Latest news with #Rumpelstiltskin
The Independent
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
How shameful that Lambeth Council is marking World Book Day with library cuts
In the blink of an eye this morning, I went from cooing over the costumes my relatives and friends had assembled for their kids to wear to school, to utter horror. In my London borough, Lambeth Council last night rubberstamped a 25 per cent to its library services, which have, like libraries around the UK, already been sliced to a single-page thinness over the years. Happy World Book Day, everyone! I am one of many authors and illustrators to sign an open letter in protest at the council's decision. The timing is stranger than fiction – certainly, it's more stupid. There is no denying that Britain's councils are in highly straitened circumstances. Librarians manage to spin gold out of minimal budgets with a skill that would impress Rumpelstiltskin. Lambeth Libraries are shortlisted for the British Book Awards Library of the Year, yet the council wants to keep 16 posts unfilled and continue its £100,000 cuts to the new books budget. Lambeth spends £4.7m a year on its library services. Its neighbour, Southwark, spends £8.6m. More shocking is that Lambeth's budget has barely changed in cash terms since 1984, when it was £4.2m. In the 2023-24 financial year, Lambeth Council managed to find £6.7 million to spend on external consultants, while more than 50 council officers collect salaries of £100,000 or more per year – roughly double that of three years ago. Lambeth has been in hot water with its constituents over Low Traffic Neighbourhoods – one in Streatham Wells had to be rolled back last year after repeatedly bringing the entirety of Streatham to a standstill during rush hour. Lambeth has always combated criticism of the LTNs by pointing to the money raised from their fines. Well, why aren't the libraries getting a slice? Is there some snobbery at work? Do they perhaps imagine libraries as places that only nerdy geniuses like Roald Dahl's Matilda can use? I cannot imagine anyone would be so stupid, and yet, given the state of things now, perhaps they are. In 2019, Suffolk Libraries commissioned independent research to demonstrate the value of library investment. Every £1 spent on three of its services – a toddler club, sessions for older people, and a drop-in – generated £8.04 in intangible 'social value. " Social value is nebulous; it cannot be graded as exam results can, yet its ripple effect on people and services is undeniable. Library attendees in Suffolk reported improved mental health and reduced stress, as did their family members. Last year, the public raised over £250,000 to rebuild Spellow Hub library, which was set on fire during the riots. It reopened in December after a tremendous community effort, precisely because it is a community heart. In Lambeth alone, the libraries offer books but also computer access, quiet workspaces, ESOL classes, tea and coffee mornings, digital support, homework clubs, debt advice clinics, coding classes, craft clubs, and clubs for teens. The Good Things Foundation gives away SIM cards to adults on low incomes to further close the digital divide. Last month, one of my own books was chosen to join Reading Well, a national scheme that provides books through libraries to help people manage their health and well-being. It is probably the greatest honour I'll ever have, precisely because it comes through the library system. And all this is before we even get to the reason for World Book Day. Research conducted by its namesake charity in 2023 revealed that over 500,000 children in England do not own a book, and one in 10 children eligible for free school meals falls into this category. Among these, one in five reported that the book they selected with their token was the first book they had ever owned. The global police forum OECD reported in 2002 that reading for pleasure is the single biggest indicator of a child's future success – over family income or parents' educational background. Libraries are crucial in providing access. The image of libraries may have solidified in Matilda as a place where book-hungry nerds can inhale as many as they can get – but that book also highlighted them as a place for lonely people to find comfort. Streatham library is filled with older men reading the morning papers together in companionable silence. In Brixton, teens enjoy the peace and graphic novel options. Parents flock to the bright, wide spiral path that centres Clapham. These and many others house a brilliant scheme called Read Easy, where volunteers give one-to-one sessions to help adults learn to read. In 2021, nine million adults in the UK were functionally illiterate – illiteracy is linked to shorter life expectancy, depression and obesity. Its economic impact was put at £80bn a year by the World Literacy Foundation. 'Most of the sessions take place in Lambeth libraries,' a local volunteer tells me. 'It's a genuinely life-changing programme, and without the libraries, it would be much harder to deliver as you need a public place (for safeguarding reasons) that also offers privacy as readers are often shy, and it's a huge step for them to have asked for help.' Britain was founded on books. Some of our greatest and most enduring 'soft power' comes from our legacy as a literary powerhouse. Yet the gulf in print and digital access continues to widen. How can we be a society of equality if only some have access to life's essentials – and to what makes life enjoyable.
