Rufus, a Blackbird, a Sock and a Cockatoo.

Having a Blackbird for a friend is a little unusual.

I know it.

I’m not ashamed, and when you know how it came about I think you will understand.

Her partner disappeared in the middle of last spring, and she was left to bring up her two chicks all by herself; not an easy task.

She managed it very well, and they flew off into the world happy and healthy and a little bit wise. Not too much, though; you know how young ones are.

She had been mated to George for several years and each spring he would risk his life to bring back enough food to feed his insatiable family. I couldn’t understand why they did it, year in and year out; it seemed like such a hassle.

I’ve seen exhausted blackbird parents run into windows and get hit by cars. Blackbirds seem not to care about their safety when they are feeding their little ones.

I don’t have any pups; at least, not that I know of.

I’ve never been partnered up with a bitch; I’m a love ‘em and leave ’em kind of dog.

Mind you; I nearly settled down with Sophie.

She was a gorgeous little blond Maltese, and she lived quite close by. Her mistress wouldn’t let her out of the yard, but I often went around there anyway.

We would sit by the fence, and I would image making love to her, doggy style, of course.

She was up for it.

That’s one of the good things about being a dog.

If we see someone we REALLY like, we suggest it, and if she is willing, we get stuck in, so to speak.

I don’t have to buy her dinner, and she doesn’t expect me to call her the next day, but she does expect me to find a good, juicy bone and bring it by.

It’s the least I can do for a pretty bitch.

But, there was none of that with Sophie; I just couldn’t get at her. It was driving us both nuts, but I was too short to get over that fence, so now I just dream about her.

Her mistress moved away, and Sophie went with her.

That’s life I guess.

I suppose you are wondering about the blackbird I mentioned earlier. She was different to all the other birds.

For starters, she didn’t steal my fur when I was sleeping in the sun.

She would fly down and sit on that plant pot that is just by the pond and tweet very softly so as to wake me up gently. “May I please have some of your old fur so that I can line my nest?”

How could I refuse such a polite request?

“Sure thing lady. I’ll try and keep the bits that fall out in one place, and if that isn’t enough, just let me know, and you can have a little bit of the fur that hasn’t fallen out. But just a little, mind you.”

“That won’t be necessary. The bits that fall out will be sufficient for my needs.” She spoke beautifully.

I could tell that she was well-educated.

It was sad when George didn’t come home that night.

She waited for him for days and days.

She must have been very hungry, but she was frightened to leave the nest in case her chicks got cold.

In the end, I had to do something, so I stole one of my mistresses woolly socks.

The nest was not too high up, but I can’t climb for shit so I yelled out, “Hey lady. Take this sock and put it on your chicks and then go and get something to eat while you still have enough energy to fly.”

I pushed the sock as high up the trunk of the tree as I could, but she was too weak to fly with it.

Fortunately, it was late in the day, and the flock of cockatoos was close by. They come our way late in the day. They make a terrible noise, and I tend towards the school of thought that says we should bark a lot and frighten them away, but today I needed help.

The problem with cockatoos is that they all look the bloody same, and I needed to find one particular cockatoo.

Jeremy wasn’t born in the wild.

He escaped from a backyard cage and joined the flock a couple of years ago. He told me all about it one sleepy Saturday afternoon, and it’s a hell of a story, but I don’t have time to tell you that one just now.

It took a little while, but I eventually found Jeremy.

I told him what I was trying to do, and he said he would help.

He’s a big bird so getting the sock up into the tree was no bother for him.

He’s a bachelor as I am, so he doesn’t get the whole ’family’ thing, but he’s a mate, so he doesn’t mind helping out.

When he first escaped he didn’t know much about looking out for himself, and he got pounced on by a large tabby cat.

He lost a few tail feathers and was putting up a pretty good fight when I stepped in.

Cats don’t mess with me; they know I mean business.

I’ve got a reputation.

Jeremy was a bit embarrassed about the whole thing, and he said he could have taken that cat on his own, but he did say thank you, and we have been friends ever since.

I introduced him to the flock.

They don’t like me much due to all the barking and the chasing, but they took him in anyway; which was good.

