The name of Seven Stories not only refers to the axiom that there are but seven stories in the world told in an infinite variety of ways, but is also played out in the Centre’s daily life: it is housed in a seven storey building that is open seven days a week for a seven hours a day.

The late-nineteenth-century building was originally a mill warehouse. Many original features have been restored and the interior spaces have been designed with imagination and children in mind. The criss-cross of original beams in the top-floor room, beautiful to behold, also gives you a start, as you realise that there is a weird, curvy beam, winding its way through all the other beams – what structural use can it possibly be? Aaah – it is a bookshelf! And as it snakes its way down almost to floor-level, it houses enough copies of Julia Donaldson’s Playtime! for young visitors (and older ones too!) to come together and put on a play in the theatre corner, with the help of a sumptuous array of costumes. These include Donaldson’s and Axel Sheffler’s creation, the Gruffalo and the Mouse (and by the way, read this lovely interview with Julia Donaldson by Vulpis Libris – Part 1 and Part 2). Under this panoply of beams are also to be found a story-teller’s area complete with its exuberant throne, and a vast selection of books for a family storytime.

The current exhibitions are All Aboard, Away We Go! and From Toad Hall to Pooh Corner – both a feast for the eyes, ears and hands, and each with its own beautifully produced interactive trail. During our family visit, we chanted Mrs Armitage’s Mantra (“What we need, what we really need…”) and flew a plane while marvelling at Robert Crowther’s intricate paper-engineering from his book Flight. We discovered new-to-us old stories, like The Little Train, ostensibly by Dorothy Craigie but really written by Graham Greene and illustrated by Dorothy Glover (read this great post from Bear Alley for the full story…). We toot-tooted our way to (imaginary!) destruction in Toad’s car and, the highlight for me, we gazed on original’s of Robert Ingpen’s beautiful illustrations for Wind in the Willows, then looked at them in the book, while listening to the appropriate extract, seated in a replica, from the illustration, of Badger’s kitchen. Perfect!

I was astounded, when speaking to Lynda Jackson, Seven Stories’ Exhibitions Curator, to discover that these exhibitions are not permanent but usually run for about eighteen months – and the really good news is that they can tour elsewhere after their space in Newcastle has been taken over by something else… And I was given a sneak preview of what the next something else, From The Tiger Who Came to Tea to Mog and Pink Rabbit: A Judith Kerr Retrospective, will look like. So we’ll definitely be going back in September and I’ll tell you all about it!

In the meantime, I’ll be posting again soon about Seven Stories, with a closer look at its background and its role as a keeper of British children’s books, not to mention its superb children’s bookshop.

Stories in verse make really satisfying read-alouds. Children pick up the rhymes and rhythms and love to preempt what’s coming or chant along once the verse becomes familiar. Mine always surprise me by being able to quote what seem to me great tracts compared with what I would be able to come up with! As I’ve mentioned before, we love Julia Donaldson’s books and a favorite is her retelling of the Chinese legend The Magic Paintbrush, which reads in true ballad form, over many 4-lined rhyming stanzas, and with repetitions and recurring themes, such as the steaming pot of shrimps the young heroine Shen conjures up before her astonished family:

“Did you catch some shrimps, Shen?
Did you catch some fish?
Did you gather oysters
To fill the empty dish?”

It’s beautifully illustrated by Joel Stewart, who has a particular talent for illustrating poetry, from Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky to Carol Ann Duffy’s zany Underwater Farmyard, another book we have all enjoyed.

Reading this Magic Paintbrush has also led on to us reading David K.S.Tse’s adaptation of the fable, which is a very lively retelling of the story, incorporating all the ingredients children need to be caught up in a tale of enchantment, good and evil, including proverbs and incantations in more or less rhyming verse. Published by Barefoot Books, it’s unfortunately now out of print… Aimed at slightly older readers, it’s also a very different story to Julia Donaldson’s version but the parallels are not lost on the young listener. Both these adaptations are set in Ancient China – now we’ll have to read Laurence Yep’s story of the same name, which is set in today’s San Francisco Chinatown. Perhaps this is a contemporary example of what the poet Debjani Chatterjee told PaperTigers in our interview last year:

I do believe very strongly that the world’s classics and traditional tales cannot belong to just one culture or country. They belong to us all. They are our inheritance and we need access to them. This is what I feel the writer can do – give children that access. And when I find a parallel I find it so exciting.

And, indeed, there is something universal and unifying in the human love of rhyme and rhythm which makes the ballad form and its equivalents such an apt way of telling and retelling these traditional stories…

Daddy: Where’s Mummy?
Son (cackling): The bird has flown, my pretty!

…I wish I’d actually been there to hear it!

Thinking back to that time when books had to be repeated ad infinitum, here’s a list, in no particular order, of only some of our family favorites from the very early years:

All the Hairy Maclary books by Lynley Dodd – in fact, all her books!
Owl Babies by Martin Waddell, ill. Patrick Benson;
Can’t You sleep, Baby Bear? – and the rest of the series, again by Martin Waddell, but ill. Barbara Firth
Each Peach Pear Plum and Peepo! by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
Mrs Armitage and the Big Wave by Quentin Blake
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, ill. Helen Oxenbury
Little Beaver and the Echo by Amy MacDonald, ill. Sarah Fox-Davies
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss
The Gruffalo and all the other books by Julia Donaldson, ill. Axel Scheffler
Mrs Goose’s Baby and Mr Davies and the Baby by Charlotte Voake

When I look at this list I realise that nearly all these books were given to us by friends whose own children had loved them – and we in turn have handed them on to our smaller friends…

So let me just leave you with a something the illustrator Howard Pyle once said:

“The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived.”

There has been a fair bit of research in recent years into the benefits of Dads reading aloud to their kids – well, let’s face it: anyone reading aloud to kids is setting them on the path towards enhancing levels of literacy; and is hopefully paving the way to a lifelong love of reading. However, Dads sometimes need special encouragement and there are some great initiatives around like Fathers Reading Every Day (FRED); as well as various reading lists which suggest books that will appeal to Dads as read-alouds with their kids, such as this one from the Minnesota Humanities Center; or this list of lists from an Australian school. And don’t just take it from me: here’s one Dad’s thoughts on reading aloud, based on his experience as a library volunteer. I agree with him about what makes a great picture book and Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s collaborations have come up trumps every time…