asandwich

A couple of weeks back I dropped by my local library and saw a notice asking for people to volunteer a bit of their time to go and read books to groups of kids for a couple of hours over the summer holidays. I thought I could do that and, before I really knew what I was doing, or given any real thought to what I was getting myself involved in, I’d somehow volunteered. I was going to be reading for two one-hour segments - with a thirty minute break inbetween - to a group of kids in the 7-10 year old age bracket. I can definitely do this, I still insisted to myself.

I looked at the recommended book list for the schedule, and saw Neil Gaiman’s Fortunately The Milk on the list. Hey, Neil Gaiman. I’ve read plenty of Neil Gaiman. I’m all over this! was, most probably, what I thought. I checked the book out and began planning for my ‘performance’.

Being for a younger audience than any of Gaiman’s other books, American Gods (or even Coraline) this ain’t. I don’t mean that negatively, by the way, because this book is ideal for Primary School-aged children: it is unrelentingly silly. A man (a caricature of Gaiman himself - hilariously illustrated by Chris Riddell throughout the book - pulling the wackiest of faces throughout) goes out to buy milk for his kids’ breakfast, and eventually returns home with a highly suspect tale concerning alien abductions, time-travelling dinosaurs, pirates, ancient aztec deities, exploding volcanoes and blood-sucking, non-sparkly ‘wumpires’. I had great fun coming up with ridiculous voices for the bizarre cast of characters, and although you could easily plough through the whole book in an hour reading it out aloud, had planned to stretch things out with plenty of 'off-the-seat action' and lots of time to show off the superb illustrations to the kids.

As the date for my big Jackanory moment approached, I started to get kind of nervous. ‘Kind of’ being a tremendous understatement. What if they all just sit there staring uncomfortably at their smartphones? I must admit that my tentative enthusiasm was beginning to give way to sheer, unadulterated terror - but I was absolutely determined to see this through. Besides, no kid of that age group could possibly fail to find my vocal rendition of Splod (the god of short, funny names) absolutely side-splitting. Could they? Yikes.

Anyway, much to my crushing disappointment (...and possible relief. Ahem.), the library contacted me yesterday to tell me that they’ve had to cancel the whole thing (which was scheduled for next week). Not enough interest, sadly. It’s a real shame, because I think that - with the help of this book - even if I had only entertained one child; one child who may have been inspired to go and pick up another book, and maybe appreciated the value of books in these times of smartphones, games consoles, 3D TVs and Facebook, then it would have been worth all the sheer terror in the world.