How picture books help young children's minds to grow

A woman who self-identified as a grandmother stopped me in the street just now when I was shopping, and told me that her granddaughter used to ask her to read a picture book to her, by reading one side out loud and the granddaughter said that she would 'read' the other side. But she couldn't 'read' in the usual sense of the word, but what she would do was 'read' the pictures and tell stories. It was wonderful, the grandmother said, 'Aren't children wonderful?' 

It is precisely this - that the child had invented - which does the 'work' in why and how reading picture books slowly with young children enables them to think. If we ponder for a moment and think of the mental processes going on when the child was doing this: hearing grandmother read the written part of the book, relating that to how the child perceived the pictures, inventing narratives from visual images, synthesising the whole thing so that it was a satisfying, enjoyable, meaningful experience. 

We might guess (without having a transcript in front of us) the child, at times, empathised with the characters, 'harvested' what she knew of the story and 'applied' it to the stories she was making up, using cognitive awareness of things we, as adults, take for granted, eg rain making you wet, wind blowing hats off, things falling down that might be dangerous and a 100 if not a 1000 other aspects of cognition. 

All in that one process of reading slowly with a child, sharing a book, giving space for the child to explore, investigate, invent, talk, think.

The antisemitism inquiry at Goldsmiths University of London: some questions

 I want to list some of the things that are curious about Goldsmiths, University of London's antisemitism inquiry.

1. How was it decided that we needed one?

2. Why was it decided that out of all possible racisms and forms of discrimination to have inquiries about, why was it decided that it was antisemitism that needed an inquiry?

3. Did anyone in management suggest that we needed inquiry or was it someone or some people on the staff who made the suggestion?

4.. Who decided that the way to do it was to have one KC to do the inquiry?

5. Who drew up the terms of reference?

6. Some inquiries publish interim findings and clarifications, why isn't this happening?

7. The inquiry has called on people to come forward and report antisemitism. Fair enough. But if you're Jewish and you haven't experienced antisemitism, how is that being taken into account? Is there a list of Jews who are not complaining of antisemitism?

8. So far, the inquiry hasn't produced a definition of antisemitism, ie the one that they will be using in order to detect the thing they're investigating. Wouldn't this be useful for those of us who are Jewish in order to assess whether what we experience is the kind of antisemitism that the inquiry is investigating?

9. By last May (2024) the inquiry had cost £128,000. Why isn't there any indication what this money is being spent on?

10. Why can't the KC give some kind of indication as to when the inquiry might conclude?

11. It's possible that some people (eg me) have experienced what they deem to be antisemitism coming from a member (or members) of staff but in off-campus situations. Would that be relevant?

List of my more radical books

 for young readers:

Dread Cat

This is our House

Send for a Superhero

The Bakerloo Flea and other stories

The Adventures of Gaston le Dog

the three Uncle Gobb books (series)

The Missing

On the Move

Please Write Soon

You're Thinking about Doughnuts

You're Thinking about Tomatoes (two short novels for children exploring the 'material' origins in exploitation and colonialism (!) - second one is now a graphic novel with Cole Henley ;

One Day.

Unexpected Twist (a new take on Oliver Twist, new setting)

The Wicked Tricks of Till Owlyglass

for teens or adults:

Don't Mention the Children,

Pebbles,

Many Different Kinds of Love,

Getting Better

Fighters for Life,

Mr Mensh,

I'm Listening to a Pogrom on the Radio,

The Advantages of Nearly Dying.

Non-fiction:

Shakespeare in his time for our time,

Book of Dissent (with David Widgery),

What is Play?

Non-fiction for younger readers:

What's Special About Shakespeare?

What's Special about Dickens?

The Disappearance of Emile Zola

Books on education:

Good Ideas: How to Be Your Child's (and Your Own) Best Teacher

Did I Hear You Write?

The two Boris Johnson satires:

St Pancreas Defendat Me,

Farce Majeur.

for younger readers (non-fiction):

What is Humanism? (with Annemarie Young),

What is politics? (with Annemarie Young),

What is Art? (with Annemarie Young),

What is Right and Wrong? (with Annemarie Young).

Who are Refugees and Migrants? (with Annemarie Young)

Two collections of historically radical stories for children

'Workers' Tales',

'Reading and Rebellion' (with Kimberley Reynolds and Jane Rosen) - both volumes bringing together radical stories over the last 150 years that haven't been published since - with commentary on sources.

Two collections of William Morris's poetry:

The Pilgrims of Hope

Poems of Protest

Radical take on language:

Rosen's Almanac.

An autobiography/memoir

'So They Call You Pisher!' (also on audio at Audible)

Forthcoming:

Poems on Education (poems from NUT and NEU newspapers)

The King and the Tutor.

Forthcoming book of poems:

Words United.