The sock did the trick, and the Blackbird got stronger, and the chicks got bigger.

You can still see that sock if you look carefully, it’s way up on the right; in that fork.

Do you want to know the nicest bit?

She brought me the longest piece of red thread, just to say thank you.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, but I was very touched.

Maybe I’ll loan to her so that she can dress up this year’s nest, and if she doesn’t need it, I know this Robin who collects red threads.

By now, you probably know that Rufus has an interesting life for a small black dog. He has been on many adventures, and you can find some of the here…..

http://barcaupthewrongtree.wordpress.com/2014/08/09/rufus-and-millie-not-a-love-story/

https://araneus1.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/rufus-goes-to-the-country/

http://barcaupthewrongtree.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/rufus-finds-a-body/

https://araneus1.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/rufus-and-the-mysterious-case-of-the-missing-dog-biscuits/

https://araneus1.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/3-minutes/

When A Seagull Needs Coffee.

You know how it is, you really need a coffee but you don’t have any hands.

It’s a problem that needs a solution and for George the seagull, the solution was Harry.

Harry was a human but George never held it against him, after all no one is perfect.

George had acquired a taste for coffee back when he used to hang out on the beach. Those were cool days but after a while you get sick of chips and left over burger buns and your young heart yearns for something new and exciting.

The answer was simple; take to the wing and survey the world from the air.

As soon as George saw Flinder’s Street Station he knew he had found his new home.

Back on the beach George would occasionally find a coffee cup lying in the sand and sometimes there would be a little bit of coffee left in the bottom of the cup.

George liked the taste and he had to have more.

It had a strange effect on him. He felt lighter, brighter and more able to reason.

He once worked out how to solve the problem of not enough food for all the seagulls in the world but because he did not have arms and could not write it down he forgot what the answer was.

Obviously he needed a constant supply of coffee, but how to get it?

George noticed that humans would go into the small room on the platform and come out with cups of this beautiful elixir.

He would follow them around and hope that they would put their cup down but in the end he knew that this was a poor solution to his problem.

George needed a human to go and get the coffee for him but how was he going to talk a human into helping him?

He had tried talking to humans but they were obviously not very bright and they could not understand him.

But then, along came Harry.

Harry took the train to and from Flinders Street Station every weekday. He noticed that this same seagull would follow him whenever he went to get coffee but he didn’t think anymore about it until one day he thought he heard someone ask him a question.

At the time he was sitting on a bench on the station drinking a coffee when he thought he heard someone say, “Can you get me one of those, I’m dying for a coffee?”

When Harry turned all he could see was the seagull that had been following him around. He stared at it and it said, “Well, how about it?”

George had just about given up on humans but he thought he would give it one more try, and this human looked like he knew what he was saying.

“Did you just ask me to buy you a cup of coffee bird?”

“Yes I did, can you understand me?”

“Yes, I can. What sort of coffee do you want?”

“Any sort, just not too hot.”

Harry was a little shaken by his verbal encounter but in the scheme of things this was not the weirdest thing that had happened to him so he went and bought the bird a Latte.

When he got back George explained that even though it was Friday he would be OK for coffee until he saw Harry again on Monday because the people who used the station on the weekend left lots of cups lying around, particularly Carlton supporters.

The friendship between George and Harry, although unlikely, went on for many years and they enjoyed telling each other stories about their very different lives, which just goes to show that you never know where your next friendship will come from.

A cup of coffee, a seagull and a very special human who bothered to listen.

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PHOTO CREDIT:

For other stories in the George and Harry series click here:

The Day I met Chester

The Mouse Who Liked Cheezels.

The Day I Met Chester.

He was proud of his ancestry, or at least his owners were.

It seems that he was in a direct line from Pavlov’s dog, the famous one who used to drool all over the place whenever the professor would sound his bell.

Now, when I say Pavlov you must not misunderstand, as I don’t mean Alexei Pavlov, the Russian mathematician who specialises in nonlinear output regulation theory, and not even Ilya Pavlov the Bulgarian businessman. I’m talking about Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, the bloke who won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his work on the digestive system.

But I can see how easily you could make that mistake.

