Woman's Hour - Takeover 2019 - Cressida Cowell, Children's Laureate

Episode Date: July 25, 2019

Cressida Cowell says, "I will be talking about the thoroughly modern magic of reading and how that magic can and must be made accessible to absolutely everybody. Also I'll be talking exclusively to Woman's Hour about lost ancestors including an extraordinary but forgotten relative of mine, plus the vital importance of diverse authors and heroes for children, and funny words for the countryside, the words we are losing and our worrying disconnect with nature."Presenter: Jenni MurrayInterviewed guests: Cressida Cowell, Children's Laureate David Tennant, actor Jonathan Douglas, director, National Literacy Trust Claire Williams, deputy head, Kenilworth Primary School Patrice Lawrence, author Aimee Felone, publisher Jackie Morris, writer and illustrator Dr Kate Lewthwaite, citizen science manager at the Woodland Trust

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Thursday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. Now, it's day four of the Woman's Hour takeover week and today's guest editor is Cressida Cowell. She's the new Children's Laureate and the author of a whole series of books on the subject of training a dragon. We had lots of response from you. We heard from parents, teachers and fellow authors who've all been inspired by Cressida's advice and her passion for reading, nature and diversity in publishing.

But why did she choose to write about dragons? Well, because I had rather an unusual split childhood, partly in London. My dad was an environmentalist as well. His job was in London. He was an environmentalist. So he was chairman of the RSPB, chairman of Kew Gardens. So his idea of going on holiday was to be dropped off on an uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland. An island so small that when you stand on the top

of it you can see sea all around you and there was nothing on the island. No houses, no mobile phones back in the 1970s. Absolutely no way of contacting the outside world if something went wrong. So you can imagine incredible experience for a child. From when I was about nine my dad had a house built on the island. And then we spent the whole summer on this island. He got a boat to catch fish to eat. Still in a house with no television. And that was where the Vikings first came to

when they invaded Great Britain. And it was the last place they left. And Vikings believed that dragons really existed. So I used to imagine, what if the Vikings were right? So did you actually start writing the stories then when you were a child? I was already writing stories because you spend a whole summer on an island without a television. And back in those days, I was the head of the entertainment section. Yeah, I was the eldest kid. Back in those days, you know, you didn't entertain your kids like we do. You know,

you let them run wild. And so, yeah, I was out there writing stories, reading books to my younger siblings. That was first when I first wanted to be a writer. I remember reading books aloud and making my younger siblings laugh and say, read another chapter. You know, the power of that. I'm getting them excited about reading.

You now have a new and rather important job. What are you hoping to achieve as Children's Laureate? As Children's Laureate, I'm hoping to get across getting children reading for the joy of it, the magic of it, and writing for the magic of it. So I think that books have something special that films and telly don't. My books have been made into three fabulous movies. They are wonderful. I adore and i love movies you know it's all storytelling but books have something special they are a medium we cannot lose yeah we can't because film is all very visual isn't it you know

and it's quite bossy yeah whereas books uh and if in a scream it's happening out there, but a book is happening inside your head. Yeah. So they're fantastic books because they're partly what I write and partly what you imagine. They're fantastic at three things, creativity, empathy and intelligence. That's the words. Film is a visual medium. Books are about words. All books about words. Well, let's go on to expand on that. You know, so many of us when we were little had no choice at all, like Cressida, of where to find the magic in a good story, which would fire our imagination. There wasn't much television and there were no computer games and certainly no screens to attract our attention.

It was books. And the pleasure for me of hiding one under the bedclothes for a bit of a read after lights were supposed to have gone out. So how, with the proliferation of screens, do we make sure the younger generations learn the magic of a good book? Well, Clare Williams is the Deputy Head of Kenilworth Primary School in Boreham Wood. Jonathan Douglas is the Director of the National Literacy Trust. We're going to start, Jonathan, on a really terribly depressing statistic that one in six adults has a problem with literacy. Why? Yeah, well, literacy is always linked with inequality. People who have high levels of literacy are always at a high level in society

than those with low levels of literacy. The UK pattern is absolutely about socioeconomic status. So people from poorer backgrounds have lower levels of literacy generally than people from more affluent backgrounds. And it's very, very deeply entrenched. By the time a child is starting primary school, children from the poorest backgrounds have early language 19 months behind. So it's an intergenerational pattern. You know, it's deeply entrenched. So that socioeconomic profile is very important. And really how we tackle the link between poverty and poor literacy is very important in this country. I think the second thing that relates to what Cressida has said, in the past two decades, we've seen a massive push on literacy.

