Disaster? I don’t do disaster…

Andrew Norriss, Whitbread Award winning children’s author and all round kind thoughtful man, was asked by his publisher David Fickling Books, to contribute to their Story Blog, by writing about disaster. I’m not sure they got what they were expecting but Andrew writes with total honesty and having lived with him for over 30 years, read many of the same books, had many, many discussions about life, the universe and all that I agree with everything he wrote for them. Andrew passed on Games People Play by  Eric Berne for me to read in the seventies, and since then we have talked about some of the ideas with our children over the supper table. ‘Aint it awful‘ and Parent, Adult, Child are two very useful ideas when considering how people behave in certain situations.

So here is what Andrew wrote about disaster. Beautifully written piece, clearly expressed and rather different from what was expected I suspect…

Disaster… by Andrew Norriss

I don’t do disaster.

Well, obviously I do in real life – my own has had plenty of them –  but I don’t write about it. Not unless I’m going to turn it into a joke. Using real life tragedy for a story feels… wrong, somehow.

I whiz through books like War Horse and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, but only to keep up with the game. They are not books I read by choice or for pleasure, however brilliantly written they may be. They do not make me feel comfortable, and this is not simply because the subject matter itself is uncomfortable.

In Games People Play, which I read while I was at university, Eric Berne described some of the mind games we all play in life.  more

So if you want books that consider disasters and problems that occur in everyday life, and then consider how to sort them out and live more happily, you want to read Andrew’s books. That is why he is an Award winning author and his books are read and valued particularly by teachers and librarians as well as loved by children.