colour plate was another joy. Even nowadays, I suspect I wouldn't have bought 'A Monster Calls' if I hadn't been intrigued by the illustrations.

malachy doyle said...

Beautiful, and perfect in the run-up to Christmas. Thank you, Pippa. I loved those Laura Ingalls Wilder books, too. I suspect not too many boys read them even then, but I was definitely one.

Moira Butterfield said...

Pass it on. Hear, hear. Pippa and Tom, you most definitely have.

Abie Longstaff said...

That's such a lovely story! The people who have inspired me live on in my memory too. My wonderful English teacher taught me so much about books and writing and I think of him often. Sadly I learned he died many years ago. It must be so good, Pippa, to be back in touch with Tom! :)

harriet said...

That is totally brilliant.

Anonymous said...

Thank you to people who have bought my children books each birthday that they can enjoy fully- I remember being given books for christmas chosen for a brilliant child with reading abilities far beyond mine- the child my parents would have liked me to be. A real burden.Childrens books should be pure pleasure. There is plenty of hard work reading to be done later in life!

Rosalind Adam said...

What a lovely story. Books are precious, aren't they :-) I used to love those simple line drawings. What a shame they seem to favour big, busty technicolour illustrations these days.

Pippa Goodhart said...

Nice to hear of other Laura and Mary fans! And I do agree with that importance of giving children books they'll enjoy rather than ones which might reflect well on parents. Ros, I think there'd be quite a market for some 'big busty technicolour illustrations'!!! Yes, yes, I know there was a comma.....

Playing by the book said...

Oh this has made me cry. And makes me want to be a "Tom". Thank you.

Kit Berry said...

This has made me cry too! What an amazing, life-affirming story. I agree wholly about the line drawings - they give a child scope to fill in the details and gaps, like a little half-formed suggestion.

Ms Baroque said...

Oh my God, this has made me CRY! Because of Mary and Laura, and Tom Deveson, and children's bookshops, and Christmas, and Norm... xx

Unknown said...

Keep up the good work Pippa. I was at Grantchester too. Happy time's with Beth Taylor and Jenny Thomas.