Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven - Bill Kirton
Last month, Julia Jones posted a lovely piece about writing for and working with children. I’ve written stories for the same age group but it reminded me most of a day I spent at a primary school which held a ‘literacy day’. The classes went from wee 3 year olds to 10 year olds and I had about 35 minutes with each. It was a day of enthusiasm, engagement and (for me) high entertainment. With all but two of the classes (oldest and youngest) I read them one of my own stories about Stanley, a miserabilist, misanthropic fairy who lives under a dripping tap in our bedroom, but the bulk of the time was given over to them creating stories of their own. My first question to the first class was ‘What do we need to start a story?’ The hands shot up, I chose one, a girl, who said ‘Once upon a time’. Incontestable. I then got suggestions about characters and locations and by simply asking them questions, which were my only input, got them to produce one or several stories. Here are just so...