literacy

So What Is Your Reading Age? Believe Me: It’s All About Numbers

On Saturday I had a very nice surprise. The usual post delivery person had been and gone at least an hour when along comes a courier with a neat, and quite unexpected package. Inside are my 6 author copies of the new edition of Mau Mau Brother. Yippee! Much jumping up and down in the kitchen. It’s always a thrill to have the freshly printed book clasped to one’s chest.

Some of you may remember that just over a year ago I was turning my brain inside out, cutting an already tightly written teen reader in half to make a new edition. The first version, bottom left, is a 6000-word, 64-page novelised short story aimed at struggling young adult readers with a reading age of 9-10 years. It is one of Ransom Publishing’s Shades series of fast-paced, high interest teen fiction.

The new Sharp Shades 2.0 edition has the same number of pages, 3,000 words, larger font and the addition of several moody full-page, grey-scale images. Its target audience are less able teen readers.

When it comes to reading age markers, it is worth pointing out that the average UK reading age (that includes everyone, adults and all) is 9 years. The reading age for our best newspapers like The Guardian is 14 years, and the reading age for tabloids like The Sun is 8 years. But of course the ability to read, and the application of that ability, and using it to acquire information, learn or to nourish the mind, are not necessarily the same thing.

It’s quite simple too. Teens can struggle with the notion of actually picking up a book; are daunted by the size and word density of a 40,000 word novel. It can be tied in to a lack of self worth; some deep belief that if they attempt so big a book they will fail; that it will be yet another manifestation of their feeling of uselessness and inferiority; that so much dense text with no pictures is of itself BORING.

There are, after all, so many other more instantly engaging, loud and in-your-face-ears-eyes experiences to be had at the lightest press of a button, and every minute of the day. You can while away every spare moment on your smart phone with whatever teen version of TwitFace is currently cool. It’s like a continuous intravenous feeding – films, music, chat endlessly streaming into us. I think it was Margaret Atwood who, speaking of the addictive quality of the internet in the Observer, said that the problem is, every time you log on you expect WWW to deliver you an Easter Egg.

That’s it exactly. It’s how I feel. It must be how Margaret Atwood feels too!

All of which is to repeat that there is for many – adults and children alike – a big resistance to picking up a book in the first place, let alone losing themselves in it. Reading requires effort and application and being still. Which brings me back to my book. The aim of the Shades series is to engage teens with the process of reading; to help build a reading habit; to show that reading a story can deliver more than a tray load of Easter Eggs, something more meaningful that helps you grow within and without; to discover where your place is in the world. The stories, then, must be arresting, but their conveyance swift and affecting. Remember: we are up against competing intravenous streaming here.

As you can see, I’ve taken some editing liberties with the covers in the intro photo. This is what the new Sharp Shades edition actually looks like.

The story is told in the first person, present tense by fifteen year old Thuo. And since the cover blurb already sets scene, I won’t say more. But to demonstrate something of the editing process involved in reducing one accessible text to an even more accessible text, here are excerpts from the two versions of Chapter 2. I think it’s anyway interesting to see what can be excised from a piece of prose and and have what’s left still carry the narrative. Of course in the process the whole tone may change. I actually found myself more engaged with the sparer version. But see what you think: the hard pruned Sharp Shades first:

Bombers

The day we lose our home Mugo and I are taking our goats to graze. My little brother runs ahead, slapping the dewdrops from the grass. I stew on my anger.

Before the war, I was a schoolboy. I wore a smart white shirt and khaki shorts. I was studying hard to be someone. Then the British closed my school, and now I am a goat herder.

It’s another reason to hate Kungu.

I’m so busy fuming I don’t hear the Lincoln bombers. They come like giant birds.

Boom-boom-ker-boom.

Bombs fall. Trees fly apart. Hills sprout volcanoes. They are bombing God’s Mountain, bombing Mau Mau.

When the planes drone away and the smoke clears, Mugo grabs my arm.

‘Kungu?’ he chokes. ‘They’ve killed him.’

And now the here’s the original Shades version:

Bombers

On the day we lose our home, my little brother Mugo and I are taking our goats to pasture.