Popular wisdom has it that the dog used in the experiment was just a mutt, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Boris was a pure bred Russian Pavolich, a noble breed with a long heritage.

Chester was very lucky to be here at all for it seems that the professor was very handy with the knife, and Boris was one of the few dogs that survived Pavlov’s experiments.

My friends and I had had enough.

We had tried for years to stop it from happening, but no one wanted to listen. We did it by the book for a very long time. But over time even water will wear away a rock, and as young people we did not have the patience of a rock.

George and Harry came up with the plan.

It was going to be risky.

We all had a lot to lose if we got caught. But that didn’t seem to matter any more.

We just wanted it to stop.

It was our job to watch out for the guards while the girls unlocked the cages. We knew that it had to go quickly or we were in deep trouble. George was supposed to be a whiz with alarms, but I guess he missed one. I didn’t see the big guy come up behind me. But I did feel him. He grabbed me just as a stampeding herd of previously caged dogs came rushing by.

My friends had their own problems so I knew that I was going to have to get free on my own. It was not going to be easy; this bloke knew his business and he had me cold.

As it often does in these situations, time seemed to slow down. I could see my friends heading for the exits, and I could see the dogs doing the same thing.

Harry looked back and saw that I was in trouble. I screamed at him to keep going. He seemed to stand there for the longest time. I could tell that he was thinking about coming back, but that was the last thing I wanted, we all knew the risks, and we all vowed to keep going if anything went wrong.

Harry went against our ‘every man for him self’ rule, and turned to come back, but Chester beat him to it.

Chester had been heading for the exit with all the others when he must have heard me call out. Maybe he thought it was a game, I guess I will never really know. He turned and slid along the polished floor for several metres before he got his feet under him again, then he got up a bit of speed and launched his considerable bulk at the two struggling humans.

All three of us went flying in three different directions! I felt as if I’d been hit by a small elephant.

The guard got the worst of it though.

Chester didn’t hang around to see how I was getting on. He headed for the exit again. Maybe he thought that that was all there was to this game.

I didn’t hang around either. I figured that I had only a few seconds before the guard remembered what day it was, so I had it on my toes, as the English might say.

I used to see Chester quite a bit after that. One of my neighbours adopted him. As with all dogs, he was extremely happy to be alive, and he cherished every moment of every day.

I could learn a lot from Chester.

This is one in a series of stories that I am writing to continue the ‘George and Harry’ tradition. A long time ago, when my sons were young I would sometimes make up bedtime stories and often they would feature two characters; George and Harry. Sometimes they would be human and sometimes they would be animals and in that beautiful way that children have, it did not seem to matter. 

At the time I did not write any of the stories down but now that my eldest son has a young family I thought that I would continue the tradition and put together a few stories for the time when they are old enough for me to send them along (they live a long way away).

I wrote this story a few years back and I found it again the other day. It probably needs a third act but for the moment here it is.

P.S. The George and Harry saga actually surfaced in real life. We had chickens when we first moved into this house but they were attacked one night when I forgot to close the gate. We rescued a few fertilised eggs and the boys borrowed an incubator. Only two eggs hatched out and naturally they named them George and Harry even though they were hens not roosters; again it did not seem to matter.

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Rufus and Millie: not a love story.

Given the choice, I’d take humans over Magpies, any day.

I’m sure there are good ones out there; Magpies, that is. But on the whole they are a cheeky bunch of bastards.

I’m not lumping all birds in with Magpies, mind you.

Some of them sing a beautiful song and go about the business of living without making my life more difficult; and more power to them.

Apart from the ones who swoop around the neighbourhood my first ‘up close’ view of a Magpie was Millie.

What a strange name.

I can see a person being named Millie, but a Magpie; I ask you?

I guess the human who was looking after Millie liked the way it sounded, either that or it was the name of his former girlfriend.

I guess I’ll never know.

I’m just a dog after all, and no one tells me anything.

That’s not completely true; my mistress tells me stuff all the time.

She reads me her stories, when she is finished writing them, and she asks me what I think.

I can’t tell her of course, but she seems to sense when I like one and when I don’t. I try to let her know by wagging my tail or howling. She seems to know the difference.

Her stories are a bit ‘kissy’ and ‘loveydubby’ but I try to overlook that stuff.

I’m interested in the plot.

I particularly like it when there is a dog in it doing wonderful things. Like Rex The Wonder Dog. He’s German but he doesn’t bark with an accent. He gets to solve crimes and bite bad guys, and no one tells him off. 

But, back to Magpies.

Millie had lost her tail feathers when she was attacked by a cat, and this human my mistress knows took her in and looked after her until her new feathers grew back. His name is John and you can just tell that he is a good human; at least I can tell. Dogs know stuff, we can smell good people. It’s hard to explain but there is a glow about them, and they smell good. I’m sorry if that sounds a bit vague but I’m a dog after all and we don’t use a lot of words but we do know a good person when we see one.

Millie had the run of John’s house and she knew it.

She would wait while Chester and I were sleeping in the sun and she would sneak up and try to steal some of our fur, while we were still wearing it!

She’s welcome to the bits that fall out but you have to draw a line somewhere.

Chester is John’s dog, and he reckons that this is the place to be. He reckons that his owner is the best human ever. I tend to disagree and we have had a few heated discussions on the subject but these days we would rather sleep in the sun than bite each other on the arse.

Speaking of cats; what is the point of a cat?

They can’t do anything useful.

They are no good at defending anything; they just leg-it up a tree if a fight breaks out; totally pointless. Why do humans put up with them?

I heard a young human say that, ‘He likes cats, but he couldn’t eat a whole one.”

I could; not that I have, but I could; just saying.

Just to show you how ungrateful Magpies are, when Millie grew her feathers back she just flew away; never came back, not even for a visit.

John was a bit sad but he said he was expecting it, “That’s Nature”. Well if that’s Nature, you can keep it. Dogs have a better idea of how to behave.

If a human takes you in; saves your life; rescues you; you look after him or her. You protect them; you play with them; and you keep them warm when they are cold, and most importantly, you listen to them and you try to look like you understand, even if you don’t. Humans get lonely very easily, just like dogs. I guess that’s why we understand each other so well.

I like it here at John’s place. It’s one of those houses where dogs are welcome. Some of my mistress’s friends don’t like dogs and I don’t know why she puts up with them. They sit around and giggle about stuff. What the hell is the good of giggling about stuff?

I kind of miss Millie. She was a pain in the butt but she was part of the pack, at least for a while. I hope she is okay. It’s a cold hard world out there if you don’t have a pack to look out for you.

Sorry, I have to go.

My mistress is calling me, and that means I get to ride in the car. I always ride ‘shotgun’ even when there are other humans in the car.

I’ll miss Chester, but we will be back soon.

Maybe Millie will have come back for a visit by then. Chester will let me know if she has.

I think he misses her as much as I do, but he wouldn’t admit it.

He’s ShihTzu, and they think they’re hard.

Rufus: and the mysterious case of the missing dog biscuits.

Fortunately, I live in a town where it is safe to visit your friends.

I get yelled at occasionally, but I’m never in any real danger.

I know all the local dogs and I know which ones to avoid; like Masher who lives two streets over.

He’s completely nuts!

It’s not his fault; he never gets walked and eventually the mental strain got to be too much.

They chain him up now because he is such a danger; which just made him worse. On the odd occasion that I head around that way I can hear him a long time before I can see him. He knows I’m coming, especially if the wind is blowing in that direction. He just barks and growls and I think that if he got loose, he would surely kill me. I feel sorry for him but he scares the shit out of me; not that I show it; show weakness and you are dead-meat.

There are a few others like Masher, but mostly it’s an easy-going neighbourhood; we all tend to get along.

I make it sound like I wander around the neighbourhood a lot; I don’t. Most of the time I’m looking out for my mistress.

She’s a writer.

That means that she makes up stories and writes them on paper and other humans get all excited and want to read them.

“That’s where the dog biscuits come from Rufus”, she says to me.

Personally I thought they came from that big building where all the food is kept; the one that I’m not allowed in, but what would I know?

My mistress writes every day.

