November 30

Today I am reading a children's story I wrote at the Hillside Dams Art and Craft Fair.  This is the furthest I have gone in writing for children.

When I was 14 and desperate to be an author, I wrote two stories for children.  One, called How Winston Warthog gots his Tusks, was published in The Chronicle and the other - I forget the title - was published in The Bulawayo Bulletin.  I don't remember much about the latter except that they spelt my name wrong, but that's been the story of my life.

I was very excited to have my story published in The Chronicle and can remember my French teacher congratulating me in class.  Many years later, I was seven months pregnant with Ellie and we were on a very wet camping holiday.  We were living in Zambia at the time and decided to go back to Zimbabwe for Christmas, via Malawi and Mozambique.  It rained the entire time we were away.  Every single day, it just poured down incessantly.  One of my most vivid memories of the trip was camping on the shores of Lake Malawi and holding the tent down at three o'clock in the morning as it was about to be blown away.  Sian was only three at the time and at night time I would tell her stories that I made up.  Winston Warthog was one of them.  

Over the years, both girls have loved the stories but they generally get out of hand as the girls contribute to the storyline which becomes more and more outrageous. Basically, Winston Warthog is a naughty little boy warthog who is a very bad speller.  He has a friend who is a very bad magician and can never get anything  right.  He also has a sister, Winstonia, and a fitness fanatic mother who makes courgette cakes and lettuce milkshakes. 

I have worked quite hard to get this story ready and polished enough to read to an audience.  The children are great.  Some of them are a little distracted, but others are very attentive.  Ellie is very proud as she has helped me quite a lot with this story. A few years ago, I wanted to start a reading campaign.  I have done quite a lot of research on the benefits of reading to children and it's a subject I push all the time. The most important thing that parents can do for their children is to read to them.  It's incredibly sad that so many don't.