Jackie Morris: books can be terrifying, that’s why you need librarians

The natural world outside our front doors and the world of books can both appear terrifying when we don’t know enough about them. Jackie Morris says it’s a disconnect that has been around a for a while.

“When I was young my parents used to drive us to Dartmoor but we weren’t allowed out of the car park because we might die, or be kidnapped by escaped prisoners and then die.”

It’s a fear that grows out of a lack of understanding for the world we live in. “People sit looking at lions and killer whales on TV, they don’t see the wren outside their front door and that disengagement is bad for our physical and mental health and the very small planet we live on.”

However, she believes children have an innate curiosity about their environment but it is removed by the cultural values of the adult world. “Remember that feeling, that understanding, that all these things around you are precious? When you see a bird land in the garden? These things are lost because people are taught to only see value in money. I’ve been in classrooms where I’ve asked people to put up their hands if they know what a wren is. No hands went up. I’ve met teachers who don’t know what starlings are, or wrens or weasels. Schools with classrooms called ‘acorn’, where no one has explained to the children what an acorn is.

"So I think our book fell into bookshops like water into the desert. I think there’s a hunger for knowledge of the natural world.”

Coded message

The Lost Words is based on the words removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary 2007 edition. It celebrates some of the missing words with three full page spreads, first showing the absence of the thing itself in an image that also includes all the letters of the alphabet with the relevant letters highlighted. Then there is a "spell" by the author Robert MacFarlane, who Jackie says “was reluctant to write poems, so he wrote spells, acrostic spells” – their first letters spelling the missing word. The third page is an image created using gold leaf, giving its subject the visual status of a revered religious icon. Finally the word is revealed in its natural habitat.

"There are no instructions with the book,” Jackie says, “but children do work it out fast because they read images.”

This skill is another thing that is undervalued, "lost", in the adult world. But it’s a vital gateway for children to get into literature and it’s why Jackie sees the youth librarian judges of Kate Greenaway Medal as uniquely important. “The judges are steeped in visual communication, in a way that many people aren’t. The shortlist is fabulous.”

It’s a view also based on her own experience of librarians: “The only thing I liked about school was the library. I couldn’t read the books but I looked at the pictures. I didn’t have anyone to tell me about books at home. And books can be terrifying when you don’t know the ‘right’ book to choose.

"For those familiar with books and publishing we forget that others find the books bewildering. One of the reasons people buy the recommended best sellers is because they are afraid to explore the shelves alone. Books can be gateways to other worlds. Librarians are like mountain guides of these wild places. They can open that world, take away the fear.”

Writing

Jackie’s own relationship with writing is now as strong as her visual communication. But that wasn’t always the case. “If you can’t spell at school and all your writing comes back covered in red ink you start to think that writers are these revered people in a club you’re not allowed to join. But a friend (author and illustrator James Mayhew) told me I must be able to write, because I can talk the hind leg off a donkey.

I didn’t begin to write until I was 36 when I wrote Seal children. I couldn’t ask anyone else to write the story. It’s set here, where I live. From then on, mostly I would illustrate my own text. Now, in the same way that I need to draw I need to write. If I don’t draw my head becomes like a nest of wasps.

"I think in words, but also images. I think better through writing than speaking. Somehow clearer. There’s more distance between my brain when thinking and the end of my arm where my pen sits than there is to my mouth. It gives me more time.

"And I write outside. I walk up the hill with my note book. I write with a fountain pen… just drawing words. It’s still visual. I draw them out from the imagination, and I draw them on the page."

Big book

The Lost Words is a big book. “I have always wanted large books. But I’ve always been told that they don’t sell because they don’t fit on the shelves. But I don’t want them on the shelf. I want them in the hands of the readers. In this case it’s so big it’s almost like a theatre. And you have to remember that children are small, so this book comes up to their tummy buttons.”

Jackie’s attitude to books has also been changed by technology. We don’t see ourselves as being an enemy of technology, even though the words that replaced the lost words were words like ‘blog’, ‘hashtag’ and ‘chatroom’. The best thing Kindles have done is make books more beautiful. You have to up your game now and The Lost Words wouldn’t work as an e-book. But there are wonderful things you can do with technology. Robert lives in Cambridge, I’m in Pembrokeshire. The Lost Words was shaped through many email communications over great distance. And Lost Words trails have been created using digital technology. Like Pokemon, but with bluebells.”

Photo credit: Jay Armstrong