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Woozy the Wizard: A Spell to Get Well written by Elli Woollard and Al Murphy is the first in a new and very funny series of readers for children just gaining confidence in reading alone.

Woozy is a terribly well-meaning wizard who’s keen to help his friends, but more often than not he gets somewhat mixed up and his spells don’t quite do what they’re meant to. With the help of his pet pig Woozy flies around trying to sort things out, and in the process it becomes clear that whilst it may not be magic, it is certainly something quite magical that helps put the world to rights.

Lots of humour, great rhythm and rhyme (enormous aids when practising reading because they help with scanning a line, and predicting how words should be pronounced), and clear, bright and colourful illustrations all add up to a lovely book perfect to give to your emerging reader.

To celebrate the publication of I interviewed the author of Woozy the Wizard: A Spell to Get Well, Elli Woollard, about her work. Given Elli is a poet, I challenged her to answer me in rhyme….

Zoe: Rhyming seems to be in your blood. Where did this passion come from?

Elli Woollard: The thing about me is I sing quite a lot
(I rather enjoy it; the neighbours might not),
And I guess if you’re singing for much of the time
Your mind sort of slips into thinking in rhyme.

Zoe: How does your blog, where you regularly publish poems/works in progress, help you with your writing?

Elli Woollard: My blog’s like a sketchbook for scribbles and scrawls
And all of my mind’s muddly mess.
I write them all down, and sometimes I frown,
But some make me want to go ‘YES!’

Elli on the Dr Seuss book bench that was recently on view in London.

Zoe: What would your ideal writing location/environment be like and why?

Elli Woollard: A hot cup of coffee, a warm purring cat;
There’s not much more that I need than that.
Working at home is really quite nice
(Except when the cat thinks my fingers are mice).

Zoe: What was the most magical part for you in the process of seeing Woozy the Wizard come to life as a printed book?

Elli Woollard: Writing, writing, is ever so exciting,
Especially when you’ve finished and say ‘Look!
All of my creations now come with illustrations!
Bloomin’ heck, I think I wrote a book!’

Zoe: What tips do you have for kids who love to write poetry?

Elli Woollard: Use your ears, use your eyes, use your heads, use your feet,
Stand up proud, read aloud, and just listen to that beat.
Feel the rhythm, feel the vibes of the poetry you’ve heard,
And think about the magic that’s in every single word.

Zoe: Which poets for children do you like to read?

Elli Woollard: Donaldson (Julia), Rosen (Mike),
Lear (Edward) and Milligan (Spike),
I could go on, and write a long list,
But so many good ones I know would get missed.

Zoe: Thanks Elli! I’m already looking forward to the next outing for Woozy, in spring 2015!

Photo: daskerst

A young girl, Jub, lives in a dark forest. She has a terribly important job – every night she must take the sack full of Happy Endings, climb to the top a huge oak tree and then scatter the endings to the wind to ensure they find their way into homes all around the world where parents are telling bedtime stories to their children. She’s good at her job, and enjoys it, spending her days reading and visiting neighbours whilst the Happy Endings fly back to the forest to hang from the ancient silver birch, ready to be collected and distributed each night.

One evening, however, a wicked witch, with “fierce red eyes like poisonous berries” steals the girl’s sack. With no Happy Endings, children in bedrooms everywhere go to bed that night in tears. Cinderella’s foot is too big for the glass slipper. The Big Bad Wolf gobbles up Little Red Riding Hood.

Photo: ((brian))

Jub is distraught. Her heart is “as sore as toothache“. Exhausted by despair, she eventually falls asleep and (appears to) dream of a Golden Pen which can write on the night sky itself. She takes the pen and uses it to re-write her own story, to create her own happy ending, ensuring the witch meets her comeuppance and once again the Happy Endings can find their way into your home, my home and every home where bedtime stories are told.

Duffy has created a fairy story par excellence – mysterious, slightly menacing, with one foot in our world and another in a rather more magical world, a magical world that you nevertheless want to believe in when you read this story. The tale is beautifully told, with so many phrases where each word seems perfectly chosen, where it is hard to imagine a simpler yet more evocative way of expressing a given emotion or situation; Duffy’s first calling, as a poet, really shines through.

Jane Ray&

If like me you grew up (mostly) in the UK in the 70s and 80s and you’re asked to think of a famous witch from the canon of children’s literature, I’m fairly confident the name Meg would be one of the first to trip off your tongue.

Back in 1972 Meg and Mog arrived on the scene (in a flash of lightning, out of a cauldron, the wonderful result of a spell gone not quite according to plan, I like to think), the creation of Helen Nicoll and Jan Pieńkowski and they’ve been delighting children ever since. I loved their books when I was little and now my children share my laughter when we read the stories of crazy japes and spells gone wrong which come together to form the Meg and Mog series.

With Halloween not far off the timing couldn’t have been better for the release of the first new Meg and Mog book in four years. Meg Goes to Bed is a worthy addition to the collection. Although the story is perhaps not quite as satisfying as Meg at Sea, Mog’s Missing or Meg’s Car, many features that you would want to find in a quintessential Meg and Mog story are here to delight in.

There is an apparently simple scenario – Meg, Mog and Owl are hungry – but yet disaster still manages to strike. There’s a classically illustrated recipe for a spell, followed by the inevitably unintended results when the magic words are incanted. Meg’s catch phrase (“Oh dear, oh dear“), Mog and Owl’s nigh on obligatory crash landing and the idea that hard work and perseverance rather than the swish of a magic wand will get you what you need all add up to making this a book that my children were thrilled to read and that I was very pleased to add to our collection.

Pieńkowski’s bold, graphic design influenced illustrations, with their bright, sheer palette and tone are dramatic and exciting. In Meg Goes to Bed the articulation of the familiar characters, Meg, Mog and Owl is slightly less smooth than in earlier Meg and Mog books, but then I would not expect characters which have been drawn for almost 40 years to be identical today with their first incarnations. Indeed when I asked Jan about this as part of an interview I held with him (which will be published on Monday) he had this to say: “Change is inevitable… The Great Masters have “an Old Style”, perhaps humble illustrators are allowed to have one too!“.

An additional joy of reading Meg Goes to Bed was that it made a great early reader for M – in fact she has taken great pride in reading it to J. As M said, it’s a “real” book (rather than one written as an early reader), with engaging, familiar illustrations. Seeing M’s happiness at being able to read a brand new story from a s

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The extremes my children contain within themselves continually amaze me. If M sees someone upset she’ll immediately offer a soft toy or a hug by way of comfort. But then incidents happen like last week when I had to leave the table briefly during supper time. M stuffed the entire contents of her plate down the back of the sofa and then assured me she had been so hungry she had finished her food in double quick time. As you can imagine I was rather cross – and since then the topic of behaviour, both good and bad has featured in quite a few of our conversations.

By chance we had a perfectly timed library find this week – Witches and Fairies written and illustrated by Eva Montanari.

On starry nights, there are
fairies in the woods.
And there are witches….
Needless to say,
fairies and witches
are different.

This is all very well but then one day along comes Clotilda “who hasn’t any stars to be a fairy. And her hat is too pointed to be a witch.” Not accepted by either camp Clotilda is sidelined and left watching the fairies and witches play. One day the fairies and witches end up fighting over Clotilda, but her actions have the marvellous effect of mixing everything up so that it is no longer possible to tell who is a witch and who is a fairy. In fact, the wood become home to a new game, a game of –

“… being Clotilda,
and being, like most of us,
a little bit
fairy
and a little
bit
witch!”

This humorous story has been a great starting point for discussions about what makes us the same and what makes us different. Given what happened last week it’s also led to a conversation about the possible differences between fairy-like and witch-like behaviour.

When I asked M about what she’d done with her food in this context she gave me her “I know what you’re getting at but I’m not going to give you what you want” look and said, “Mu-um…I’m a little bit bee. A little bit bee and a little bit wasp.” I had to smile.

Eva Montanari’s illustrations are just as much fun as her story. The witches and fairies are a far cry from any Disney version. They are impish and energetic, not classically beautiful but nevertheless adorable.

We’ve all enjoyed this book – it’s not too pink and sparkly for Dad to enjoy reading it with the girls, it’s just the right length and ratio of text to illustrations for J to enjoy, M has certainly understood the message and it’s brought a smile to my face – all in all it comes highly recommended by the whole family!

Taking this post at Nature Kids, written by Beth from Acorn Pies, and also by these adorable storytelling dolls made by Farida who writes at Saints and Spinners as our starting point we set about making our own fairies with stars on their clothes and pointy hats.

We