Heroes or superheroes?

Mother Teresa - a real hero?

A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.  Christopher Reeve – one of the actors who played Superman

Every novel needs a hero especially children’s stories. 

Nick North is the hero of my novels.  He is just an ordinary lad, apt to get into trouble and with a mouth that works quicker than his brain. His life is transformed when he meets the Shepherd who invites him to fulfil a quest; an adventure that will change him. 

As the quest unfolds Nick discovers that there is often a very good reason why people are the way they are - a back-story.  People aren’t dysfunctional and unpleasant because they are born that way but often because things have happened in their family and lives that have shaped them.

Nick discovers that his father, a trouble-maker at school, came from a broken home where happy family was a myth.  Nick’s classmate Leone is another such person.  She is the girl with the biggest mouth, a person not to antagonize.  As Nick reluctantly befriends her he finds that she has been rejected and hurt by a horrible father and her wicked tongue is her best defence.

In the second book Nick North: War Zone Nick helps Leone start to reconcile her family by getting to the bottom of what went wrong with her great grandfather in the First World War and what caused her dad to be so nasty.

In both novels Nick is called to be heroic.  He has to fight odds and situations far bigger than normal and he finds the strength to conquer ‘overwhelming obstacles’.  He is just a lad who finds, fights and overcomes circumstances that might cause many to flinch or back away.

I love a good hero.  It makes a book for me.  What I am less comfortable about is the current cult of superheroes.  I find the desire of so many children, especially young children to be like Superman, Spiderman, Batman, the Incredible Hulk, Captain America and so on disturbing. 

At best it is probably harmless enough and something children will grow out of but at worst it give youngsters a totally unrealistic role model.

I agree with Josh Keaton the voice of Spiderman from the cartoon series: Being a superhero alienates you and separates you from humanity.  These must surely be the very qualities we don’t want for our children. We want our children to be relational, to know how to get on with all sorts and to be accepting of those different from themselves.

Superheroes are only heroes because of supernatural powers. They trust in things that no one else can.  They aren’t really heroic because it is not bravery, perseverance and character that overcome but abnormal abilities. They may save the world but they’ll never be your buddy in real life.

Timothy Dalton said: You can't relate to a superhero, to a superman, but you can identify with a real man who in times of crisis draws forth some extraordinary quality from within himself and triumphs but only after a struggle. That’s a real hero and a great role model.

I have a superhero – the Shepherd in my books.  He is never separate from humanity but always right there with everyone, from the rich to the poor, the famous to the completely unknown.  He is a real man with extraordinary qualities and character.  He overcame the most terrible odds to win the mightiest victory in the history of the planet yet he shows love and compassion to the lowest and the least.  He really did save the world.

He is a hero – a superhero. 

God loves families

God loves families – and so do I. 

God created the family so a man and a woman could show their love and commitment to one another and as a safe place for children to grow up in.  Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen.  Quite a lot of marriages end in divorce.

The good news is though that 60 out of every hundred marriages survives to 20^th wedding anniversary. Why is this good news?  It means lots of children grow up with both their natural mum and dad which a lot of people say is the best thing for children.

But maybe your mum and dad aren’t married or maybe you live with just a mum or just a dad. A lot of people do. Did you know a quarter of all under 18’s have only one parent? 

Does this mean God doesn’t love you or doesn’t love you as much as those with two married parents?  NO!

God loves everyone just the same. 

However God loves to make families work.  In my first book Nick North: Blood Quest Nick, who after all comes from a single parent family, finds that the Shepherd loves him amazingly.  However because of things that have gone wrong in his family years ago, the Shepherd wants to use Nick to stop these problems so that Nick won’t end up in the same sort of trouble.

Nick has to fight dragons in the past to break a curse placed on his family and then he has to stop his natural dad, whom he had never met before, from committing a terrible crime.

In my second book Nick North: War Zone the Shepherd uses Nick to help Leone sort her family out.  Her dad is an angry and very unpleasant man. Leone hates him and just wants to leave home as soon as possible. Things start to change when her granddad gives her a book of letters written by her great grandfather from the First World War. Through these and some supernatural visits to the battlefields of the war, Nick and Leone find out what really happened 100 years ago. It was nothing like what her granddad thought.