You know, the Blair government, the education, education, education mantra, strategies, all sorts of fantastic things going on. But they've treated literacy, quite rightly, as a cognitive and a skills-based activity. But as well as it being that cognitive and skills-based activity, it's also effective. It's about loving books, it's about loving reading. And those two things work together. And the impact of literacy is always going to be curtailed unless actually we create space for children and adults to fall in love with literature and fall in love with reading. Claire, I know you discovered something really interesting in getting pupils in your school to read. They'd been behaving badly.

You got them to read. What happened? We've been working really closely with an organisation called Empathy Lab, which is all about building empathy in children and helping them to develop their empathy skills because everybody, 98% of the population, can build their empathy skills. And we found the most effective way to do that is through books, because by reading, you enter different worlds. You are forced to see the different events through somebody else's perspective.

And actually, if you can see the world from somebody else's perspective, then you can react differently in your own world. If somebody is doing something, instead of just looking at what they're doing, you can unpick the reasons. You can actually have that understanding and that reasoned debate and you can just communicate with other people so much more effectively and books give you that window into somebody else's world that television doesn't because it like as chris said it gives you all the information we need empathetic children my goodness i mean we need empathetic children in the future. Donald, how do you encourage people whose literacy is poor

to actually start reading? That's a brilliant question, because it is the biggest conundrum in the world, because the power of enjoying reading is the fact that you're doing it because you want to do it. It's the intrinsic motivation. It's the fact that you're in charge of that situation, and the fact that the're in charge of that situation and the fact that the

the agency involved in becoming a reader is the thing which actually transforms an individual and the the research it's fantastic you know children who read for enjoyment by the time they're 15 um that has a higher impact on their educational attainment than their parents socioeconomic background it's driving social if we could get them reading it would be and and but libraries are intrinsic aren't well jonathan i mean if a kid doesn't have a public library and they don't have a school library and their parents can't afford books how are they going to become a reader i mean there's a marvelous quote from um daniel penyak who wrote a book called the rights to read and he said you can no more teach a child to enjoy reading than you can teach a child to fall in love or to dream.

But what we can do is we can create the conditions, we can give the opportunities, we can actually give them the access to the books that interest and inspire them. Claire, how as a teacher do you win a child round who is reluctant to read? And is there a gender divide still? I remember years ago people always said

boys are much more reluctant to read stories than girls are we do find there there can be a gender divide but what it all comes down to with us we feel is that high quality literature for every child out there there is a book that will open the world to them so it's about finding that book so you need those resources that time those different places we need the books and you need people who know about books or Or you can work with the Premier League. Jonathan and I, we work with the Premier League, don't we, on a primary start. That reaches the kids that we want to reach, in particular, that is boys. How does that work then? So, I mean, the key challenge there is, you know, the young men who find inspiration in football,

the Premier League, the most powerful influence in their life. If we're going to connect them with motivation, we need to go close to the thing which they're most excited to. So we work in a variety of ways. Footballers, role modelling and advocating, do work with competitions. Kind of 25,000 children entered a writing competition recently with the Premier League. Premier League, brilliant. But the brand itself is enough to actually reposition reading and writing as something which is exciting. And you don't have to be snobby about books, do you?

Books are for everyone. The magic is for everyone. It's reading. Yes. In terms of supporting the development of readers, the most important message is you are reading already, probably. I mean, I go into countless classrooms where actually I'll say, how many of you are readers? No, teenage boys. Not a single hand goes up.

How many of you got a copy of the Metro in the bag? They've all got the Metro. You are readers. You've got quite a task coming up because you're one of the organisers of the Man Booker this year. So you've got to read a lot of books. I think 13 on the long list were published yesterday. Just what do you do if you pick one of those books up

and you think, oh my goodness, this is boring? Well, that's a brilliant question. Just to clarify, I'm on the advisory committee. I'm not actually having to organise. But that's exactly the point. So there are two motivations to read. There's extrinsic and intrinsic. There's extrinsic because you're going to have to read it

because actually I might be interviewed by you on the Man Booker Prize and it's really embarrassing if I don't know how the book ends. But then there's the intrinsic, which is when you're reading it because you want to. And frequently I'll pick up a book and the motivation will be extrinsic and I'm having to do it, but then there'll be a tipping point halfway through the book when I actually really start reading for enjoyment