Telegraph
06-03-2025
- General
- Telegraph
PC parents have ruined reading. These are the books that terrified us as children
Created by UNESCO 30 years ago, World Book Day is supposed to be a celebration of reading. However, for many parents, it feels more like a celebration of polyester, with frantic searches for costumes with a tenuous link to a book. A proliferation of children dressed as ' Where's Wally?' is a sure indicator of those of us who just gave up. Sadly, a survey by the National Literacy Trust in 2024 suggests it's now kids who are giving up with books – it revealed only one in three children aged eight to 18 years said they enjoyed reading in their free time, the lowest levels since 2005. Is that a surprise when today's helicopter parents hover overhead, and books now must be slotted into an overscheduled, CV-building childhood and be improving? Edges must be smoothed, words sanitised. Take Roald Dahl's books, where, for example, the word 'fat' was removed and lines not written by the author were added in. The underlying darkness of the books that thrilled so many of us was made bland. Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are met opposition upon publication in 1963 as it was thought children might find it too frightening. But in the BBC's Culture Poll of The 100 Greatest Children's Books of all time in 2023, it came first. We forget children possess a strong in-built moral compass capable of spotting injustice. They can also be cruel. Books that raise problematic themes are an ideal training for the real world. Look on a train today and most people are staring down at a screen, yet among those adults there will be a book they remember vividly from their childhood – that terrified them and made them laugh in equal measure. And one they still remember – like our Telegraph writers and readers. My childhood wasn't filled with the noise of siblings, but it was filled with books, and parents who understood their value. The first real memory I have of books is being drip fed the Ladybird Series in the seventies. The Three Billy-Goats Gruff disturbed me with the troll under the bridge as did the concept of a cannibalistic giant in Jack and the Beanstalk. However, it was Rumpelstiltskin that stayed with me. The illustrations were realistic and quite beautiful. Today's version is cartoonish. That realism compelled me to analyse the pictures as well as read the words. The picture of a furious Rumpelstiltskin stamping on the floor once his name was correctly guessed terrified me. As a Grimm fairytale it was full of darkness: a captive daughter having to spin straw into gold because of her boastful father, the greed of the King and the Faustian pact made with Rumpelstiltskin who threatens to take the daughter's first-born child. The stakes were high, and the clock was ticking, both elements of great fiction. The very name, Rumpelstiltskin, which translates from German as 'little rattle stilt,' prompted a fascination with language. I experienced the thrill of being both repelled and compelled by what I was reading. It sparked my own imagination, and ignited in me a passion for words. My children are older now, but I wouldn't hesitate to share the vintage version with young ones, even though revisiting those pictures still catapults me back to that terrified but thrilled child. Of the qualities that children's books seek to encourage, melancholy and neurosis sit relatively low down the list. Yet these are the animating forces behind Arnold Lobel's Owl at Home – to which, for reasons best left to a psychoanalyst, I responded strongly as a child. Owl, the portly, pyjama-clad protagonist, lives alone in the middle of a wood and spends most of his time brooding about stuff. In one episode, after a rare bit of physical exertion, he dolefully accepts that he can't be upstairs and downstairs at the same time. The most striking chapter, though, is the one in which he decides to make tea – from his own tears. To get production going, he imagines 'spoons that have fallen behind the stove and are never seen again', and 'mashed potatoes left on a plate because no one wants to eat them'. Philip Larkin for three-year-olds. What's not to like? Heinrich Hoffmann did not intend his book, Struwwelpeter, for general circulation. He wrote and illustrated it for his three-year-old son in 1844, frustrated at the available children's literature. 