…our second son Rafael Patrick was born two months ago today, on the Monday of carnaval, with the whole country dancing around us.

 

I would have written something here sooner if his arrival had been an easy one. But it wasn’t.

 

Rafa was born with a rare condition called a diaphragmatic hernia. It meant that organs which should have been down in his abdomen were actually up in his chest. This made it difficult for him to breathe. And less then two hours after his birth, he was in intensive care. The doctors reckoned his chances of surviving were about 50:50. At only 4-days-old he had to have an operation to put things back in the right place.

 

Happily the operation was a success. Even more happily, Rafa made an amazing recovery. One doctor used the word “sensational” to describe it (a nice word to hear from a doctor.)  

 

He spent nearly three weeks in hospital but is now at home with us, and seems a strong, happy baby.

 

So, here’s to the special boy, who got through such a hard journey so early on.

 

I read this poem to him when he was born:

 

 

WAITING FOR RAFAEL PATRICK

 

The chairs have been listening out for you.

Trees in the park look to see if you’ve arrived.

At the bottom of the toy-box, animals wonder

if your fingers will bring them to life.

 

The grit under the steps expects you.

Roof tiles look forward to keeping you dry.

A sandpit sits quietly, waiting for your feet.

The moon waits for you to look in the sky.

 

A warm weave of family and friends waits.

The hard ground waits to catch you when you fall.

And spoons lie waiting to reflect your face

in the darkness of the kitchen drawer.

 

Colours, stories and seashores wait for you.

And the sounds from the street before dawn.

And now the windowpanes whisper to each other,

                        “He’s born! He’s born now! He’s born now! He’s born!”

 

 

Although Rafael is doing well, and life is steadying now, I’ve decided not to travel to the UK as planned in May of this year. I’ve cancelled a number of events I was going to take part in. But I will be making the journey later in the year…in August and September.

 

So I’ll be available for school visits, bookshop signings other events then. Make touch if you’d like to arrange anything.

 

Last month I travelled to woods in West Sussex with storyteller Inno Sorsy and Year Six children and their teachers from Harbinger Primary School in East London. It was my twelfth Writers’ Journey with the school.

This year we worked on a story from the Middle East called ‘The Faithful Gazelle’.  All sorts of special writing was done in response to the story and the countryside around us.  This poem, by Manesha, left everybody still when she read it out:

HOW TO MAKE A GAZELLE

First take soft, smooth fur as gentle as the light of mid dawn.

Add bones stiff as stone.

Then attach 4 metal hooves to make a ‘click, clock, clack’.

Sprinkle a spoonful of quietness and a pinch of wild.

Finally place 2 sharp, shiny, grey horns.

by Manesha Yasmin

Thanks to Manesha for her beautiful writing, and to everyone else who took part.  You helped make it another journey to remember!

I will be in the UK for four weeks in the run-up to Easter.  If you are near Oxford on Sunday 5th April you can see me at the Oxford Literary Festival. I will be doing a session for 3-8 year olds featuring riddles, stories and my new picture book CROCODILES ARE THE BEST ANIMALS OF ALL. 12pm in Christ Church Cathedral School.  Tickets £3.50, available at Oxford Tickets .

Two of my poems have been animated for the big new series Poetry Pie, on the Cbeebies Channel.  You can see ‘Six Pots of Paint’ on 16th March 2009 and ‘When My Mum Got Her Electric Wheelchair’ on 24th March 2009.  Both at 4:55pm.  The series features a whole lot of wonderful writers including Valerie Bloom, Roger McGough and Michael Rosen. And some of the poems will be available to view on the Cbeebies webpage, www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies .

As a way of celebrating the UK’s 2008 National (leap) Year of Reading, Scholastic Books have brought out a book called “WOW! 366″. It’s aimed at 5-11 year olds and contains 240 stories, all of which were donated by contributors and are exactly 366 words long:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/WOW-366-Speedy-Stories-Words/dp/1407107984

I gave them a story. So did Michael Morpurgo, Anne Fine, Raymond Briggs, Roddy Doyle, Terry Jones, Geraldine McCaughrean, Gervase Phinn, Wendy Cope, Tom Fletcher from the band McFly…and Gordon Brown. It costs £6.99, and profits from sales go to ChildLine.

There’s also a competition to write your own story in 366 words, open to all ages with a prize of 366 books. Go to: http://www.scholastic.co.uk/wow366/comp.

You can enter online. The closing date is 31st December 2008.

I recently led the creative writing side of a two-week-long poetry, story and percussion project at The Cherry Trees School in Bow. Cherry Trees is a special primary school for boys with emotional and behavioural difficulties. The project is run by the Spitalfields Festival Education and Community Programme, and it is the tenth year in a row that I have been lucky enough to take part in it.

This has been a very rewarding challenge for me. I have learnt much from working with the sparky, sharp-witted boys and the school’s skilful staff. So many thanks to everyone who has helped it happen over the past ten years. Now I have a young baby and am living abroad I have said it will be the last year I do the project. And I will miss it.

This year I told the younger two classes a fast-moving Russian folktale called The Iron Wolf. Meanwhile the older boys worked on an Indian love story called The Snake Prince. A lot of strong writing was done in response to the stories. Many boys managed to write honestly about difficult subjects and, what’s more, stand up in a performance to read out their poems. So fair play to them and all the parents, carers and relatives who came to the performance on the 4th April.

This was one of the poems that I liked:

PEOPLE BREAKING MY THINGS

 People breaking my Lego.

People breaking my home.

People breaking my toys.

People breaking my mum’s car.

People breaking my toy cars.

People littering in the street.

People hitting me.

People making me so angry, I can’t breathe.

But I can count to ten

and think about a boat and happy feelings

on holiday in Cyprus.

by Aedan

 

I am back in the UK for a few weeks.  Had a lot of fun with Year Six from Harbinger Primary School, out in the West Sussex woods last week.  Thanks to every one of the children for their writing, their riddles and their moments of funky dancing, to Inno Sorsy, who worked alongside me, and to the teachers who, for eleven years now, have been helping make the Harbinger Writers’ Journey a special few days.

I will be telling some of the traditional stories from my new book, THE GREAT SNAKE, at The Eden Project, in Cornwall, this coming weekend.  And I will also be storytelling at Waterstones in Greenwich on the morning of Monday 7th April.  It’s a free event, running from 11.00 to 12.30.  Age-group 6-11.  Stories followed by a creative writing workshop and book-signing session.  Come along to that if you can.

Here’s news of a couple of events coming up in the UK in the spring. In March I will be launching my new book, THE GREAT SNAKE – STORIES FROM THE AMAZON. I will be telling stories from the book and signing copies at Stanfords Book Shop in Bristol (29 Corn Street, BS1 1HT) on Saturday 15th March at 2pm. And I will be telling some of the stories from the Amazon on Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday (22nd & 23rd March 2008) at The Eden Project in Cornwall. You’ll find me in The Tropical Biome…

I am writing this in warm night air in Brazil. My family and I arrived yesterday (after three years in England, living in Bristol). We are going to live here now, in São Paulo, a city of almost twenty million people. It’s famous for being a place of stress, hurry, pollution and violence. But it’s also a place of music, encounters, open-hearts and surprises. So I’m glad to be back! 2007 has been a heart-warming year for me and my wife Adriana. The most heart-warming part was the birth of our son, Joey back in January.

I hope to have this site up and running before the end of the year. So, if you’re reading this in time, let me wish you bright eyes and fresh adventures in 2008.