The White Man's Burden and Gaza

Rudyard Kipling is best known

for the Jungle book:

Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, Akela and the rest

and (with the help of Disney)

the Bear/Bare Necessities,

also wrote about the White Man's Burden

a poem that urged America to

colonise the Philippines.

The burden in question was the moral duty

of the white man to civilise brown people

who, as he put it in the famous poem

about this 'Burden'

were 'new-caught, sullen peoples,/

Half devil and half child.'

The phrase

'white man's burden'

has also been used mockingly

to jeer at the 'burden' of pain and distress

the white man has carried

as he enslaved, exploited and genocided

his way across the world.

It's a phrase that has occurred to me

over the last year

as the death toll in Gaza has mounted

and the pictures of flattened apartment blocks

rows of shrouded dead bodies

naked prisoners

and limbs lying amongst air-raid rubble

have reached us,

and, more recently

the images of thousands of people

on long marches home

to homes that don't exist

while here there are some journals,

media shows and social media accounts

which have ignored this destruction,

mass killing, maiming and orphaning.

and focussed entirely on

Jewish pain,

which in theory, should be my pain too.

I have followed threads which

have meticulously reported on the personal strain

of being a Jew in London

the horror of reading signs that say

'from the River to the Sea'

the shock of seeing

the amalgamations of Stars of David with swastikas

the terror of knowing that

Jeremy Corbyn is free to speak in London,

the factual evidence in graphs that show a line

slanting upwards like the face of the Matterhorn

showing the increase in antisemitic incidents

(though whether these do or don't include

people swearing about Israel is not clear).

I've read articles

pleading the case that when the Chief Rabbi

referred to the Israeli army as

'our heroic soldiers'

we should most definitely not take that as reason

to blame him or anyone other Jew in Britain

for anything that the Israeli army is doing wrong

- not that the Israeli army is doing anything wrong,

they often add.

It's obviously antisemitic

they point out

to say that supporting Israel here

means we are responsible for anything

over there.

The old principle that antisemitism

is hating Jews because we are Jews

has slipped away.

Antisemitism now includes

hating Israel

or indeed caring too much

about the victims of Israel's army and airforce.

I've even checked myself

when I winced watching Israeli security forces

beating up 'Torah Jews'.

I realised I was unknowingly showing latent antisemitism

towards those security forces.

So I return to the newspaper columns

and social media posts

carefully mapping the pain of being Jewish

telling of the analogy

with what it was like to be Jewish

in Germany in 1938 at the time of Kristallacht

when 267 synagogues in Germany, Austria, and Sudetenland

were destroyed,

over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed,

and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.

and between one and two thousand Jews

were killed or committed suicide.

When the hostages from October 7th emerge

I read that this is like the survivors

from the concentration camps

and there is an audible shudder

at the analogy

with those pictures from Belsen, Auschwitz,

Buchenwald and the atrocious rest.

But then, as we can,

at the touch of a key on my computer

I can read, see and hear of the thousands of

mangled and incinerated bodies

in Gaza,

even if these don't appear on the social media

posts that talk of what should be my Jewish pain.

Then,

if I voice this,

a stern correction comes

which explains that these deaths in Gaza

are the people of Gaza's fault.

They are responsible for their own deaths.

And other people chip in explaining that

they're not really from Gaza anyway

and that they should all fuck off to Egypt.

Given that these posts are full of talk of

Krystallnacht

(or Tsarist pogroms that my father says

his grandfather used to play out on the kitchen table)

I look back at how the Nazis

in 1938

sold German families

lovely children's board games

where the pay off for your winning counter

was to send the Jew in his fur coat

'nach Palestäna'

'to Palestine'

so Germany could be 'judenfrei' (Jew-free)

or 'judenrein' (clean of Jews).

And there was a beautiful teutonic vision

of a pure Aryan 'Übermensch'

(super-people),

cleansed of the congenitally mentally or physically

disabled

cleansed of 'gypsies' and 'Jews',

and cleansed from German history too.

'No Felix Mendelsohn or Mahler now, grüss Gott').

And over the top of the thousands of corpses in Gaza

comes the voice of Trump and Netanyahu

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich

and indeed

the calm media voices explaining the nuances of meaning

in Trump's plans to 'clean out the whole thing'

(meaning Gaza)

and this glorious vision

of Jewish lands stretching

from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river

(not at all like that racist image of

'from the river to the sea', please God)

and people explain on social media

that there never was a Palestine,

the ancient mosques and churches

were just some kind of arbitrary

incursion by Ottomans or Crusaders

and now that they have been

(or will be, thanks to Trump)

flattened,

they will slide from history

like sandcastles in the sea.

My analogy with Rudyard Kipling is wrong though.

His 'burden'

I should remember was the pain of civilising brown people.

Now, I read,

that's not the task in hand.