'What did I find?' he once related, 'Long tales, stupid collections of pictures, moralising stories, beginning and ending with admonitions like: 'the good child must be truthful', or 'children must be kept clean'.' He popped it under the tree as his Christmas present. Then a publisher friend insisted it be printed and, he said, 'the little home-bird flew into the wide, wide world'. It flew into my world when I was about six years old. It was not a book my parents read to me, rather one I found and was drawn to. Tempted by the vivid drawings, then drawn back again and again in the same way one cranes one's neck to get a good look at a car accident. Because it is terrifying. Children are set on fire, people dunked kicking and screaming into vast pots of ink, men shot by rabbits and falling into wells. and one particular story whose imagery became ingrained in my little mind. Conrad, 'little suck-a-thumb', is warned by his mother about sucking his thumb. If he does it while she is out, 'a great tall tailor always comes…and cuts their thumbs clean off.' Yeah right, thinks the boy. The mother goes out, he sucks his thumb and in leaps the tailor. With his vast scissors he cuts off his thumbs, drops of blood falling to the floor and there's no happy ending. 'You know they never grow again,' says the mother. It's pure creepy horror. I wouldn't read it to my little kids and it still frightens me. But it does stand out against a wealth of bland morality tales that abound today. And if you want to know how to stop a kid from sucking his thumb… I have a theory that every Gen-Zer should have been given Struwwelpeter, or Shockheaded Peter, to read at birth. Obviously, they would have been scarred for life. I certainly was. But at least they'd be scared of worthwhile things rather than, you know, applause and hard work. Every story was the stuff of life-long nightmares, but for me The Dreadful Story About Harriet and the Matches was the worst, because I was (and am) constantly terrified of doing something wrong – and being made to pay the price. Harriet wouldn't take advice, would she? She lit a match – it was so nice! Until the flames swallowed her whole, and all that's left – you'll recall – is a pile of smoking ashes and a pair of scarlet shoes. That one story stopped me from doing all the things my naughty friends would suggest. Why don't we run across the road, take a sip of your dad's wine, steal mascara from Boots and get into that drunk kid's car? Duh – because look at what happened to Harriet! I only recently realised that people don't always pay the price for their misdemeanours, although I won't tell my daughter that. I am the youngest child and was constantly taunted by my older siblings for being the bookish, lazy one. I always found myself drawn to the darker, scarier stories – so much so that I find it hard to choose one. That mouldy old 1920s tome, with Bluebeard warning his visitor 'Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest your heart's blood should run cold'? The apocalyptic Comet in Moominland, where a variety of imaginary creatures flee this ever encroaching peril? No, I've settled on Matilda Who Told Such Dreadful Lies, by Hilaire Belloc, from his 1907 book Cautionary Tales for Children: Designed for the admonition of children between the ages of eight and fourteen years. Very specific. The book is a slightly jollier British version of Struwwelpeter: terrible things happen to naughty children who misbehave. This most memorable poem is a retelling of Peter and the Wolf – Matilda calls the fire brigade in jest, who do their best to put out a non-existent blaze. When her aunt's beautiful London townhouse does catch fire a few weeks later, all people in the street do is call her 'little liar'. Matilda perishes. Every time I read it, I prayed for a different outcome (I was always rooting for the bad guy). And I loved the poem and its pacing so much that I once performed it at a talent contest birthday party, wearing a blue flowery frock. My friends, on the other hand, sang Abba songs and did roller boot displays. No wonder I always felt like a fish out of water. I didn't know that I was frightened. But, my arms and legs were trembling as I lay in bed. I must have been about 10 and we were in a strange house, in Rye, Sussex, as it happened, on holiday. I'd been frightened plenty of times before — I had always been frightened at home to go upstairs on my own in the cold and dark of winter. But now, reading The Hound of the Baskervilles, I didn't expect to be frightened by Conan Doyle. There was something preposterous about his prose that made it impossible to fear any number of Speckled Bands slithering down the bellrope. Dr Watson might have shuddered when the great detective was told, 'Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!' But it didn't shake me, any more than Edgar Allan Poe's tales of premature burial. Rather, I think I feared the emptiness that I imagined on the Grimpen Mire, which answered to the unfamiliar silence of the Romney Marsh where we were staying. I often went back to Sherlock Holmes, never to be frightened again, but always left puzzled by how the author gives pleasure with what ought really to be tosh. And there are plenty of other books I'm too frightened to read today. But I'm to blame, not the authors, and certainly not Conan Doyle. I don't remember how old I was when I was traumatised by my mum's 1968 edition of The Tyrant King by Aylmer Hall. It's a wholesome story of a group of children who go on a thrilling adventure around London, following