It is January, high summer. All around doves coo and cornstalks rustle, and I think: how can there be war on so fine a day?

The sun is just rising and Mugo runs ahead, slapping dew from the grasses, so the drops fly like jewels through the sky. I remember doing that too when I was younger.

But I was not minding goats. I was hurrying to school, wearing the white shirt bought four sizes too big from the Indian trader so it will last for years. And I am wearing khaki shorts instead of my kidskin wrap. It is my first day at the Kikuyu Independent School.

Father has taken me away from the Scottish Mission, saying the teachers there teach Africans to be nothing better than clerks and house servants. He says I will have a better future at KIS.

I don’t. With the uprising, the British close my school. I have been minding goats ever since. It is another reason to hate Kungu.

Mugo goes on swishing grasses, but I am so busy fuming I do not hear the planes. Then the world shakes to bits.

Boom-boom-ker-boom.

Mugo jumps like a spooked deer. And we run. At the top of the ridge we see the Lincoln bombers like giant birds above the forest.

Down come the bombs. One, two…five, more…till I want to vomit. The hills sprout volcanoes. Trees fly apart. Our goats shriek.

We stand and stare as if turned to stone. The bombers do not target our farms, only the forests outside the Reserve.

When planes drone away the smoke clears, we stare at God’s Mountain. The jagged snow peaks, the dark forest slopes, are still there. It is hard to believe.

‘Kungu?’ Mugo’s eyes dart round in case there’s anyone to hear. ‘They have killed him?’

As you can see, nearly two thirds of the descriptive context has gone from the shortened version. It is easy to be sorry to lose these kinds of detail, but ruthless cutting of such passages was better than losing the story.

All fascinating stuff. I quite like seeing how many versions of a work I can come up with. And I really enjoy the challenge of a limited word count. After all, it’s not so much about how much you can hang on to, as how little you actually need to tell a well rounded and affecting story.

But there is a problem here for me as creator of fiction. If you produce work that is labelled for a specific purpose, then it is unlikely to be read by anyone else, i.e. those who consider themselves outside the target audience. As a writer, I write for anyone who will read me, and tend to balk at categorisation of any kind. I especially dislike the category ‘educational writing’.

All the same, if the stories I write, and the different ways I can write them, will encourage unkeen readers to read and develop a love of reading, then I’m wholeheartedly for it. Not to read well is to be disenfranchised. Your options are shut down. You leave oneself vulnerable to those who would misrepresent, manouevre and manipulate the information-world we inhabit. Good reading promotes understanding, powers of discretion, a sense of autonomy; it strengthens mind and imagination, those attributes that make us keenly human; the very attributes we will increasingly need if we are to make something worthwhile of our lives on this planet.

In England we especially need to look to our laurels. In fact those laurels are down round our ankles like pants that have lost their elastic. We apparently have the lowest teen literacy rates, and second lowest numeracy rates of the world’s 23 most developed countries. Korea, Japan, Netherlands are respectively the first, second and third most literate and numerate nations. See The Spectator article HERE for more on this shaming state of affairs.)

In the meantime, more power to small publishing houses like Ransom who specialise in making books for struggling readers of all ages. Their extensive catalogue provides all the tools to tackle literacy. This particular writer is anyway proud to be a Ransom author: when it comes to better reading only the best writing will do.

Ransom blog on WordPress HERE

Numbers – go here for the Daily Post Weekly Challenge
#RansomBooks #literacy #NickyMorganSecretaryOfStateForEducation #NationalLiteracyTrust #Proud2BeARansomAuthor #BestWritingForBetterReading

New Edition on the way ~ Mau Mau Brother

It’s always a thrill, nerve-wracking too, when the book proofs arrive. But then with this new Sharp Shades edition of Mau Mau Brother there was no need for qualms. Ransom’s Art Director, Stephen Rickard, has done my story proud, both in the final edit, and the inclusion of some moody grey-scale images.

The story that was 6,000 words in the original Shades series has been chopped in half, but spread over the same 64-page format to become a Sharp Shades edition. And it works. And I’ll repeat that for the benefit of any writers who are reading this, and who are a touch sensitive about heavy editing: three thousand words from my tightly written 6,000-word story (you can see an extract of the original HERE) have been expunged, and the end result is great.