and really start and that's when the intrinsic motivation, I'm doing it because I want to But on the snobby question, again you know, there are times when I get to page three of a book and I think uh uh. Great. But you can put it down. I try not to feel guilty about it. You mustn't

because it's the agency it's being in control that makes it a great experience. As soon as you're doing it You turn it into being in control that makes it a great experience. As soon as you're doing it... You turn it into a chore. You turn it into a chore. But on my charter, I've come to this charter, I say you can put a book down if you're not enjoying it. That's very important for children as well

because otherwise it becomes a chore. I mean, sometimes you have to try hard with a book if you know, if somebody said it's fabulous, if you persist. But you have to be able to put it down otherwise it becomes a chore. Claire, I know you are keen to encourage pupils to write. How do you get them to sit down and construct their own work? Again, it comes down to having that wealth of language,

of experience in their heads, and through a wide range of reading, they can access things that they've not seen before. But with the work with Empathy Lab that we've been doing, we found that the more they can empathize with characters the the greater their imagination is and actually because they can see things from other people's points of view they can then write in character and actually instead of it just being a blank page it becomes more of an opportunity and they've got more of that their their ideas are flowing because they've they've got that wealth of understanding inside and going back to what you're saying about the different reasons we we very much focus on the skill of reading and

the will of reading they have to love that reading and if you're not enjoying it the biggest conversation we have with so many of them is it's okay you don't have to finish that book find the ones you love and kind of surround yourself with those and chrysalia you've got something called a friday freedom scheme free writing Friday, that was something I launched last year because I was getting so many letters from parents saying my kid or you know saying my kid used to

love writing but now with the SATs and having to put in the wow words they no longer enjoy it they're so terrified of making a mistake so I introduced this idea that I thought you could put in something practical that you could fit into the curriculum, 15 minutes every Friday, where you could have a special book, where in just this book, you could write whatever you wanted, and the teacher couldn't mark it. No rules, no marking, just fun. So it was a space for

them just again, like the reading reading just to enjoy writing because so often you go into schools and the kid the fact that they can't write properly holds them up and they think they don't like writing but I say you were the kid who I just saw playing in the playground some incredible imaginative game with your friends that is writing that's being a writer that's writing a screenplay so don't let the mechanics of writing put you off. So this space to write whatever, I think we need that. We need that.

That's going to be part of the new, in 2021, creativity is going to be part of the new PISA and PILA. How important is reading aloud to children? So important. And that experience of being read to and being part of the communal aspect of reading, it helps the vocabulary development

because they're hearing words pronounced that they don't know before. It helps the imagination because if they're struggling with the decoding, the actual reading, they don't have to worry about that. They can just get enveloped in the story. But also just that discussion

because two people don't read the same book. How I read it and how you read it are different. Your own imagination has that input. So by sharing that text together in that discussion because two people don't read the same book how i read it and how you read it are different your own imagination has that input so by sharing that text together in that discussion it really just unlocks the world and helps you see differences how someone else's opinion is valid and also just to really unpick all of the different elements in the text and instead of seeing your own well somebody who's rather good at it and has read quite a lot of Cressida's books is David Tennant. Let's just have a listen to him. Pay attention, screamed Gobber the Belch, the soldier in charge of teaching initiation.

This will be your first military operation and Hiccup will be commanding the team. Oh no, not Hiccup, groaned Dog's Breath the Durbrain and most of the other boys. You can't put Hiccup in charge, sir. He's useless. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, the hope and heir to the tribe of the hairy hooligans, wiped his nose miserably on his sleeve. He sank a little deeper into the snow. Anybody would be better than Hiccup sneered Snotface Snotlout Even fish legs would be better than Hiccup Fish legs had a squint

that made him as blind as a jellyfish and an allergy to reptiles Silence! roared Gobber the Belch The next boy to speak has limpets for lunch for the next three weeks Yeah, he's good at it. Jonathan Douglas and Claire Williams, thank you both very much for joining us this morning.

We did actually catch up with David on his way back from filming in Scotland. He was at Glasgow Airport, so of course he was on the phone. And I asked him how he begins to get the range of voices Cressida creates. Cressida doesn't make it easy. It was over about 12 years we did, I think we did, it was over about 12 years we did the How to Train Your Dragon books and she kept introducing new tribes of Vikings who all had to come from different places.

