Biography versus fantasy

Often when we are driving with the grandchildren we turn on the sound system for music. They love the nursery rhymes, or the lively action songs they have learned at Mainly Music or at Jump Jam. 

The older ones have taken to listening to stories, especially the collection of stories written by Roald Dahl. So they, and we, are familiar with "The Enormous Crocodile" , "James and the Giant Prach", and the rest.

Dahl is a superb fantasist, and like all good children's authors, has a lot of wry comment about human behaviour for the adults as well.

So I was interested to discover his autobiographical books, on a completely different tack. "Going Solo" is the account of his first days of actual combat as a fighter pilot during the Second World War. He had been working in East Africa, enlisted in the RAF, like me was trained on Tiger Moths, and then posted to Egypt, and then Greece as the allies pulled out.

His accounts of real life are as readable and gripping as his fantasy; I can't recommend them too highly. The book is not long, you could read it in a holiday weekend easily!

Now our youngest has progressed to the movie of "The Gruffalo's Child", which I think is a perfect example of ideal children's literature. I still enjoy it every time, anyway. Perhaps this is what they mean by "second childhood"!