I’d better explain.

When I am not growing cauliflowers, making leaf mould and generally hanging about on WordPress, one of the very important things I do is write short fiction for teens who are striving to build a reading habit.

Back in the spring, Ransom, who publish these works, suggested that my latest title, Mau Mau Brother, would make a good Sharp Shades edition if I was prepared to cut it by half. As I wrote in a post back in April HERE, I was doubtful that I could, but I said I would try. In the event, I found myself stuck at around 3,400 words and Ransom asked me to hand it back for some more pruning; they would let me see the finished text for my approval, they said.

A few days ago they did just that, and I am really pleased with the end result. They are great people to work with.

Not only that, Ransom Publishing are specialists in the production of accessible fiction and nonfiction for struggling readers of all ages. Their strap-line is ‘UNLOCKING LITERACY’. For those of us who can read and write fluently, it is hard to imagine not having these skills. But if you can’t read well, you are effectively disenfranchised as a functioning member of the community. Locked out in every sense.

The Shades series includes some 60 titles written by many well known and seasoned children’s writers. The titles are aimed at young adults with an interest level of 12 years +, but a reading ability of 9-10 years. Many young people are also daunted by the size of a book, while still wanting ‘the excitement of a great story told with pace and style. ‘ At 64 pages, the books are compact, easy to handle. The cover images are striking, edgy, and with all the style of quality mainstream fiction. In other words, they may be small, but they don’t look ‘less’.

Inside, the story is presented novel-style, in chapters, but with plenty of white space on the page. To cater for the less able reader, the Sharp Shades editions have half the number of words of a Shades title, far fewer words per page, are set in a larger font and have added illustrations.

Personally, I think the books in both Shades series are appealing to any reader of any ability. They make for handy quick-reads that fit in most pockets. And just because they are aimed at people who struggle with their reading, doesn’t mean the stories are either simple or simplistic. They embrace themes that matter to all of us: love, hate, fear, injustice, belonging, relationships, families, overcoming threats and hardship. So I’m not going to say any more about Mau Mau Brother. The blurb on the back of the book pretty much covers it. Thank you, Steve Rickard.

Killing Words ~ a case of verbal decomposing?

Losing Kui – an extract

@ransombooks #RansomPublishing

@Literacy_Trust #NationalLiteracyTrust

Inspiration: striving to succeed

It was in Africa that I became a professional writer. And it was writing for children like Zaina that spurred me to begin. It seemed to me, that unlike many British young people, Kenyan kids were desperate to go to school and, once there, strove to do their utmost to make something of their lives. I was cross, too, at the then lack of contemporary local fiction that showed young Kenyans as heroes, and in the kinds of situations they could identify with. Then I found that many of the stories I wrote for African children also worked for a European readership, or at least for those who were keen to find out what life was really like in the parts of African that I visited and lived in. And now, all these years later, and living back in England, these are still the things that drive me to write.

Inspiration

Early Edition: Mau Mau Brother

An exciting little parcel arrived last week – copies of my latest quick-read for teens (or even for adults) in Ransom’s Shades 2.0 series. It’s a small, neat book. Pocket sized. As per the Shades’ format, it is a novelised short story, the text broken down into brief chapters, the whole designed for readers who find bigger books, and dense text too daunting to tackle. The pages have much white space, and the story’s 5,000 words are spread over 64 pages, which of course makes it easier for anyone to read. The aim is to build reading muscles and so (hopefully) nurture a love of books.

But if the books are small-scale, there is nothing ‘slight’ about their content. Their themes are of adult interest too. As a writer I can think of no bigger challenge than to woo readers who would probably rather not read. It unavoidably demands your crispest most affecting prose.

I knew, too, that historical fiction can be off-putting to many teen boys. In Mau Mau Brother, then, I used first person, present-tense narrative to make events more immediate. The story tells of the 1950s uprising against British rule in Kenya as seen through the eyes of fifteen-year-old Thuo. This perspective on what happened is not widely known outside Kenya; the British authorities deliberately destroyed many records. But for Thuo there many kinds of war – not only with the British, but also with the African Home Guard, and even with his own freedom fighter brother whom he blames for all his troubles. But in the end, the biggest war he has to fight is with himself.