Her favourite place is in the bay window on the north side of our house. “It catches the winter sun”.

That’s another thing she often says, though usually not to me.

I sit on the rug by the fire and keep a sleepy watch; that’s my job; I keep her safe.

Human’s can’t smell or hear as well as we can so trouble often gets very close before they notice.

So far I have saved her from all sorts of things; bad boyfriends —- I bit that one on the arse; the postman —— he doesn’t deliver here any more, we have to drive into the village to collect the mail and usually I get to go along.

There is nothing better than being in an open top car with your mistress.

Bliss.

It’s my favourite thing.

She got a bit annoyed about the postman, but I tried to tell her that anyone who rides a squeaky bicycle is definitely up to no-good.

My biggest triumph was saving her from that murderer at the stately house we were staying at; but that’s a story for another day.

As I said, my mistress and I are together most of the time and if she goes somewhere she usually takes me with her, but every now and then she goes off and leaves me at home ‘to guard the house’.

Which is just plain silly: the house doesn’t need guarding; people need guarding.

The house only needs guarding if my mistress is in it —— everyone knows that.

The first couple of times she left me behind I went looking for her.

I was very worried; how was I expected to protect her if I couldn’t see her; didn’t know where she was?

After the first few times I still got anxious but she always came back unharmed so I decided to ‘suck it up’ and put my time to good use.

Us dogs are very social animals.

We don’t like everyone but we do like to find out if we are going to like them.

So when my mistress is away I like to do a bit of traveling; it’s not as much fun as traveling with her but it’s fun all the same.

I try to visit the ones who never get out, the ones who never get walked; they are in the greatest need.

There are a pair of Labradors on Sophia Grove who are a lot of fun.

He gets a bit too excited but she is calm and very funny.

She sits by the fence and gathers all the gossip from the dogs going by. She has a very exciting time and she knows everything about everyone.

If you have a secret, don’t tell her.

One or two of my friends are able to get out without their masters knowing [I’m the only dog I know who has a mistress] and sometimes we meet up or they come to my place.

I alway keep an extra bone buried for just such an occasion.

My best recent adventure involved the Beagle who lives on Ross Street. He’s the best escape artist I know but he gets into heaps of trouble for running away. He can find a way out of any enclosure but he always forgets how he did it so when it is time to go home they always find him on the outside of the fence, pacing up and down. He’s a good dog, and a good friend but really, he’s not that bright.

He’s been picked up by the dog catcher a couple of times and me and a few of the other locals have tried to teach him how to recognise the danger and what to do if he sees the dog catcher but I guess, being so close to the ground puts him at a disadvantage and he never seems to see the human coming.

His owner gets really mad at having to go and collect him. “No more dog biscuits for you Fred. All the money for biscuits went to pay your fine”.

Fred doesn’t understand the relationship between money and food so he can’t see what all the fuss is about.

Which brings me to the adventure.

When Fred’s master finally let him have dog biscuits again, they kept mysteriously going missing. His master got really mad and accused Fred of somehow breaking into the storage shed and stealing the biscuits.

Fred didn’t do it; he told me so, and I believed him.

It took a little while but I worked it out.

It involved the Dingoes that live on Sandells Road.

Dingoes are almost as good as Beagles at escaping but the difference is that they know how to get back in and make it look like they never left —- pretty smart.

They knew that Fred wasn’t all that bright so they hatched a plan.

The female Dingo engaged Fred in a little ‘conversation’ while the male climbed the fence, opened the shed door with his teeth and carried off the tin containing the biscuits, after first closing the door ——- very clever; classic diversionary tactic.

But they didn’t reckon on me.

I caught them at it one particularly fine spring afternoon when my mistress had left me at home ‘to guard the house’.

They were so embarrassed at being caught that they promised not to do it again, and as everyone knows, a Dingo’s word is their bond.

All this made Fred very happy and his master stopped being annoyed, and I was a hero for a couple of days but you are only as good as your last adventure so I went looking for my next one.

It didn’t take me long to find it.

It involved a bucket, a bunch a sea crabs and a time bomb, but that story is going to have to wait for another day.

My mistress is due home very soon so I have to get back.

I look after her; it’s my job.