So by the end of those books, I was really struggling to find another area of the world that I hadn't plundered yet and a voice, a variety of accents that I could achieve. It's a great joy for me in figuring out how they're all going to sound and the kind of vocal acrobatics, hopefully, of leaping from one character to another.

I rather enjoy it. It's a real treat to just read out loud to yourself and therefore, hopefully to some people who might one day listen to it. How did you get Hiccup's voice? Hiccup? Well, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III,

he's kind of our main character. He's sort of as close to me as anything, really. I always figure that the kind of protagonist voice should be the closest to the voice of the narrator, really. So he's pretty much a version of me. So his tribe all come from, I suppose they all come from the west of Scotland because my voice does

and from him we go, you know, his father's slightly deeper version and it's me, a slightly twitchy version of the same thing and all his friends kind of worked out from there. What do you remember about being read to as a child?

I remember it being read to as a child? Well, I remember it being something that was very special and something that happened fairly regularly. The only book I vividly remember, an Enid Blyton book called Mr. Meddle's Muddles, which had a story about him baking crows in

a pie or something, and I vividly remember crying with laughter, laughing so hard I couldn't breathe as my mum or dad because I would have this story reread to me of course on multiple occasions. One of the joys of being read to as a child is that you sort of you have your favourites and you demand them and now as a parent myself I realise how mind-numbing that can be sometimes but that's one of the things that children enjoy, the repetition and the familiarity of a story that they love.

And I remember my parents being very loyally going through stories. It must have been boring them to tears, but they never let on. I think you've got four children now. What sort of qualities do you look for when you're deciding if your children will enjoy a book that you're going to read aloud for them? Well, they very much decide that. And then, you know,

whatever way you try and steer them, they'll find a way to determine what it is they enjoy hearing and the stories that they like to go back to time and again. And you can never entirely predict what that's going to be or what is going to capture their imagination.

You know, I think that children are pretty exceptional critics and they're very honest in their response to things. So you know when a story has captured them and you know when you're losing that audience, I think. Have you ever had to read a book aloud that you really didn't enjoy? Oh, yes. Yes. There are a few. There are some wonderful children's books and there are some pretty creaky ones. But I think your duty as the reader, as the parent in that situation, is to try and give it all the enthusiasm you can muster, even if you're not really feeling it.

I think that's your job, really really in those moments, isn't it? As a performance, it's like putting on a one-person show when you're there in the studio recording it. How hard is it compared to acting with other actors when you're in a film or a play? No, it's very different to being on a film set or being on stage. Obviously, you're having to distinguish sometimes large cast and characters. You've only got yourself to fall back on. So you can't always be too subtle with some of the character choices, but that can be great fun, of course,

if you can come up with some sort of extraordinary, ludicrous character. It can be quite enjoyable to play around with. I think some parents find it rather difficult to know how to express themselves when they're reading aloud to their children. What sort of advice would you give to a non-professional? I think enthusiasm is all you can really hope for, and that's all that's really required. If a child detects your enthusiasm for the story you're telling, they'll feel like it's worth listening to. They'll be engaged.

I don't think you have to have a sort of vast array of character voices to reach for. I don't think that's a requirement. You just need to be enjoying it. If you can enjoy it, then I think your audience will enjoy it. David Tennant, who's read about a lot of dragons. Now, still to come in today's programme, the lost words as Adder, Bluebell and Conqueror dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary

and blog, chatroom and celebrity are added. How do we make sure the young can name what they see in the wild? And the serial, the fourth episode of House Rules. Now, so far this week, you may have missed programmes edited by the baker, Nadia Hussain, the lawyer, Harriet Wistreich, and the teenage campaigner for the end-to-period poverty in schools, Annika George. You can find them on BBC Sounds,

and tomorrow the guest editor will be Danny Cotton, the commissioner of the London Fire Brigade. Now, I don't know if you had a hero when you were reading books as a child. I did. She was Georgina, who preferred to be known as George, and she was one of Enid Blighton's famous five. She had a dog called Timmy. She never worried, as Anne did, about making sure the sandwiches and lemonade were packed for the boys, Julian and Dick. She generally concerned herself with solving whatever problem they all faced. Well, how important is a hero to a child's development? And how easy is it to find someone you really want to be in a book? We're joined by Amy Filoni,