And now for an extract:

The British are bombing Kenya’s highland forests to flush out the freedom fighters. Thuo and his family have been driven off their farms and made to live under curfew in a fortified village. Their every move is ruled by the African Home Guard. Then one night Thuo’s elder brother, Kungu, a seasoned fighter, finds his way to Thuo’s hut. He is wounded, and sick, and Thuo is faced with the starkest choice – to inform on his brother, or risk detention and death to help him.

After the plane goes, Njonjo whispers that he’s overheard the Home Guards talking.

‘They know Kungu is near,’ he hisses. ‘Tomorrow the British soldiers will sweep this part of the Reserve.’

That night we sit in our hut ,weighed down with fear, expecting the worst. I am stunned when Kungu says, ‘I must leave now.’

‘But how?’ I cry.

This time I am more scared for him than for me. His brow glows with sweat. He still cannot walk properly.

‘The way I came, through the barbed wire.’

‘But the ditch. The stakes.’

‘I will roll down. Crawl out. Like a cockroach. Have no fear, little brother.’

‘But where will you go?’

‘A cave I know. I once shared it with a she-leopard.’

I shiver. A window on hell has just swung wide. I see the big cat’s yellow eyes, the white fangs. Then I see the falling bombs, hear elephants screaming, the rifles’ crack-crack, feel the breath of a pseudo-gangster on my neck.

The words fly from my mouth before I can stop them. But, once said, I cannot take them back.

‘I’m coming too.’

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

Flickr Comments: E words

FOR MORE ‘E’ WORDS STORIES

Elephants, E-books and Enticing Reluctant Readers

Two at once challenge – DP : Reel Talk and Frizztext’s EEE

Everyone who comes to this page is a reader. Bloggers love to read as well as write: poems, flash-fiction, memoir, novel excerpts, reportage, long pieces, short pieces; it’s how the blogweb works: exchanges to entertain, enchant, enthuse, encourage and elucidate.

Some of my stalwart followers and followees boldly read and create in second and third languages, which for me who only has proficiency in English is a great source of admiration and envy. And if that’s not enough ‘Es’ already, I have some more. But first a question: what about those (old and young) who find reading a struggle? What about those who find a page loaded with text a total turn-off, or the average sized paperback too daunting in scale to broach?

And to answer my own questions, this is where the book cover below comes in, because one of the things I do besides loitering in cyberspace is to write good stories for unkeen teen readers, (or for anyone else I can corner for that matter).

The title of this new edition of my very short book Mantrap clearly begins with ‘M’ ( which means you can look forward to more mentions further down Frizz’s alphabet.) So what is it doing here now? The elephant is of course the excuse I needed to write this piece, also the fact that Ransom Publishing will shortly be bringing out an e-book version for Amazon Kindle and Apple, as well as a paperback edition. It is part of their Shades series. Full details of this and other books in the series can be found HERE. The series is being printed as I write this and will be launched in August.

Interest-wise, the stories are aimed at readers of twelve years and upwards, but whose reading ability is deemed to be a few years younger. The text is a piece of short fiction but presented in a novel format i.e. 6,000 words divided into several chapters, and over 64 pages. There is plenty of white space on the page.

Ransom publishes a wide range of fiction and non-fiction for all ages. Personally, I think the Shades’ quick-read formats are ideal for just about anyone who wants a good story, but has limited time to read it. You can slip these nice little books into your pocket. However, this is not so much a sales pitch as an explanation: the why, where and how this story about ivory poaching came into being. There’ll be an excerpt at the end.

I can also tell you precisely where the Mantrap story began – under a baobab tree. And here it is, the very one:

The fact that it was in leaf at the time was perhaps auspicious. Baobabs are usually bare. This one could be a thousand years old. We stopped under it for a noonday picnic after a get-up-while-still-asleep and go on a dawn game drive. The location is South Luangwa National Park in Zambia. It is a glorious place with parkland vistas, much shaped by the local elephants who knock down the thorn trees, but rarely the baobabs, to encourage the growth of their favourite food – grass.