Now,

the pain is having to hear people

going on and on about Gaza.

I read and must understand

that every photo of a dead Palestinian

is really Jew-hate.

With that sentence

I read that

the suffering of that Palestinian person's family

(if by luck or chance that family has survived)

is wiped away

and it's replaced by my suffering

of having to look at the photo.

5 star review of 'One Day' in Telegraph

 

Emily Bearn

08 January 2025 1:15pm GMT

Michael Rosen is one of our most popular children’s authors, beloved for such enchanting bedtime stories such as We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (1993), which to today’s child are as familiar as Winnie the Pooh. But he has never shied away from difficult themes. His Sad Book (2004) chronicled his grief following the death of his teenage son Eddie. The Missing (2020) was an account of his quest to find out what happened to his Jewish great-uncles Oscar and Martin – one a clockmaker; the other a dentist – who disappeared from France during WW2, and were presumed to have died in a concentration camp.

In One Day he returns to the subject of the Holocaust, using a 40-page picture book to tell the story of Eugène Handschuh, a Hungarian Jew working for the Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris. Handschuh narrates the story in factual, unsparing prose. “We were fighting the Nazis. And the Nazis were hunting down Jews. Jews like us,” he begins.

Two pages on, he and his father have been arrested. “We were interrogated. That meant we were beaten. Then we were sent to Compiegne camp.” They remain there for two months, “breaking stones” while surviving on starvation rations.

Eventually, in 1943, Handschuh and his father are placed on a train convoy carrying 1,200 Jews from Paris to Auschwitz – but with the help of fellow passengers, they escape by jumping from a window. ‘There were 19 of us who jumped on that day. The rest went to Auschwitz. Only 29 came back.” In an afterword to the story, Rosen reveals that his own ancestors were among those who died. “My father’s uncle and aunt were on that very same train. They didn’t come back.”

These are not easy subjects to tackle in a book aimed at readers as young as six. But Benjamin Phillips’s illustrations cleverly evoke the privations of life in the camp, without focusing on the brutality. The text is similarly careful, with much of the emphasis on the internal: “Get through on one day and then on to the next. One day at a time. One day after another.”

Rosen has always been something of a rebel. He’s an outspoken republican and has turned down an OBE. But what stands out about this book is its gentle, almost understated tone. Here, as with The Missing, there is no anger, and no grand prose. Instead, the emphasis is on the human capacity for renewal. As he concludes simply in the afterword: “It’s very difficult to find any hope in the horror and catastrophe of the Holocaust. Even so, here and there, we hear of stories where people were able to help each other or escape, and it can give us a lift.”

Books and a video I've made about my relatives and what happened to them in the Holocaust

'The Missing' (Walker Books) (Paperback) An autobiographical account of how I found out what happened to my relatives in the Holocaust. Suitable for children, teenagers and adults. (available in Portuguese) Contains documents, letters, photos. 


'Please Write Soon (Scholastic). (Paperback) This is a fictionalised account of the lives of my father when he was a boy in London during WW2 and his cousin in Poland at the same time. It's written as letters between the two boys. The Polish boy goes through persecution, flight, and arrest by the Russians, joining the Polish Free Army and fighting at the Battle of Monte Cassino. This is suitable for 8 year olds upwards. Illustrated by Michael Foreman. 


'On the Move' (Walker Books) (Paperback) This is a set of poems about growing up Jewish, finding out about my relatives in the Holocaust, and widening it out into questions of migration and persecution in general. (available in French as 'Prendre la Route'). Illustrated by Quentin Blake.


'One Day' (Walker Books). This an account of a group of French-Hungarian and French Jewish Communists in the Resistance who escaped from Convoy 62 on its way from Paris to Auschwitz. It's a true story. Convoy 62 was the transport that deported my father's uncle and aunt. (available in French and Italian). Illustrated by Benjamin Phillips.


Video: This is  also called 'The Missing'.  It's a 45 minute video I made for anyone of any age. It tells the story of 'The Missing' and 'On the Move' with documents, letters and photos.
It's on my YouTube Channel, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iR_GiyIJ6k


'So They Call You Pisher!' (Verso Books) - an autobiography for teens or adults, the last chapter of which is written as a letter to my father (who had died) telling him what I had found out about his relatives. Includes photos. 

Israeli newspaper 'Haaretz' quoted from and summarised Antony Blinken's speech this week as follows:

'"The more people suffer, the less they feel empathy for those suffering on the other side. Large majorities throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds believe October 7 didn't happen, and if it did, then it was a legitimate attack on Israel's military," he said. "In Israel, there was almost no reporting on the conditions in Gaza and what the people there endure every day. This dehumanization is one of the greatest tragedies of the conflict."

