Forget speed reading, let young concentrate on pictures

Children’s Laureate Anthony Browne tells Sarah Freeman why, when it comes to getting youngsters to read, it’s pictures you really need.

When Education Secretary Michael Gove, fresh from a trip to America, began waxing lyrical about a US school’s competition to see which child could read Harry Potter the fastest, Anthony Browne wondered whether he should wave the white flag.

Since becoming Children’s Laureate two years ago, the Sheffield-born author and illustrator has visited enough schools to know that speed reading isn’t the way to inspire a life-long love of books.

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“I do wonder where people get the idea that force-feeding children books is the way forward,” says Browne, who studied at Leeds College of Art in the 1960s. “There’s a big rush to get children away from picture stories and reading for want of a better phrase ‘proper books’ at an earlier and earlier age, but so often it backfires.

“I don’t think it’s insignificant that around the same age some children stop reading, they also stop drawing. It’s as though their creative imagination has been stalled.”

When Michael Rosen handed on the baton of Children’s Laureate, Browne said his one aim was to raise the appreciation of picture books. He’s now approaching the end of his run and, anecdotally at least, he seems to have made good on his word.

“I meet teachers who say they have started using some of my books with older children and it has made a big difference,” he says. “There’s a misconception that picture books are something to be left behind as we get older. It’s not the case at all, the gap left between the pictures and the words are a really fertile ground for the imagination and that’s true no matter how old you are.”

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“I’ve always tried to create books which are multi-layered, so they can be appreciated at different stages of developments. I like the idea of readers seeing more each time they read them.”

Browne grew up in Wyke, near Halifax, where his parents ran a pub and while his father, who had a spell as a professional boxer, inspired a love of sport in both him and his elder brother, he also encouraged his various artistic ambitions.

After leaving art college he worked for a time as a medical illustrator before securing a job with a greetings card company.

“As a child I always made up stories and I loved anything that was strange or surreal. Ken Reid’s Fudge in Toffee Town was just fantastic, what child wouldn’t want to live in a place where everything is made out of lollipops or sweets?

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“For a while I considered becoming a cartoonist or journalist, but ended up illustrating greeting cards for a living. I’d been doing it 15 years when I finally had what you’d call my Eureka moment. I’d drawn a picture of a great big Gorilla holding a teddy bear and just thought there must be a story in this.”

There was. While Browne had already published a handful of children’s books, it was Gorilla in 1983 which won him an unprecedented number of awards, including the Kate Greenaway Medal. Ever since, apes have been something of a recurring theme.

“I guess they remind me a little bit of my father – strong and outwardly confident, but also shy and sensitive. Some people would probably say I have an obsession with gorillas, but I prefer to describe it as a healthy fascination.

“To look into a gorilla’s eyes is very much like looking into the eyes of a human being. Sometimes it feels as though there is a person looking out at us.”

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Browne, who was the first British illustrator to win a Hans Christian Andersen award, now has 40 books to his name, the first major retrospective of his work, Through the Magic Mirror: The World of Anthony Browne, opens in Newcastle this weekend and his memoir Playing the Shape Game has just been released.

“There’s a lot going on,” he admits. “It’s been slightly strange being the Children’s Laureate. They pick you because you’re good at writing books, which means you spend a lot of time on your own with your own imagination for company.

“Suddenly, you’re expected to speak at various events and overnight become a spokesman for children’s books.

“I wouldn’t have changed it for the world, I’ve learnt a lot, but my day job has been pretty much on hold for the last two years.”

Time it seems for Browne to go back to the drawing board.

Playing the Shape Game, published by Doubleday, priced £25 is out now. To order from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop call 0800 0153232 or online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk