It feels like I am always busy these days… busy cutting the crusts of fussy small people’s sandwiches, busy drawing and cutting and sticking creating artwork for a new picture book, busy rushing about being late for this and that. Not that I mind most of this modern juggling lark (apart from the being late for this and that bit)- most of it I love. But it does mean that downtime and relaxing is rather rare and precious…
When I lived in London before I had children, I used to do a lot of wistful gazing out of bus and train windows, I used to read books and articles and day dream on the way to my day job as an animator person, in cosy coffee shops at lunchtimes and have lazy lie ins in bed at the weekend.
I don’t get so much time to read as I used to, and with two young children I find that most of my reading is of picture books and children’s books... Actually If I am being completely honest - that was what I mostly read before I had children… so it is no bad thing.
Most of the books I buy are picture books. I still get a flutter of excitement when I stumble on a really beautiful picture book in a shop and buy it for “research” (it is good to have an excuse!) This will usually happen on a trip to London for a publishers meeting or something. I have absolutely no patience and will always read the new book and pour over each illustrated page on the train journey back home. It is pure escapism and magic and means that I will not even tut or care if the train is delayed or late (which it invariably is). I have gotten used to the raised eyebrows and funny glances from people in public places when they realise a grown up is reading a picture book without any children around. I do feel sad that most people don’t appreciate that stories with pictures are important, dismissing them as mere childish things. So many picture books deal with big ideas and rich emotional concepts that could touch anyone of any age. A good picture book for me is like visual and written poetry that has been mixed together with love to make something rather amazing.
At home I realise I have become quite obsessed with big comfy old chairs and creating little spaces where you can curl up and read... either by myself or with my son or daughter. Now I realise that this was the inspiration for my new picture book with Bloomsbury Are You Sitting Comfortably?. We don’t live in a big house and my husband won’t let me rescue any more lovely abandoned old armchairs from skips, so instead, I drew them and put them in a book.
I have reupholstered most of the old chairs we have in our house. The chair I covered with a pair of 1970s curtains sits in my bedroom and is a great chair for reading picture books in the morning.
Another chair I covered with a bright orange hospital felt blanket and some pink material now sits in the corner of my garden shed, ahem, I mean my studio. At first I used to sit and read on it, but these days I can barely see it as it is covered with artwork and book layouts and other miscellaneous creative debris.
Last year I was so desperate for a quiet reading nook in our busy house that I had the brainwave/moment-of-insanity of turning an unsightly messy deep cupboard in the hallway into a little restful hidyhole sanctuary. It has become known as Narnia - as although the first half of it now houses a comfy rocking chair, the cupboard is a lot deeper than you expect and hiding behind a curtain there is a lot of household boring stuff like light bulbs, tax folders and a permanently smiley Henry the Hoover.
However, of all the places to read in the whole wide world, it seems that on my three-year-old son’s humble little bed is the firm favourite. We read two books together everything. One chosen by my son, and the other chosen by my daughter. The funny thing is, that of all the zillions of picture books I devoured before children... it was not until I had my children that I actually read any of them out loud. It is quite a different experience, and much much more fun in so many ways. To have a shared reading experience with them is such a privilege, not to mention being able to be over dramatic with the performance and character voices. (Although this, I fear might be a bit too much even for me on a commuter train from London).
The other very incredible thing that is happening now, is my daughter is starting to read too. Sometimes at bedtime she reads US all story (yes, with the funny voices too!) Lately I have seen her skulk off quietly and curl up in one of those big old chairs of ours and get lost in a book all by herself, and that makes me very very happy indeed.
Leigh Hodgkinson’s Are You Sitting Comfortably is available from the Guardian bookshop.
Join in: Where do you like to read? Tweet us pix to @GdnChildrensBks so we can add to this gallery. Or if you don’t tweet you can email us childrens.books@theguardian.com.
@EmilyDrabs @hoonbutton @GdnChildrensBks @guardian Lying in front of the fireplace. Perfect for a read and a snooze!
— Mahtab Narsimhan (@MahtabNarsimhan) April 1, 2016
Personally I never read in a chair - it's all bed and bath for me! @hoonbutton https://t.co/Nur65gDma7 @GdnChildrensBks
— Emily Drabble (@EmilyDrabs) April 1, 2016
@GdnChildrensBks @EmilyDrabs @hoonbutton everywhere but soft spot for reading in the bath...
— Perdita (@perditact) April 1, 2016