The primary element of Blinken's vision for Gaza's reconstruction starts with the Palestinian Authority inviting international partners to help establish and run an interim administration – responsible for civil sectors like banking, water, energy, health and civil coordination with Israel. The international community, according to Blinken, would provide funding, oversight and technical support.

The interim administration, meanwhile, would include both Gazans and PA representatives, selected after "meaningful consultation" with communities. It would hand over full responsibility to a fully reformed PA as soon as feasible.

It would operate in close cooperation with senior UN officials, alongside an interim security mission made up of partner nations and vetted Palestinian personnel responsible for a creating secure environment for humanitarian and reconstruction efforts, as well as border security preventing Hamas smuggling.

Under Blinken's plan, the U.S. would stand up a new initiative training a PA-led security force in Gaza that would gradually take over from an interim mission – the details of which would be enshrined in a UN Security Council resolution.

Blinken noted that several unnamed international partners expressed willingness to provide forces, but only if Gaza and the West Bank are reunified under a reformed PA as part of a pathway to an independent Palestinian state.

"All parties need to summon political will, make hard decision and hard compromises," he said. "Key regional and international actors need to fully commit to fully supporting Palestinian-led governance and preventing Hamas' return. The PA will need to carry out swift, far-reaching reform to build more transparent, accountable governance," he said.

Blinken further noted that Israel will have to accept reuniting Gaza and the West Bank under the leadership of a reformed PA. "All must embrace a time-bound, conditions-based path toward forming an independent Palestinian state. These principles are mutually reinforcing," he continued, painstakingly detailing missteps from both parties.

"Israelis must decide what relationship they want with the Palestinians. That cannot be the illusion that Palestinians will accept being a non-people without national rights," he said.

"Israelis must abandon the myth they can carry out de facto annexation without cost and consequence to Israel's democracy, its standing, its security," he continued.

"Some in Israel argue that accepting a political horizon for the Palestinians would reward Hamas for October 7. In fact, Hamas has tried to kill the idea of two states for decades."

Blinken insisted that Israel accepting a political horizon would be "the ultimate rebuke to Hamas' nihilistic agenda of death and destruction.

"Up to this point, the parties have failed to make these difficult decisions or acted in ways that put a long-term deal and peace further out of reach," he said, charging Israel with "systematically undermining the capacity and legitimacy of the only viable alternative to Hamas – the Palestinian Authority."

"Israel continues to hold back PA tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the Palestinians – funds that belong to the Palestinians and that the PA needs to pay people that provide essential services."

In the West Bank, meanwhile, Blinken noted that Israel is expanding official settlements and nationalizing land at a faster rate than at any time in the last decade while "turning a blind eye to the unprecedented growth of illegal outposts," adding that "violent attacks by extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians have reached record levels."

"We've long made the point that Hamas cannot be defeated by a military campaign alone," he continued, noting "in north Gaza, each time Israel completes its military operations and pulls back, Hamas militants regroup and reemerge because there's nothing else to fill the void.

"We assess Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost. That is a recipe for enduring insurgency and perpetual war," he continued. "The longer the war goes on, the worse the humanitarian situation gets in Gaza."

"Israel has pursued its military campaign past the point of destroying Hamas' military capacity," he added.

Blinken, however, charged Hamas with having "cynically weaponized the suffering of Palestinians," recalling how slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar sent a message to mediators deeming the deaths of Palestinian civilians "necessary sacrifices."

"Israel's efforts have fallen far short of meeting the colossal scale of need in Gaza. We've been clear publicly and privately, there are steps Israel could take to transform the humanitarian situation in Gaza," he continued.

"The longer the war goes on," Blinken warned, "the greater the risk that Israel's longstanding peace accords with Jordan and Egypt will collapse."

He further warned that Israel "remaining bogged down in Gaza will only harm Israel economically," noting hits to foreign direct investment and Israel's credit rating, as well as how the extended mobilization of reservists is undermining small businesses and private sector productivity.

Blinken further lamented the PA repeatedly failing to undertake long overdue reforms, such as reigning in corruption, and its refusal to consistently and unequivocally condemn October 7.

He said the latter point only entrenched doubt among Israelis that the two communities could ever live side-by-side – as has the PA's prisoner-payment system and "antisemitic remarks of its leader."

He further attacked regional leaders for not forcibly condemning October 7, nor the general operating mode of Hamas. "Had countries around the world applied this collective pressure," he said, "Hamas leaders might have been forced to make different decisions many months ago."

Despite this, he noted "much of the heavy lifting" on Israeli-Saudi normalization is complete, including U.S.-Saudi negotiations on making Saudi Arabia a treaty ally, energy agreements on civil nuclear cooperation and economic agreements to bolster bilateral trade and investment.

The two main elements blocking Israel-Saudi normalization, in his words, are the end of hostilities in Gaza and a credible pathway toward a Palestinian state.

END