Background
During the 1st lockdown I went on an online course about reading for and with children. This introduced me to a range of books and authors I hadn’t known.
These included Geraldine McCaughrean – who rewrote Moby Dick, Arabian Nights and other classics for a younger, more modern audience – and Chris Priestley. Chris writes portmanteau collections of spooky stories. Each book is set in a specific location from where the stories can be told – an old seaside pub, for example.
When we returned to normal schooling, we were introduced to a new English writing scheme called Writing for Pleasure. (We had already implemented ‘Reading for Pleasure’.)
An aim of this scheme was to establish all teachers to be seen as active writers. After the lesson input, the teacher would spend 10 minutes or so writing their own story, while the children wrote their own. (The genre had already been agreed upon.)
The story writing would continue for 2–3 weeks until the children had written a draft, edited it and rewritten it with improvements based on suggestions from peers or the teacher.
I remember writing a fairy story about a young ice maiden who longed for adventure. In spite of her parents’ warnings, she left her ice palace and travelled to the limit of her known world. Here she came across a huge forest – as vast as the ice world she was leaving behind. She made her way though the snow and the trees until she came out the other side.
The climate and the landscape were decidedly different in this sandy new world and she saw children playing on a beach, splashing in the sea and enjoying the sunshine. It wasn’t long before she felt rather too hot and realised she was melting.
However, help was at hand in the shape of a friendly ice cream van owner who managed to scoop her up, put her in the van’s freezer compartment and safely drove her home to be reunited with her relieved parents.
A rapprochement was achieved as the ice queen realised there were places that were, after all, too dangerous for her and the parents agreed to let her go out on her own and seek independence, within the limits of their ice world and the near side of the forest.
Activity
Your task today is to write a fable for children. Could you write a modern version of the Princess and the Pea? Little Red Riding Hood? The tortoise and the hare? Androcles and the Lion? The 3 Little Pigs / or Goats and Bears of various sizes? Rapunzel?
Remember that you are writing for children, so the language will need to reflect that, but remember also that the subject matter, when handled sensitively, can more or less be anything. I’ve even read an oblique reference to rape in After Tomorrow by Gillian Cross (a novel for teenagers) and of course cancer is the subject matter in Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls (itself not an original story). Not to mention marmalade sandwiches in Paddington which could be read as an addiction to opioids. So if a theme seems ostensibly too grown up, it might just not be.
Finally, I am aware that in publishing terms, the ‘Modern Day Fairy Tale’ might seem a little hackneyed these days but
a) this is all about having fun and letting your imagination go wild
and
b) one of these days, the MDFT will surely come back into fashion!
Good luck!
Chris Dance – June 2023
Huddersfield Authors Circle 
Leave a comment