5th February Pondering Holes

I've just finished Week 2 of term1 at school and it has been both busy and interesting. In the library we catalogued a new book, Holes by Jonathan Litton. Here's the blurb

Delve into this fascinating book of holes to discover a world of 
burrows and boreholes, subways and sinkholes. From the 
mythical and mysterious to household and human holes,  
find out what makes a hole a hole and how they shape our world. 

It is quite a thick tome for our age group, but it is full of fascinating information, including a section about the philosophy of holes. This led to quite a lot of conversation and  laughter among the library staff and of course it led us off on to all sorts of tangents. Is there a day to celebrate 'holes'? Well, no not really. There is a 'My Bucket's Got a Hole Day' on 30th May, but not one that covers all sorts of holes. Maybe because the phrase 'whole day' is a common one.

There is an amazing number of picture books that feature the word 'hole' in their title though. Of course that started us off on a display. See here for the books the library has. You'll notice these books don't all have the word in the title because we then started thinking about what 'hole' means...'an opening through something' and other words for 'hole'...gap; aperture; cavity; dent; void; pit; cranny; burrow; crater; and even tunnel.

Some picture books for young children are about physical holes, things to  dig, carrying on from Ruth Krauss' classic A Hole is to Dig. Julia Donaldson's One Mole Digging a Hole and Mac Barnett's  Sam and Dave Dig a Hole do this, but books such as Kelly Canby's The Hole Story and Paul Bright's The Hole Story start to play with the meaning of the word 'hole'. Then books such as the very special The Hole  by Oyvind Torseter really start to get at the philosophy of holes.

I grew up besotted with stories about smuggling and caves, probably because of Enid Blyton and stories such as The Secret of Spiggy Holes. My own children grew up being readers who kept revisiting  Louis Sachar's novel, Holes, so obviously holes and their many incantations provide copious ideas for stories. And of course any display has to include books such as Alice in Wonderland which has a hole as a pivotal part of the plot.

Collect a whole lot of hole stories and go make a hole in your reading time!

4th July Alice Anniversary

The fourth of July marks the anniversary of the day in 1862 when Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)  and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth rowed in a boat up the Isis River with the three young daughters of Henry Liddell, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. The middle daughter was ten year old Alice. During the journey Dodgson told the girls a story that featured a girl named Alice who goes looking for adventure. The next day he started writing the story down.  Several versions and trips later on 26th November, 1864 Dodgson gave a handwritten manuscript to Alice  as a Christmas present. Then in 1865 it was published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with illustrations by John Tenniel, so this year marks its 150 anniversary.

The story has become more popular with age as its fantasy world of peculiar anthropomorphic creatures, its structure and narrative course have undertaken much analysis and literary criticism and have thus its characters and imagery have influenced popular culture and literature. There are hundreds of versions available to children and adults. They range from preschool versions such as the board book by Jennifer Adams and Alison Oliver, through many of the abridged versions by publishers such as Usborne and Ladybird, picture book versions such as the one by Eric Puybaret,  beautifully illustrated versions by renowned illustrators such as Antony Browne, Emma Chichester Clark, Lizbeth Zwerger, Helen Oxenbury and Robert Ingpen right through to annotated versions such as Elucidating Alice for adults and spoofs such as Fifty Shades of Alice. It has inspired musicals, films, stage productions, sculptures, artworks and gardens.

I have collected all the versions in the library and put together a celebratory display.