who's a publisher and was responsible for setting up a bookshop in South London. Patrice Lawrence is the author of the award-winning Orange Boy and Indigo Donut. But Cressida, let's start with you. Who was your hero growing up? Well, it was very important for me to have a female hero. And I'm going to talk about a woman in my personal life. The men were all out there doing public things in my family. I was quite a traditional British family. But there was this one woman who people actually don't know about. We're still very much his story rather than her story, called Trudy Denman. And she was extraordinary. She was involved with women's suffrage. This is

my granny's aunt. She was the first chairman of the Women's Institute. And she was that for 20 years. She was the first chairman of the Family Planning Association. I mean, that was a big deal in, you know, 1920s, 30s, 40s. And she was president of the Ladies' Golf Union. I love that. Bit of an all-rounder. And she was also, I mean, at the third, I mean, astonishing women's rights kind of thing that she did was she led the Women's land army I mean she

was extra in the second world war an extraordinary woman who we don't really know much about and she was in my personal history my granny used to talk you know she died before I was born but my granny used to talk about her my granny who was a very splendid woman who I adored would talk about her and I needed that hero to know that women can do stuff they can be out there you know fighting for stuff they can be out there on the public stage so even if you're a strong woman or a little girl as I was a fierce little girl you need those heroes out there doing stuff and you need heroes in books and George was a hero of mine and also Pippi Longstocking so strong she could lift a horse

above her head. Patrice what about you who was yours from a book? I didn't really have any heroes in books I was a massive reader I loved stories I loved absorbing every element of a story and following that story and getting emotionally involved but I think for me as a child I even though I didn't realize it I always always had this little ethnic hop um because nobody in certainly none of the children in books looks like me or have family structures like and that's an issue and so I take little bits I love Jo in Little Women because she was in a single parent family wanted to be a writer I loved Heidi because

she was living with her granddad and I lived the first four years in a foster family, so a different type of family. And then I loved Mole from Wind in the Willows because he was deeply short-sighted like me, had a home that wasn't like others and liked his food. And what about you, Emmy? Who was your winner? Yeah, I think I'm quite similar to Patrice, actually, in that I was a voracious reader as a kid,

but I couldn't pick out one person, you know, that A, looked like me, or B, was somebody that I truly felt an affinity to in kids' books. You know, I was a big Jacqueline Wilson fan, and it's only when I've become older that I realised that Jacqueline Wilson at the time was quite controversial in what she wrote, in that she was writing single-parent stories, or she was writing about kids who have lost their parents. And I think I drew more inspiration from the characters that she wrote

just because it was the situations, it was the friends' stories that were familiar to me. Now, Patrice, I know you began your career as a writer for magazines and your characters were white. Why? Oh, and every character I wrote up until I was 32 was white. Not that I didn't think our stories were important, but if you... And I grew up in mid-Sussex as well in the 70s and 80s, so my school curriculum, everyone around me,

every book that was written by someone, every character in that book, most characters on tv programs were white so the whole cultural industry as far as i had absolutely absorbed was white so it did not absolutely occur to me that i could write a book that would have a black or asian character so you were just doing it unconsciously you were just unconscious it was it just wasn't actually on my radar that that was a possibility so i wrote stories for my little brothers and that was a different thing but a book that was in a shop, that would have somebody that looked like me in them?

No. Amy, what prompted you to set up a bookshop? Well, firstly, we set up a publishing house. So Nightsoft was set up two years ago, and the whole point of the company is to address the lack of representation, both in terms of workforce and publishing. And the bookshop came up out of um the publishing house

you know we did a pop-up celebrate our one-year birthday and the community of brixton really loved it and they were asking us why aren't you here permanently uh how can we make you here permanently and we said well we kind of have to put our money where our mouths is and we set a target to open up um a permanent store in brixton market and managed to exceed our target of 30 000 pounds and we're there now who comes to buy the books everybody everybody and regardless of that yeah and i think that's really important to say is that when we did the pop-up a white man came in a parent and he said i find it really hard to find books that feature the school kids that my kids you know exactly and they're like exactly and i think you know there is this

kind of uh wrong assumption that prevails in the industry that diverse books are for diverse kids whoever they may be and that's absolute rubbish because everybody should be reading about everybody the magic is for everyone how much diversity patrice do you reckon there is in the school curriculum? Well, I mean, I did my, it was then O-Levels in the 80s. I did O-Levels as well. It's all right. We weren't that far back, were we? But most of the English GCSE, as I knew before, has the same books with maybe a little hint of Benjamin

Zephaniah if you're lucky, a hint of John Agard and I just think that discussion around how you can use different types of language, how you can explore different characters is still very much missing so I think young people are now so bogged down in the exam curriculum

that it's really hard to read for pleasure and find all the other lovely stuff that's out there. So how easy has it been for you to find books for your mixed-race daughter? Well, when she was a baby, because I said I was born in Sussex and she's born in London, in East London, which is obviously very different from where I grew up.