a mysterious stranger, until… well, I never found out how it ends. One night, I was reading illicitly under the covers by torchlight, when I was faced with a grotesque illustration of a shrunken head. I went stiff with horror, dropped the book on the floor and kicked it under the bed, where it stayed, haunting me, for a decade. It's customary today to see trigger warnings attached to Netflix series and films, such as 'contains mild peril', which are about as useful as putting 'may contain nuts' on a packet of KP. Treasure Island has plenty of mild peril and plenty of the less mild kind too. For a young reader, it is a masterpiece of waiting for something bad to happen. Treasure Island may not be a creepy throwback from the 1970s or 1980s but it retains the power to unsettle a child. I was given it as a Christmas present in 1980, a deep red hardback with embossed lettering, as was the style at the time. Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate adventure from 1883 has plenty of thrills and it deserves its reputation as a deceptively sophisticated parable. What I recall about it most was the tension it creates from the beginning: it's one long exercise in delayed threat, specifically the threat of violence. That the protagonist is a boy and that the threat of violence is often to him has obvious implications for a reader of a similar age. The entire first section in Bristol recounts Jim Hawkins waiting in dread for a succession of psychopaths, with each arrival bringing either fear or violence or both. As the story rattles on, Jim – and the reader – meet the most dangerous character of all, Long John Silver, at once a Flastaffian force of nature and a conscience-free murderer and thief. The episode in which Jim learns of his mutinous plans from the inside of a barrel stands for the whole book – for a child it is as if glimpsing and overhearing one potential horror after another. The young reader is forever like Jim hiding, unseen. There is a kind of release at the end, but it is far from what you might call a happy ending – more a salutary reminder of the effects of greed and inhumanity. Just what any eight-year-old would want to read then. I was around 12 when I read the entire Anne series. I'm British Canadian but grew up in Germany, so it being set on Prince Edward Island in Canada was appealing to me. Now, I'm a women's bespoke tailor and designer and I really connected with Anne's desire to own a beautiful dress with puffed sleeves, because we couldn't afford all the fancy clothes and started making our own. Anne's appreciation of nature and ability to take pleasure in the smallest detail seem like a blueprint for gratitude practices and mindfulness exercises today, but it's the breadth and depth of human emotions that make the series a great read: death and loss, regrets, ambition and failed dreams, inequality, world events and small-town squabbles. Life and its unpredictability aren't sugar-coated with the cruelty Anne experiences as a child. Fatal illness is only ever a toss of the dice away. In later books Anne and Gilbert lose their first-born daughter and later their son during WWI. These big life events helped me navigate loss when I experienced it personally. When Anne's doubts creep in about her marriage, it normalised the fact for me that relationships will go through rough patches. Every time I re-read them, something else will connect with me because I'm a different person now and understand something different from the books than I did as a child. As a child I was regularly paralysed with fear by Creepy Castle (1975), a wordless picture book illustrated by John S. Goodall (1908-1996). The story hinges on a simple plot, following two grandly dressed mice as they set out on what appears to be an uneventful country stroll. When they come across an abandoned castle, the lady mouse looks nervous. But her adventurous partner gently persuades her to go inside to explore. 'Turn back!' the reader cries, as the heroine's fear immediately infects us – and what follows is 40 pages of spine-tingling suspense, as the couple are followed through the castle's cobwebby halls and dungeons by a malevolent male mouse, whom only the reader can see. The fact that the story has no words makes it even more frightening, as we can infer any number of motives for the villain's behaviour. Does he want to trap our protagonists? Or – horrors! – does he want them dead? Naturally, there is a happy ending, when the couple finally emerge back into the sunlight and the villain gets what he deserves. But as with all good thrillers, knowing the outcome never relieved my fear. Goodall is now best remembered for his nostalgic picture albums (An Edwardian Season, Victorians Abroad), which, as his obituarist noted in 1996, 'are to be found in the spare bedrooms of almost every country house in England'. The genius of Creepy Castle was to combine the cosy domesticity of his period-piece watercolours with a subtle hint of terror.