You can find some of Rufus’s other adventures here………..

https://araneus1.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/rufus-goes-to-the-country/

https://araneus1.wordpress.com/2014/07/28/rufus-finds-a-body/

https://araneus1.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/rufus-and-millie-not-a-love-story/

Rufus Finds a Body.

This is a story that might appeal to older children, but if you are a grown-up…..

Reading this story first might enhance your enjoyment……

https://araneus1.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/rufus-goes-to-the-country/

A dead body smells funny.

Not funny exactly; more strange that funny.

I found it, and it’s mine.

Humans aren’t supposed to smell like that, and they aren’t supposed to lie that still.

I sniffed where the breath should be and nothing came out.

I’m definitely claiming it but I’m not sure what to do with it.

I need help. I need my mistress, and the best way to get her to come is to bark really loud.

I have different barks for different occasions and she seems to understand most of them, which is great because it means that we can share stuff. She likes my ‘happy to see you bark’ best of all, even if it does wake everyone up when it is dark outside.

That’s another thing; why do humans insist on wandering around after it has gotten dark? Dark means it’s time to go to sleep. Every dog knows that. You need your rest. When the sun comes up you may have to go hunting or look for water and you don’t want to be tired; it could get you killed.

Killed; that’s the word I was trying to think of.

This human has been killed.

Maybe he wandered too far away and didn’t have the protection of his pack.

I sniffed him all over and I don’t think that he has had a bath recently.

Humans wash way too often.

They also try to disguise their smell with other smells. It makes it difficult, but not impossible, to tell where they have been, what they have been eating, and who they have brushed up against.

We are away from home and I don’t know all the smells around here and I haven’t worked out where the danger might come from so I was out early, thanks to a door that was left open. I was having a wee and good look around.

It’s my job to keep her safe.

She reckless at times and I’m not talking about her driving; I rather like the way she drives and I love being in her car.

That’s annoying.

My barking, which was only for my mistresses ears, has attracted a couple of other humans.

I’m trying to tell them that this body is mine but they don’t seem to be listening.

I don’t want to have to bite one of them because that causes all sorts of trouble; except for that one time when that young fellow was rough housing with my mistress and the game got too rough and she started to cry out. She called my name and I naturally thought that she wanted me to join in with their game; which didn’t happen all that often.

I ran into the room and landed on top of this fellow who was on top of my mistress. He seemed to be winning the game and he didn’t like me joining in. He tried to swipe me with his arm but I was way too fast for him. Then, he rather loudly used a few words I didn’t understand and tried to kick me while still holding my mistress down. It was then that I realised that this wasn’t a game and my mistress was very frightened, so I did what any responsible dog would do, I bit him on the arse. That’s the correct word, isn’t it; arse? Drew blood; and he used a few more words that I hadn’t heard before. I checked with a friend who has a man for a master and he said that he hears those words a lot.

It seems that biting this fellow was the right thing to do, though I wasn’t thinking much at the time, I just reacted to my mistresses fear.

I didn’t get into trouble or anything.

I even got an extra bone and lots of cuddles, which I don’t particularly like but I put up with it because it makes her happy.

We didn’t see that fellow again so I never got to find out how well his bottom healed. I was a bit worried because the bite was in a place that he was going to find difficult to lick. I hoped that it wouldn’t get infected.

Now, it’s really getting difficult.

A whole bunch of humans are trying to deprive me of my dead body.

“It’s mine, get off”.

No use; there are too many of them.

I can hear a few words that I know. Someone said ‘fell’, and someone else said ‘pushed’. A whole bunch of people said ‘dead’.

I could have told them that.

I could have told them who pushed him, if they had bothered to ask. I recognised the smell on his back. It was different from all his other smells, and I thought it might belong to someone else.

That ‘someone’ just walked past me.

Thank goodness, my mistress is here. She’s sure to ask me who did it. She’s very smart and it’s my job to keep her safe.

I wonder if it will be harder to keep her safe if I tell her who the killer is?

Should I just keep quiet and keep an eye out, or should I tell?

SCHOOME: The Book.

