In a slight detour from my usual delightfully raucous Storytelling work, 2016 saw me working in partnership with Penguin Random House appearing as their official Beatrix Potter.  This year saw the 150th anniversary of her birth and I toured an interactive family show around major literary festivals, music festivals, bookshops and story centres up and down the country. Quite often Peter Rabbit himself would join me on stage to help tell his story and to lead us in song and dance. Every single child left with bunny ears, stickers and a limited edition writing book which encouraged the themes of creative literacy explored in the show.

The casting came as a surprise to me. No to dreadlocks, no to tattoos, no to fantastical, multicoloured, flying, fairytale coat and bad monkey impressions.  Yes to starched cuffs, yes to high neck blouses, yes to pocket watches, yes to sensible, boots and cut-glass annunciation. However, through honestly fascinating research I found that we had more in common than I first expected. A deep love of the countryside and an appreciative eye for beauty in the small really rang true for me. Her love of fungi (a study of which she put into a hitherto unpublished scientific paper) and no small amount of absurdity fuelled her days in her beloved Lake District.  Any woman that can put a waistcoat on a frog or mop cap on a hedgehog clearly has a mischievous heart and as such I painted my Beatrix with these colours. Deliciously silly, delightfully mad and thoroughly serious about both endeavours.

The celebrations are now over and my Beatrix has been retired, but we had a blast together, as did the 1000s of children (the young and old ones) who came and listened with their hearts as well as ears.

I’m so excited to be able to share a glimpse of some of my work with schools. The wonderful staff and children at Bentfield Primary School allowed me to spend the day spinning tales with them and film the whole shebang.

Vast, sprawling thanks to Smoke No Pony who filmed, edited and animated (yep!) this visual feast.

Here is a tale I call Monkey See, Monkey Do.

I am, amongst other things, a storyteller.

Me, the mouth where my stories come from and the mirror that tells me I AM the fairest of them all, most of the time.

This year sees the 200th anniversary of the first edition of  Children’s and Household Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.  Their monumental tomb of tales, some of which lay ingrained within the fibre of our childhoods.   As with whispers and gossip, tales told time and time over often end up not really resembling their true form.  Today saw a story in the Telegraph which made me feel all shades of opinion.  You can read the full article here .

The headline reads “Fairytales too scary for modern children, say parents.”  It is the result of an American TV channel’s survey who’s results, issued as a press release, gives their new ultra-adult retelling of classic Grimm tales heaps of promotion.  I realise I am playing into their hands, but I could not lessen my grip on this.

2000 parents were surveyed; 50% refused to read their children Rumplstiltskin or Rapunzel because of  unsavory issues raised such as the threat of kidnap and execution.   A third of parents report that the eating of the grandmother in Little Red Riding Hood by the wolf left their children in tears.   52% feel Cinderella is outdated as it sees a young girl left carrying out household chores all day.

Oh my…… where to begin?

Yes, if you tell the original version of Cinderella it will be outdated, the story is over 200 years old.  However,  you will also learn that the two step-sisters are punished for their wickedness with blindness by having their eyes pecked out by two pigeons.

It is a moralistic tale; if you chose to do bad things to good people, that badness will eventually return to you.  It is a simple and exceptionally relevant lesson.  Surely it is the parent’s responsibility to unpack this moral to those little ones too small to understand themselves and not just leave them reeling and in tears??

Secondly, children like to be scared …as long as it’s within a safe environment.  That’s why theme parks are so successful, why playing peek-a-boo is so hilarious.  It’s positively beneficial for their health and well-being, if we do not let children explore the boundaries of their emotions, how on earth do we expect them to become grounded, level-headed adults?  If we wrap them in cotton wool, we run the very real risk of creating a generation of adults who are risk adverse, overly cautious and full, full of fear.  The very thing we are trying to protect them from.

The world is a place of undefinable beauty, inexplicable wonders but there is also darkness beyond the very depths of our imaginings, there has to be, as one cannot exist without the other.   For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (Newtons Third Law of Motion physics fans) (For fellow Brian Cox fans, here’s a pic of our Bri looking like a sexy physics angel, .. any excuse)

It may be that the survey was weighted towards providing a negative outcome for our friend Fairytale, you can prove almost anything with the right statistic.

I really could go on, but I feel I’ve ranted enough.  Before I go though, I’d just like to ponder where the notion has come from that stories are just for children?

The utterly fantastic Rachel Rose Reid is a flying example of a contemporary adult storyteller.  We all have a heart, we all have a soul, those souls need sustenance and watering so they can grow.  So here we are, have a nibble on some soul food…