Storytelling Starters ~ Elephant Luck
A girl pushes her fingers down the back of the rear seat of an abandoned Renault car in the scrapyard near her home. As she exlores the hole her fingers have found, she feels the hard-edged corner of what is surely a box. Determined to get it out, whatever it is, she returns to the scrapyard a day or two later. This time, she succeeds. She sees that the top of the box is covered with fabric which could be Indian or Chinese and inside, when she opens it, she finds a shining glass figurine of what looks like an elephant man. The elephant man will turn out to be a statuette of Ganesh, the Hindu god. But even before the girl finds that out, her questions have begun.
Questions on World Book Day:
At Ysgol Dafydd Llwyd in Newtown, Powys, on World Book Day this week, the children were brilliant at thinking what those questions might be. How had the box got down the back of the seat? Who put it there? Why? Who did it belong to? What might the figure be worth? How old could it be? Where was it made? Did it have any special significance? How much might you get if you put it on eBay? How long had it been in the Renault? Could you trace its rightful owner?
Ysgol Dafydd Llwyd:
I’d been invited to Ysgol Dafydd Llwyd for World Book Day because three top Junior classes there are reading Elephant Luck, my second children’s novel. In previous weeks, they’d got well started on the book but still had plenty of way to go. Without giving too much away, I was able to show them my own little glass Ganesh figure, given to me by Sabita, a wonderful charity worker from India who stayed with me in London once. I also showed them pieces of cloth I’d bought in Nairobi when I was there and let them know that the middle part of Elephant Luck would take them to Kenya. (I went to Kenya to do V.S.O. when I was 18.) I told them about some of the places they’d visit as they read the rest of my book – the Elephant Nursery outside Nairobi, Bazaar Street, Lake Nakuru and also a family home and curry restaurant in Swansea! I let them know that, by the end, all their questions would be resolved.
But not only questions poured out from the children. So did links that they made with my story. Nearly everyone in the year 5/6 class had been to Pembrokeshire where my book begins: they’d been there to compete in the Urdd Eisteddfod. The teacher of the youngest class I saw had been to Kenya with the Young Farmers. So had a boy in one of the other classes. One girl has a carved wooden Ganesh at home. A boy has two carved elephant figures. And, yes, when reminded by their teacher, the year 4/5 class remembered some work they’d previously done on Hindu gods.
I love it when children get really involved and start coming up with things from their own experience. I loved it on Thursday, too, when I talked to the children about visualisation and they proved brilliantly able to do some brief visualisation work of their own.
What can’t be weighed:
The pleasure of a good day cannot be weighed. I loved my day in Ysgol Dafydd Llwyd. I loved the way the children responded. I greatly appreciated meeting the teachers, especially Anwen Jarman, who’d taken such trouble in organising and preparing my visit. I also loved having coffee and lunch in a staff room where all the talk is in Welsh.
Then yesterday, Friday, was another good day, though of a completely different sort. Back in Pembrokeshire, the weather was sunny, clear and warm and though it was a shock to see the damage the big storms have done to trees and beaches, it was brilliant to be out walking. My walk provided my second photo – some of the hundreds of celandines shining out from the verges. As I say, the pleasure of a good day is incalculable.
Tags: celandines, Elephant Luck, Ganesh, Kenya, Nairobi, Ysgol Dafydd Llwyd