So I thought, yes, this is going to be so different. And then trying to find a book, a UK book that had a black mum and a white dad and a mixed-race daughter. And the one that we found was by Tony Bradman and Eileen Brown called Wait and See, which I kind of found by accident. And it was the one book I found, and we read it over and over again. Did she love it? I don't think she kind of got the significance,

but there was another book by Helen Stevens I think called What About Me that had a little girl that looked mixed race and had curly hair and my daughter who was one years old used to kiss that picture because she thought it was me so I thought representation matters so much. Amy

as a publisher how much do you think, I mean obviously you're doing it but you set up a special company to do it. How much generally are things moving in the right direction? There is a lot of conversation in publishing at the moment around diversity. And I think there are schemes and things that are being done and certain houses are realising, but I think it's a lot more reactionary than it is genuine at times. And I think, I understand that there is a lot of years behind this problem

and a lot of people are trying to turn very large ships, but I do think that some of the things that are being done are a little more tokenistic than maybe genuine. But what is it they're worried about? I mean, you say that people of all colours come to your shop and buy your books that have black and mixed race children in them. Yeah, black, mixed race, disabled, across the board. Are the publishers thinking, hmm, if we publish books

with black kids in, the white parents won't want to buy them. Is that what's going on? I wouldn't want to say that because I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth but I do think that it's not something they've had to talk about or had to deal with or had to even you know speak to anybody in their office who doesn't look like them I think publishing on the whole is a very white space very white middle class female heavy kids publishing at least uh space and they these conversations just haven't been happening and now it's just a bit more like oh uh there's something wrong here how do we how do we fix it what progress are you beginning to see patrice i mean have you had difficulty getting your books

published ever have you ever had difficulty getting your books i started quite late i think for all of those reasons actually because i was writing since i was little but it just didn't occur to me that my my work could be uh And when I was 32, talking of representation, I saw a BBC production of Mallory Blackman's Pickhart Boy with a black UK family. I said, oh, my days. We can write that. And I found my voice.

I still feel so. Book Trust are doing Book Trust represents. Yes, I know. Because I'm going to be working with them as laureate. I'm going to be working with Book Trust because that's the charity who does that. Yeah, that's exciting. But I also think people in their own communities

are doing lots of work as well. So I think it's happening. Some it's happening mainstream, but I think with today's technology, people from different communities are thinking, we won't wait for you, we'll do our own stuff. Amy, I know you speak to a lot of libraries. Yes, I speak to a lot of librarians, yeah.

What do they tell you? Librarians tell me that they're crying out for literature that is more representative and that they are constantly seeking to find books that are featuring the kids that are in the libraries who are in schools and that there's just a lack. There's a massive dearth of literature for kids and they're literally knocking on publishers' doors

being like, where are they? We need them now. Well, I suppose you just say well yeah there's a small independent house yeah we're definitely trying to a publish as many as we can and then also the bookshop stocks all inclusive kids books so yeah well emma filoni and patrice lawrence thank you both very much and we would like to hear from you on this one. Have you been trying to find books that have diverse characters in them? If you're finding it difficult or if you've found it easy, let us know where they are and do

let us know if you find it difficult as well. You can tweet or of course you can always email and thank you both very much indeed for being with us. Now it was in 2007 that some significant changes were made to the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Some words went.

They were acorn, blackberry, bluebell, conker and kingfisher. And some new words went in. Broadband was there. And later editions have included chatroom, blog and celebrity. Well, what are children missing

if they don't find the old words in their dictionary? And how do we ensure they know how to name the things they see in the wild? Well, Dr Kate Luthwaite is the Citizen Science Manager at the Woodland Trust. Jackie Morris is the writer and illustrator who has created a book called Lost Words with Robert McFarlane and has a pad and pens

and I think is going to draw me an otter. I might just be going to do that. This is a special trick that I've learned. But I have to, in order to get the otter out of the brush and the ink, I have to speak the otter spell that was written by Robert McFarlane. So if you would, shall i do that now why not these are beautiful words and this is a kind of spelling that i love it's a magic an alchemy so i have ink that was given to me by a wonderful woman called shinran who some people

might know and it's mixed with river water where otters swim. I'm just going to put the brush on the paper and start reciting. So, otter. Enters river without falter, what a supple slider, out of halt and into water. This shape shifter is a sheer breath taker and a sure heart stopper. But you'll only ever spot a shadow flutter, a bubble skein and never, almost never, actual otter. This swift swimmer is a silver miner. With trout its oar it bores, each black pool deep and deeper, delves up current steep and steeper, turns the water inside out, then inside outer.