 

 

 

 

 

Our Homeschooling adventure from beginning to end, and beyond. Lots of adventures and practical advice based on our experiences.

This is the book we wish we had been able to read when our adventure began. It started out as a means to recapture all of the fun and to retell some of the stories. But it seemed like a good idea to write it as an encouragement to those parents who were considering homeschooling. A question we asked was ‘How does it work out?’ What kind of adults come from this style of education? Our boys are all grown up with families of their own, so you will see how successful the experience was for all of us. We don’t gloss over the problems either. It’s all here.

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Why reading the classics with your children matters.

Published in The Age newspaper

Why reading the classics with your children matters

Date

June 13, 2014

Nova Weetman

“These were grand adventures, often written in language I didn’t understand, and about events that seemed ancient but intriguing.” Photo: Getty

There are more books being written and targeted specifically at children than ever before. There are bookshops dedicated entirely to children’s books. And there are books to cater for pretty much every imaginable taste and ability. And what a wonderful thing, that our kids are literally swimming in stories.

It wasn’t always like this. When I was a kid, there were some books written specifically for my age and ability, but they were pretty limited. And so once I’d exhausted everything pitched directly at me, I read whatever I could find, and this often meant reading the classics. Charles Dickens. Jules Verne. Mark Twain. Books my parents had on their bookshelves that seemed to feature characters that were around my age. And I loved them. These were not stories I’d found in the pages of contemporary novels. These were grand adventures, often written in language I didn’t understand, and about events that seemed ancient but intriguing.

My children have been reluctant readers of classics. Maybe it’s because they are spoiled for choice, but I suspect it’s because they like the slightly larger font of newer kids books, or the flashier covers, or the more kid-friendly layout of contemporary fiction. So in an effort to take them on the journeys I loved as a child, I’ve been choosing classics to read them at night. We started with Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. They were terrified but engrossed. These are kids raised on the world of Harry Potter, and yet an old drunk pirate can scare them. And they were terrified because the characters and the world (even though it’s historic) are so real. But they loved it. The boldness of it. The fear of it. The fact that it felt just a little more adult than reading a kids book, even though it would have been read by kids when it was first written.

12 classic books every child should read

Peter Pan by J.M Barrie

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Then we went onto (an abridged version of) Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. The younger one, who is only six and barely reading himself, was engrossed. He didn’t understand the satirical aspects of the book, or some of the language, because a lot of it is invented and complicated, but he loved the large scale of the adventure. He loved how ludicrous it was. How elaborate and fanciful it was. And how totally foreign it was to his world. And he didn’t care at all that it was about an adult protagonist rather than a child.

My daughter has now dived headfirst into Grimm’s Fairy Tales, admittedly preferring the new Philip Pullman adaptation than the original, but for her, these stories are dark and wild and tap into territory similar to Paul Jennings. She reads them without me and is so totally engrossed in the stories that she has paused the contemporary novel she was reading to finish Grimm.

Both children loved Arabian Nights, because the stories are so rich and wonderful. And not like anything written today. My son borrowed The Magic Pudding from the school library himself, and couldn’t wait for me to read it to him. We’ve read (and loved) Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland,Wind in the Willows, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Winnie the Pooh and Pippi Longstocking. We’ve started reading (and stopped), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Railway Childrenand the Jungle Book. Obviously not all classic novels will appeal.

It’s so easy to overlook the classics with kids because we have so many extraordinary books to choose from. But what is great about venturing down the classics path is that it introduces kids to a whole new world of storytelling. Old books are structured differently. They’re often slower in pace. The language is harder and more complicated. The world is foreign and unusual. The lead characters are not always kids. And they require something different when you read them.

My daughter has been amazed at how many contemporary stories seem to be based on the classics. And she’s right. I forget that so many of these stories underpin so much of our children’s worlds. The films they see, the television they watch, the stories they read are often directly or indirectly inspired by the classics.

So while I love my kids reading anything they want and choosing the contemporary books that reflect and explain their world and their experiences, I’m also going to keep pushing a few classics into the mix. Just so they have a sense of where stories come from, and of the changing nature of storytelling throughout history and across cultures. There are good reasons why these classic stories are still in print. They are rich and diverse, challenging and rollicking. My kids may not like always like the books I read them, and we may not make it all the way through Charles Dickens or Mark Twain, but we can give it a go. And hopefully learn something about where literature comes from and about the history of great and sustaining stories.