The Shepherd then helps Nick and Leone discover what went wrong in her dad’s life.  In a dramatic incident on a car park roof Leone’s dad comes to his senses and realises what a terrible father he has been.  He and Leone plan to try and get on better.

You see God loves families and when they don’t work, well he loves to fix them as only he can.  You probably wont have dramatic things happen to help fix your problems but with the Shepherd’s help you can see even the most terrible families turn around.

Singing for Mrs Pettigrew

I have just finished reading Michael Morpurgo’s book Singing for Mrs Pettigrew. It is a lovely compilation of short stories and chapters about his life. Sometimes it is hard to tell which are stories and which autobiographical chapters.  He also gives a little bit of background into how he writes his stories.

I love Michael Morpurgo books because he is a master of the art of writing for children.  He says: I am a grower of stories. I farm them as surely as a farmer does his corn. I am a weaver of dreams: a teller of tales. I have, through my mother reading to me, through my own reading, through inspired teachers, through my great mentors, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ted Hughes and Sean Rafferty, through years of practice, discovered my way of doing it.

He certainly has. His books are so good that adults and children alike can enjoy them.  He can take a simple story and draw you into the event so completely that you are living it with the people. It feels like your life and theirs have become entwined.

The short story Singing for Mrs Pettigrew is a simple tale of the effect of building a nuclear power station on the village of Bradwell in Essex and the devastation it had on Mrs Pettigrew who was evicted from the railway carriage where she lived so that the power station could be built on that land.

Mr Morpurgo generates a great deal of sympathy for Mrs Pettigrew along with her supporters, the young Michael Morpurgo and his mother. You feel anger as one after another of the villagers who had initially opposed the building gradually come to support it and oppose Mrs Pettigrew. Finally you feel intense frustration that after building the nuclear reactors, they have all too quickly become redundant. Nevertheless the huge monstrosity will stand for centuries right by the sea, scarring the landscape because a nuclear power station can never be demolished.  The reactors have to be entombed in concrete for centuries till they are no longer radioactive.

What made the story all the more poignant for me is that I can recall the building of the Bradwell nuclear power station.  I went to a youth camp on the marshes nearby and remember being in awe of the enormous building and slightly frightened by the constant ticking noises it made.

Bramwell nuclear power station on the coast of Essex

I grew up in the era just after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  We had seen the devastation that the bomb had caused not just to the landscape but the effect of radioactivity on survivors. My mother took me see The War Game at our church hall. It is a short film about the immediate aftermath of a nuclear bomb.  It was a shocking experience for a teenager in those days, already traumatised by the newly released daleks from Dr Who.

Nuclear energy was frightening, unpredictable and what if the nuclear reactor blew up?  Not only would I be wiped out but half of Britain as well. These were my fears most of which were groundless but as more recent events in Chernobyl and Japan have shown – nuclear power can be dangerous.

So I found great empathy with Mrs Pettigrew who is the one small voice silenced and overthrown by the march of new ideas and developments which in turn prove not be as amazing and ground breaking as at first thought.

Time and again, Michael Morpurgo has the genius of being able to write about great events from the perspective of just one small individual or animal whether that is Mrs Pettigrew, Joey the horse from War Horse or Sofia caught up in a massacre at her village in Bosnia or Adolphus Tips the cat left behind in the evacuation of his village in the Second World War.

Michael Morpurgo has written over 100 books. Which one is your favourite? 

Nick North and the First World War

The second Nick North book tells Leone’s story and without giving too much away, it centres around the First World War.

Last year there were many events commemorating 100 years since the Great War started.  In addition a rush of television programmes both factual and fictional hit our screens showing life back in those days.

One of the most moving tributes was the more than 850,000  red, ceramic poppies planted around the Tower of London.  They represented one poppy for each British and Commonwealth soldier who died in the War. It took months to place all the poppies and after the Remembrance Day service in November, they were all taken down and anyone could purchase one. 

