By
Veda Anita Dandamudi
Antoine
de Saint Exupéry once wrote in Le Petit
Prince, “All grown-ups were once children...but only few of them remember
it.” Well I’m one of those lucky few. (Not that I’m a grown up per say.)
When
I was a child I was fluent in a special language (one of my favourites to this
day) called GOBBLEFUNK, the brain child of Roald Dahl. Dahl loved to twist and
turn the English language to create strange and interesting words which he used
in his writing.
So
I can easily say I svolloped (destroyed)
all of Roald Dahl’s books, reading them over and over, till my copies no longer
resembled their pristine form. I lived in the world he created, full of oompa-loompas, vermicious knids, time
twiddlers and blabbersnitches. I
remember sitting up late in my bed, hiding under the sheets using a flashlight
to read the BFG and George’s Marvelous Medicine way past my bed time, my gogglers (eyes) unable to be pried away
from the pages. Then I went to sleep and had ringbellers (excellent dreams) about phizzwhizzle and whizzpopping.
Who would ever want to wake up? Not me, that’s for certain.
Except
as the years go by, the shelves pile up with bigger books with much bigger
words and one day I did wake up....
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
There
goes the sound of my alarm, waking me up after living in the land of dreams.
And then I look around myself and think, “Oh no! I’m living in the ADULT WORLD!”
It’s a scary place where all we do is splatch-wink
(rush around in a hurry) without realising why we’re splatch-winking. What’s my first thought? I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE!
So
what do I do?
Head
for the time machine, that’s what.
Master of the
Time Machine
There
is a time machine I know of
Without
buttons and gears as such
It
presents a world of wonder
A
world I wish to visit
Oh
so very much
Some adults
refuse to leave the land of childhood and those are the best kind. If I had to
pick one children’s author to call my favourite it would most definitely be
Roald Dahl. Despite the fact that he was a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force
and having seen the worst, he could still come back from the anarchy of war and
write books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (now also a major motion
picture starring Johnny Depp), The Twits, Matilda, Fantastic Mr. Fox and many
others. Dahl had his own writing hut where the all the magic happened and I can
safely say that it was from this very hut that the essence of my childhood was
captured and cultivated from.
Reading Roald
Dahl as a child is a way of living in the present. But reading Roald Dahl at
the age of eighteen is way of revisiting the past. Forget the gadgetry and
automated notions of time machines. If you’ve got a Roald Dahl book in your
hand, you’re all set to take a trip down memory lane.
So I’m right
here about to get a ticket to my childhood. There’s only one problem... I
always get asked the same old pesky question. “Why don’t you grow up?”
To which I
reply with the same old answer...
“Why
should I?”
The
Scrumdiddlyumptious Art of Writing for Children
Never
tell me it’s immature to read children’s books at this age. I’ll read them even
when I’m in my eighties.
The fact is
that children literature is the foundation upon which young readers catapult
themselves into the depths of adult novels and other forms of literature. If I
had never read my first book, Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss, I may never have
discovered my passion for reading and writing. From Dr. Seuss’ picture books to
Roald Dahl’s chapter books, the transition starts.
Children
literature is widely underappreciated, not being given its due importance. And
that’s just buggles (absolutely
crazy). We grow up and forget about the books that made us who we are today and
it’s a shame.
Write a
story for children in not more than a couple of hundred words. Sounds simple
doesn’t it?
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Here’s
the gist of what needs to be considered when writing for kids:
- · Strip back the decadent language. This isn’t the place to use studies for affectation or ornament.
- · Brevity is key and hence one must learn to pick and choose the right and best words to narrate the tale.
- · The sentence structure and vocabulary should appeal to young readers and must be written in such a way that kids can understand it. Otherwise it’s all moot.
- · Write in such a manner so as to foster a sense of anticipation in the child. Make them cry, “Mommy what happens next?” when their mothers read it to them at bedtime.
- · Lastly, use evocative and rich words that paint a picture in the child’s mind, sparking their imagination. Imagery is essential, after all.
Not
quite so easy is it? Yet Roald Dahl makes it sound like a piece of cake when he
said, “You can write about anything for children as long as you’ve got humour.”
To
write a book for children, you’ll have to be twice as creative and more than
half mad. It’s all about pushing boundaries and maybe eliminating them
altogether. Anyone can write about the real world, simply because we live, eat
and breathe in it. It takes a whole lot more talent to create your own world
where reason is an outcast and write about it.
So
never under estimate the power of a children’s author. You never know what’s
going on in their head. That’s the beauty of it.
And the
only way to experience the author’s world is getting into the time machine. So
I take one step forward and what do you know...I’m inside.
The
Arranged Marriage between Pictures and Words
The time
machine starts off with a clap and a bang and soon enough I’m whizzing off to
the 90’s. There are all sorts of images outside the windows, flitting past.
Let me start
off by asking if you are one of those people who picture everything you read in
your head, making your own mental movie out of the book. Well illustrations
help the kids out with that.
Yet make no
mistake, they’re not merely there to make the book more goggler-catching. Pictures happen to contribute to the multi-sensory
experience of reading.
Once an
imaginative world has been conceptualised, the author makes strenuous effort to
distill and condense while the illustrator
takes equal pains to expand, translate the words into pictures, conveying
exactly what the author intends.
The relation
between an author and an illustrator is rather symbiotic in nature. Just take
Roald Dahl and illustrator Quentin Blake for example. The two names go hand in
hand. Blake has the distinct ability to use a few strokes to express a panorama
of emotion and activity.
For the BFG,
Blake initially drew the giant wearing large boots but neither Dahl nor himself
were pleased with the way the illustrations looked. So what did Dahl do? He
sent him a scrappy old sandal and voila! Blake was inspired to draw the BFG
with sandals instead. Clearly the two worked well together as demonstrated by
their partnership enduring nineteen books. Their collaboration ended in 1990
due to the unfortunate passing of Roald Dahl.
I can boldly
say that the stories would have been incomplete without Quentin Blake’s
masterful illustrations.
Stepping
out of the Time Machine
The trip’s
been great and I’m back. It might have felt too short but any time at all is
more than enough. There’s only so much time one can spend in the past before
being jolted back into the present. That isn’t to say that the past cannot be
imbibed within the present.
So, take the
time to just be a kid. Don’t let the
muggles tell you otherwise because sometimes we suffer from temporary
moments of insanity when everything seems to make sense. So truly, in madness
lies a sense of truth and clarity. This is the magical world of children
literature encompassing madness and morality.
So make no
mistake, if you’re re reading Roald Dahl and the gobblefunk throws you off (there is also a Gobblefunk Dictionary in
case you need it) remember what the BFG said to Sophie, “Meanings is not
important.” Just have fun with it.
There’s a
little kid inside everyone so please don’t forget about them. After all, they
just want to come out and play. Even if for a little bit. Give them their time
of day. You won’t regret it.
I solemnly swear..png)
Class - 1st CEP
1313140
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