This is my rough (and brief) guide to attempting classics with kids – in no particular order:

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (adapted by Philip Pullman)

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Peter Pan by J.M Barrie

One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay

Do your children have a favourite classic novel they love to read?

School?

 

Michael Leunig.

Learning how to read is learning how to live.

It is important to read this remembering that the author is a ‘heavy weight’ Catholic, but considering that he makes some good points……..

Learning to read is learning how to live

By Kevin Donnelly

Updated Thu 9 Jan 2014, 2:26pm AEDT

PHOTO: Literature has the power to transcend the here and now. (AFP)

Getting your children to read does far more than improve their test results – it also teaches them invaluable life lessons about morality and empathy, writes Kevin Donnelly.

For parents, the good news is you don’t have to be university-educated, pay for after-school tutorials or be able to afford expensive school fees to give your child a winning edge when it comes to education.

Research investigating how parents can help their children succeed at school concludes that there is an easier, less expensive and more effective way.

It’s called reading, especially literature that involves nursery rhymes, poems, ballads, songs, myths, fables, legends and classic tales like the Iliad and the Arabian Nights.

An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development report titled Let’s Read Them A Storyanalyses the test results for 15-year-old students in literacy across 65 countries and argues, “Students show a better ability to read and learn when their parents are involved in their education and when parents themselves value reading.”

The report also argues, “Parental involvement when children are entering primary school is strongly associated with reading performance and even more with instilling a sense of enjoyment of reading in children.”

And reading to children can never start too early. As the OECD report states, “a child’s education should start at birth”, with parents interacting with their children, reciting rhymes and songs, telling stories, playing alphabet games and surrounding them with picture books and illustrations.

Forget e-readers and tablets, computer screens and plasma TVs – what young children most need is the physical interaction involved when sitting together with their parents and learning how to handle real books with real print.

Reading to children and fostering their love of literature do more than just improve test results. Literature also has a strong moral influence and can teach children to better understand and relate to others.

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the main character Scout recounts when her father, Atticus Finch, told her “you never really knew a man until you stood in his shoes and walked around in them”.

And that is exactly what literature can achieve. Research by scientists at the US-based Emory University (The Herald Sun, December 30) suggests that literature can help children better understand and sympathise with adults and other children.

As suggested by Gregory Berns, one of the scientists involved in the study, “The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist”.

When reading an enthralling, page-turning novel, we have all experienced the feeling of being transported to an imaginative world where we get so caught up with the characters that what is happening feels real.

Researchers at New York’s New School for Social Research provide additional evidence that literature can help students better understand and empathise with others. The study involved getting participants to read three types of texts, including literary, popular and non-fiction, and measuring the extent to which what was read influenced the ability to relate to the mental state of others. Good literature proved to be the most effective.

And it doesn’t rely on research to prove the point that reading literature can have such a beneficial humanising influence. The famous English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge termed the expression the “willing suspension of disbelief” when describing the impact of reading poetry.

Literature – unlike playing computer games, surfing social networking sites like Facebook, and sending and reading SMS messages – has the power to transcend the here and now, and to teach children how to sit still, concentrate, and appreciate the richness and power of the English language.

When many young people are being cyber bullied and ostracized on social media sites, it also makes sense for parents and schools to promote literature if reading classics like Brothers Grimm, Aesop’s Fables and the CS Lewis Narnia series help readers to be more sensitive and caring for others.

Good literature, including Biblical parables like the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, also convey moral lessons about not being selfish and the importance of forgiveness.

Given the impact of celebrity culture, selfies and the fact that much of Western culture is materialistic, there is no doubting that literature proves a very inexpensive and powerful way to teach sensitivity to others and, like Atticus Finch says, to walk in their shoes.

*Editor’s note (January 9, 2014): An earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to William Coleridge rather than Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Dr Kevin Donnelly is director of Education Standards Institute and a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University. View his full profile here.