The start

The Land where No Dragons Live/ Stories for the Family

When I went on journeys by train with my sons I wanted something to talk to them about. ‘The Land where No Dragons Live’ was one of the stories I made up for them as we travelled around Tower Hamlets where I still live now.

When they were younger I told them stories: ‘The Dribble Dribble monster’ and ‘Abigail the Boat’. I would also tell memorised children’s traditional tales. They were around 7 and 9 when I told them ‘No Dragons’.

When my daughter (7 years younger than my sons) was that age, I told it to her too. She really enjoyed it, and with this encouragement I began to write it down.

In my work as a Family Learning teacher I go into schools to teach parents how to help with their children’s literacy. My first lessons are about the importance of traditional tales and of oral storytelling. Many of the parents in the borough where I work come from other countries, and I encourage them to tell some of their traditional tales as part of the class. If they don’t know any, I encourage them to tell a story from their family or the story of a journey such as coming to England for example.

I am very keen on people realising they have so many resources to share with their children. People can feel lost when they arrive in this country; it can seem that the children have run ahead of them in language learning and integration. It is easy for parents to allow their children to be taught by online media and by other people. It’s important they know that they have still got so much to give into their children’s lives.

This is not only true of people from abroad. Society has changed fast: parents can feel that, just due to time and not distance, they are out of touch and irrelevant to their children. This is not true. It takes some effort to communicate our stories but it is so worth it.

I really treasure the oral tradition I got from my parents and grandparents. My dad made up some stories that entranced me. My mum was a storyteller of a different kind. She liked to tell the stories of her family history in long and dramatic style. She enjoyed going into the details of the stories to the extent that I would sometimes long for her to get to the point and just tell me what happened, but for mum the joy of the story was in the long journey.

My mothers mum knew songs and rhymes from her era by heart. One was : ‘When Mary Anne was cooking once, our Polly made a pie’. My father’s father’s storytelling ranged from knock, knock jokes, through singing ‘Black Bottom, a new rhythm…’ and reciting the comical alphabet’ A for horses. B for mutton, C for yourself, to reciting the whole of the Ancient Mariner.

One of my daughters favourite car journey games was the one where someone says a short paragraph of a story and the next person carries on so that all have contributed to the story. We would all have our favourite parts to play. My daughter, aged around 6, would start off with a sweet tale about a fairy and her woodland friends. Her middle brother, 13, would then get the mafia to come and mow them all down with machine guns. The job left to me was to resolve this widely veering story into something that would keep my daughter happy. It was a good test for the imagination!