The other great shaper of the territory is the mighty Luangwa River as it endlessly carves new meanders through the bush country.

As the river shapes a new channel, so the old meanders are left behind, some becoming stagnant lagoons where hippos wallow amongst the cabbage weed. The local people call such places Luangwa waffa or Dead Luangwa.

But back to Mantrap. It was while I was standing under the baobab, and peeling a very English hard-boiled egg, that our guide happened to point out the narrow strips of wood that had been driven unobtrusively into the tree’s hard, smooth trunk.

“It’s a poachers’ ladder,” the guide told me. “Ivory poachers. This tree has been a look-out post for years.” He went on to tell me how earlier that week an elephant had been killed nearby. The tusks had been taken, but then later, when the coast was clear of poachers, the local villagers had come to grab the meat.

My spine tingled: horror and pity, and not only for the elephant. I knew that rural Zambians were in a poor state. This was the reason why we had come to Zambia. Team Leader Graham was responsible for the logistics of delivering EU food aid to drought-stricken villagers. (See Letters from Lusaka.) Also, elephants and other game can destroy a farmer’s whole crop in a single night. The conservation of wild game, then, and the protection of neighbouring people’s livelihoods are matters not easily resolved. Game parks across Africa generally do not have fences. Animals move about at will, and many farmers are maimed or killed by buffalo, crocodiles, hyenas and elephants. Their families rarely receive compensation.

We, however, belonged to the fortunate segment of the world’s population that had no shortage of food and also the leisure to take a few days holiday, staying in a small tented camp run by Robin Pope Safaris. On the way to our campsite from Mufuwe airstrip we crossed a dried up river where a girl was digging deep into the sandy bed in hopes of scooping out some water. In the gardens of a nearby farmstead, the maize was blown to dust. It was hardly surprising that there was a poaching problem in the district. People were starving.

But then to my mind, there’s a big difference between hunting antelope and small game for the pot, and particularly when the park and surrounding licensed hunting blocks occupy the local people’s former hunting territory, and the obscene and pointless slaughter of elephants solely for their ivory.

Yet the temptation to some locals must be enormous. They have families to support, children to send to school, medicine to buy. Big business cartels, especially in the Far East, are apparently more than glad to arm and fund local hunters in the pursuit of ivory and rhino horn. This means that park rangers are at great peril. Many are murdered in their attempts to protect wildlife so tourists like us may come and stare, and snap away.

One way to combat poaching is to give people good reasons to protect the game. Robin Pope’s Safaris have pioneered schemes to involve local communities in conservation.

Helping communities to gain from tourism

So these, then, were some of the things I wanted to explore in my story. What emerged was a life-and-death adventure that had its beginning the moment my fingers touched the rungs of the poachers’ ladder.

Here then is an excerpt – the opening scene. It is dawn in Luangwa. Hunger has finally driven Danny and his father, Jacob, into the National Park to hunt antelope. But Danny is a schoolboy, not a hunter; it is not surprising that, in his panic, he makes a mistake – a mistake that lands them in the clutches of a corrupt ranger who has a far more dangerous quarry in mind.

Chapter One: The Kill

“Impala. A small herd among the sausage trees. Jacob stopped dead and held up a warning hand. Danny froze on the spot and this time, without a sound, dropped behind a potato bush. He peered through the leaves, fixing on a big ram. He was about twenty paces away, grazing the yellow grasses, his harem of females all round. Danny’s eyes stung with longing. There was that beautiful ram. So near, and yet so far. The smallest sound might send him bolting. Out of reach!

Danny willed Jacob to shoot. Now, Dadda, now. Then nearly howled when the ram raised his lyre-shaped horns and sniffed the breeze nervously. The ram had scented them. He had. Danny prayed and prayed. Please let our luck change. Please let Dadda shoot. Then we can get out of here. Before the sun comes up. Before the park rangers start their patrol. Before we’re caught and sent to jail…

And finally, here’s a short clip that shows Luangwa in all its rain-soaked glory. One of the earth’s most beautiful places, and over four hundred species of birds.

Links:

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/reel-talk-writing-challenge/

http://flickrcomments.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/eee-challenge/

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge