Tess Gibney speaks with children’s author, Andrew Daddo, about what it takes to make a good book.
Andrew Daddo certainly knows the joy of a really, really good book. One that switches the flick, so to say; so good you just can’t put it down.
Daddo even remembers ‘that’ book, the first to give him that insatiable urge to read. “I remember when I found it,” he says. “I just went – ‘this is brilliant.’ I could see it, I could hear it, I could smell it, I could feel it.”
It is this excitement Daddo hopes to imbue in children today; raised as they are on a diet of technology. Aside from the obvious, page-turning tangibility of a paper book, Daddo wants to leave kids to their own devices – allowing them the freedom to rediscover the joy of fully engaging their imaginations.
Daddo’s latest book, Ned, is part of Penguin’s “Stuff Happens” series – a collection of stories about the everyday lives of young boys, written by various authors. The series, which includes titles Jack (written by Tony Wilson) Michael (Phillip Gwynne) and Sean (Will Kostakis), is designed to improve the emotional literacy of pre-adolescent boys by providing them with a realistic comparison point to their own lives.
“The series is about providing kids with a bit of empathy, or that access to empathy, to understand that stuff happens to them and that it’s pretty normal,” Daddo explains.
Described by Daddo as just a ‘really normal story’, Ned‘s purpose is to make kids realise that sometimes life isn’t like the movies, and that being ‘normal’ isn’t boring – it’s just life, and it’s fun and it’s good.
“It’s not necessarily advice, Ned’s family is pretty funky, and pretty daggy and just so very, very normal. Kids often read stories where the kid is cool, and his mates are cool and there are good guys and bad guys,” he says.
“Ned is just a really normal story where kids can go – ‘oh, my dad’s like that, he’s a dag!’ or, ‘yeah! my sister’s a pain too and my brother doesn’t understand me’.”
Now the author of an impressive 25 books, Daddo – an acclaimed media personality and dad of three – says though it’s a hard task dragging younger kids away from the screen, it can be done.
“TV and games are good. And games these days really are so, so good compared to what we used to have when we were kids – which were just crap. It’s a really hard sell to say to a kid; ‘here, put that three dimensional thing down, where you can talk to your friends live online and shoot people, and read this nice story about a little boy’. Any kid is going to think, ‘why would I?’”
“A book will, you know, give them a different life and different perspective. Say that to a 10 year-old and they’ll say ‘what are you talking about?’, but once they find the right book – the book that’s going to turn them on – it’ll be quite clear that that’s what they want to do,” he says.
So just how does Daddo propose parents do it? Lock the iPad in the cupboard, put the book in front of them and force them to read?
Well, not quite. “Don’t just be the facilitator and say, ‘well here’s this book I got, you should read it’, and expect them to read it,” Daddo says.
“Read to them, and read with them. Start at a young age so they think of reading as an important part of their life and their relationship with their parents and family.”
Are books on the agenda for Daddo’s kids this Christmas?
He laughs. “We always, always, always, give our kids books for Christmas. Books are probably the one thing [my wife and I] are not frugal about. I try and say, listen you lot, I know there’s a place in your school called the library.”
Andrew Daddo’s Ned (RRP $9.99) is published by Penguin Books Australia as part of the Stuff Happens series. His other books, Goodnight Me and A New First Day, will be republished for Christmas.