Ever dreamed of being otter, that utter underwater thunderbolter, that shimmering twister run to the riverbank otter dreamer slip your skin and change your matter and pour your outer being into otter then enter now as otter without falter into water oh That's amazing Isn't that beautiful Painting on the radio Absolutely Let us make the point that we will tweet the picture

when you've finished it and I guess it'll come on the Women's Hour website as well Jackie, what alerted you to the loss of words It was a letter that I was asked to sign by a poet called Lawrence Rose. And it was signed by 25 authors, including Margaret Atwood. You know, I was so such a fangirl moment that I was asked to sign a letter the same as Margaret.

It was so childish of me. And Robert had picked up in landmarks that the dictionary had dropped these words. Now, I thought for a while about it and I thought, well, maybe we could do a kind of, you know how the impressionists, when their paintings weren't allowed into the exhibition, they had an exhibition of their own. And I thought maybe we should just do a dictionary of the lost words um something with gold leaf and icons and I'll ask Robert McFarlane who I'd never met other than in the wild places um in the pages of a book it's a lovely place to meet somebody um if he would write it forward and it kind of grew from that that was like a seed and it's a big book it's a big book. It's a big book. Lots of pictures. It starts with Acorn.

It starts with Acorn in the English language version. And then because it's been taken into other languages, because it goes in alphabetical order. It was the English language version. Yeah, we just had it translated into Welsh as well, which is beautiful. Acorn, Kate, how much is this loss of things happening in the real world? Because Jackie's book begins with the acorn, how likely is it for there still to be acorns in the future? Because oak trees are not doing too well.

No, oak trees are having a hard time. They're suffering from various pests and diseases. The oak processionary moth is one that's in the news at the moment. Nasty, hairy caterpillar, human health problems too, but defoliates the tree, takes all the leaves off. So it is a worry. Climate change is another worry. So it is important that we know and love and care about these species, definitely. I mean, in the book, there are all kinds of things. I mentioned kingfishers and bluebells and otters, obviously, conkers. How do we retain all these things, which we were so familiar with as children? You know, everybody went out and picked blue...

Sorry, we shouldn't have done that. We did pick bluebells for our mums, didn't we? And we picked up the conkers and we had conker fun. So long as you don't uproot the bluebells. No, I never did. She said hastily. I only picked them for my mother, she said hastily.

Exactly. How do we retain all these things? Do you mean the words, Jenny, or do you mean the actual species? The things. I mean, I think the words are indicative of how we may be losing contact with nature, the kind of relationship with nature that we used to have. And that's why it's so powerful what Jackie is doing. She's almost recreating these, so poignant, recreating these creatures that we are losing because they're

losing their habitat, because of all the things that the woodland trust that you were dealing with all the time. So yes, the work, I was drawn to exactly that same chapter. I think it was in Landmarks where Robert talks about that. It was the introduction. Yeah, and

I created a lost words section in my Wizards of Once book, which happened to come out at the same time in the spelling book. That's amazing. By total accident. But I think it indicates that we are losing children are not playing outside in the way that they used to. They're not wild. They're not wild in the same way. We were unsupervised. I bet you were, Jenny, when you were picking your bluebells. I bet no adult was hovering behind you, checking, you know, where you were. No, but she was very pleased when I brought the bluebells home. It was quite wild.

But what I'm interested in is how do we retain the places where, you know, the wonderful bluebell woods are, where children can pick up the conkers that they'll know about because they've read about them in Jackie's book. We need people to care about them and care more about them because ancient woodland, those woodlands that you describe with amazing bluebell carpets, they're still being lost to development and that shouldn't be happening. So we need more people to rise up and say,

no, this just isn't acceptable. We need everyone to do their bit for climate change. We need to have a really long, hard think about where all these pests and diseases are coming from. Do we need more controls on what comes into the country? There are lots and lots of things that we can all do to help make this situation better and make sure all those species are there for the next generation to enjoy.

