A Book That Stayed With Me

 

There are not many books in my library that I can honestly say I would sit down and read all the way through again. I have never been an avid reader, which probably makes the few that have stayed with me for many years all the more noticeable.

One of them is Upside Down Stories by Donald Bisset.

I found the book many, many years ago and it has been in my library ever since. During my years teaching in primary school, it became one of those books I regularly turned to when reading to a class. I knew the stories well, but that did not matter. Children hearing them for the first time had no idea what was coming next, and that was always part of the pleasure.

There are twenty short stories, each with its own collection of eccentric characters and strange situations. They are funny, slightly rude in places and just naughty enough to make children listen more carefully. Not rude enough to shock, but enough to produce that familiar reaction when a class suddenly realised that the story had said something they were not quite expecting.

That was often when the room became quiet.

Children seem to recognise that kind of humour immediately. Adults sometimes try to tidy childhood up too much, forgetting that children have always enjoyed nonsense, absurdity and things being just a little bit improper. Bisset understood that very well.

The stories are also short, which made them ideal for school. There was no need to spend several days building towards an ending or trying to remember where we had stopped the previous afternoon. A complete little world could appear, become ridiculous and disappear again within a few pages.

I can still remember reading some of them aloud and watching children wait for the next strange turn. There is something very satisfying about reading to a class when you know they are genuinely listening rather than simply being quiet because they have been told to be. A good story can do that far better than a teacher asking for attention.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons the book has remained with me for so long.

Even now, as a considerably older adult, I can pick it up and enjoy it. That is not something I can say about many books. Some belong very clearly to the time in which we first read them and lose much of their appeal when we return years later. Others seem to sit outside age altogether.

Upside Down Stories is one of those for me.

The copy on my shelf has travelled through a large part of my life. It has moved house, moved country and survived the usual clear-outs when other books were given away or forgotten. There was never any particular decision to keep it. I simply did.

Perhaps that says more than any review could.

One day my library will no longer be mine. The books will be divided, given away, sold or simply end up somewhere I could never predict. Most will mean nothing to the person who eventually finds them. They will just be books that once belonged to somebody else.

I hope this one is treated differently.

I would like to think that somebody might take Upside Down Stories from the shelf, wonder why I had kept such an old children's book for so long, and open it.

Perhaps they will read one story.

Perhaps there will be a child sitting nearby.

And perhaps Donald Bisset's strange little characters will make another child laugh in exactly the same way they did in my classroom many years ago.

Good stories have a way of lasting much longer than the people who first read them.

This one will certainly outlast me.