You have now painted the most beautiful... Oh, it's exquisite. But how did your family respond when you said you wanted to paint for a living? It wasn't encouraged, certainly. I was the first person in our family to go on to further education. And it was a struggle.

And still, I was thinking about this today as I passed the British Museum and I was thinking, this today as i passed the uh british museum and i was thinking we have all these palaces to art and yet at school art is seen as a subject that you shouldn't do so the end product is celebrated but making new artists is not encouraged you know it's not part of the english baccalaureate you're're told... It's not part of... You had to leave school to study art, didn't you? Well, because we went to a very academic... It was a very feminist, which was great, all-girls school, and they just didn't take art seriously.

Yes, it's not considered intelligent. So I moved to a school which did. Exactly, where a third of the kids at the school that I then went to at A-level took art for A-level. I mean, it is... The creative industries make £101 billion a year for this country, outperforming the rest of the economy by double. And that's not even counting the other industries that rely on, you know, museum industry, tourism industry. And yet we had the lowest take up of art at GCSE that we'd ever had.

How does that make sense? That doesn't make sense. And creativity, as I was saying earlier, in 2021, it's going to become part of those international tests for the first time. But also people's happiness as well. And how seriously, Kate, do schools take nature? Now, I mean, we... OK, it's a long time ago, but we used to go on a nature walk twice a week

to identify things and know how to name them. Yeah, I mean, I think there are some absolutely fantastic teachers out there and there are some good resources to equip them. So, for example, we have a Green Tree School Award at the Woodland Trust and that gives loads of tips and ideas for teachers and you can gain points. And around two thirds of schools in the UK are actually engaging with that which is fantastic so I think there is still a will and a desire but perhaps you know schools just need a bit more help a bit more permission to do it you know to take kids out of school to go and visit the woods to write about their experiences. Just briefly Jackie of all the words in your Lost Words book, which is your favourite? It changes all the time.

But one thing I would like to say is that images make books accessible to people who are illiterate and also people who struggle to read. And that's one of the things that I've loved about our book, is that reluctant readers love this rich language, partly because of the images. Which is your current favourite word? Otter. Of course it is.

Of course it is. And briefly, Cressida, what's yours? Oh, oh, oh. Otter, Conker. Oh, oh. I do, oh, I do. Oh, gosh, but they're all so lovely. Quick, quick, quick.

We're going to run out of time. I mean, I do love Otter. Adder, though. Yes, Adder. That's a good one. I love Adder. I mean, I do love Otter. Adder, though. Adder. That's a good one. I love Adder. Maybe it's the dragon. It's got to be Bluebell. It's got to be. You can smell it, can't you? Dr Kate Leithwaite,

Jackie Morris and most of all, Cressida Cowell, thank you all very much indeed for being with us today. I was talking to Cressida Cowell, the new Children's Laureate, Jackie Morris and Dr Kate Luthwaite. Alan said, in the school in which I work,

a large primary in outer London with a significant number of pupils that have English as an additional language, we prioritise the creative teaching of high quality text using drama and role play to allow students to get inside text they're reading with great results. We also run immersion days where pupils get to work with

props related to the text making the teaching of language exciting. Joan said I'm now retired and I work with a charity called Read Easy in Devon. I'm teaching a 59-year-old to read. The adult statistic is about one in 20 adults either can't read or read poorly. My reader is thrilled. Recently, he read his first book. So it's never too late to learn to read. Mrs M said, My imagination is running wild listening to Jackie recite the spell song

for painting an otter. Can't wait to see the painting in a bit. Mrs McG said, I'm a class teacher listening to this show with such joy. Full of enthusiasm for next session and introducing Free Writing Friday. Also looking to ensure more diversity in the books I choose for the class library.

Tomorrow, the final editor to take over this week is Danny Cotton, the Commissioner at the London Fire Brigade, who's about to retire sometime next year. She'll be talking about the mental health of first responders and how we can encourage leaders, especially men, to set an example in talking about their feelings when they've witnessed horror. Therapy dogs who support people with emotional need and crumble. The nine-year-old cocker spaniel would be in the studio with her owner. And the joy of eating her looby cheese. The chef, Georgina Hayden, will be talking us through some innovative ways to use it. That's tomorrow with Jane.

From me for today, bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.