All of this stirred in me a deep interest to know more about my great uncle Charles who died in the War. I had never been that interested before but I dug into some of my family photos and letters and found a whole pack of letters that he had written to his brother Will, my grandfather.

My grandfather William Neville.
He always wore a bow tie, as did my father and my brother still does.
Three generations of bow tie wearers.

I carefully typed the letters out so that my brother and I could read them more easily. I also discovered that he had been injured in the Battle of the Somme and then died of septicaemia, all too common in those days before penicillin and antibiotics. I bought a Tower of London poppy in his honour.

All of this provided the background for Nick North: War Zone.  Leone is given a book of letters written by her great grandfather to his mother from the Front.  I used some of my great uncle Charles letters as the basis for the letters in Leone’s book. Gran also typed out the letters to help Nick and Leone read them.

In reading the book I hope you enjoy the story but also realise what an enormous effect it had on the lives of that generation.  So many young men were needlessly slaughtered and many more were left devastated by the experience.

One of my great uncle's letters. You can see how hard it is to read.
Below is what it actually says

My dear Will

I received 200 CWS cigarettes last night which I presume you sent and which I shall distribute to my platoon today some time and please accept many thanks for the same. It is yet only 3:30 a.m. just Monday in fact. Yesterday we had quite a calm day for Sunday really. Our parapet got hit with shells twice just about the time when people in England were thinking of going to Evening Service. That has all been made good during the night. We have only got one more night to stay in I think for tomorrow night we shall be relieved again. One day short this time because we did an extra day last time.

The last two evenings there has been some amusement watching the aeroplanes. On Saturday evening one of our people was having a jolly good game on his own. The Boches plugged 136 shells at that one plane and still he flew round. That does not seem to show a shortage of ammunition does it?

I had a letter from Arthur last night. He expects to be going home again about Wednesday so it has not been a very long job for him but I expect he will have told you all about it.

That is rather a bad accident at Kirkby Pit[1] Someone looks like being in trouble for the conductors must have been broken according to the paper.

You don’t want any tea before you get up do you? We have got some mashed – we always have some between 2 & 3 a.m. in the trenches and six a.m. in billets before going out for a run.

It has every appearance of being a very hot day again today.  These last two days have been very warm indeed. Quite hot enough for a bathing parade but there is no stream running through the trenches.  

The night before last there was some sporting German fellow with a cornet straight in front of their line who shouted “If you want fun I’ll play you a tune”. He struck up several old English melodies and it sung out very well in the darkness. They yell like fun occasionally.

Now I think I will finish and take my periscope along to see if I can get a shot. Then I’ll try to get a wash and shave to wake up and keep the bugs away if possible.

Best love to all

Yrs Chas

---

[1] Looks like reference to I Bentinick Colliery when 10 people died when cages collided in the shaft 

One of Leone's letters also mentioned the airplane flying around and a German playing tunes for the English soldiers.

Just for you

This blog is for those young people who may have found my previous blogs a bit dull, too adult and frankly not for them.  After all the Nick North series is for 10 – 13 year olds and so is this blog.

Who loves reading great children’s stories?

I love both reading and writing children’s literature. Always have. Always will. It’s my thing.

Do you have a book in you?

There’s a saying that goes ‘there’s a book in everyone,’ which means everyone has got a good story in them that they could write about. However bringing up four children and teaching did not give me much time to write anything. When I retired, apart from catching up on some sleep and travelling to South Africa, the first thing I wanted to do was write a children’s novel. Nick North: Blood Quest is the result.

It took a long time from my first not very good efforts to the version available in Kindle and soon coming out in paperback. Very exciting.  Writing, like everything else that is worth doing, takes a lot of time and effort and there is loads to learn. I am definitely still learning. 

Second Nick North coming soon

The second book in the Nick North series is now written and being edited and redrafted or in other words: improved.

The first Nick North book Blood Quest is about Nick and his family.  The second Nick North book (the title is a secret) is about Leone and her family though Nick is very much the star of the book.

Part of the book is set in the First World War which is very topical at the moment as it all happened 100 years ago.

I’ll tell you why I wrote about the First World War another time. 

My favourite books

When I was a child, I loved reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and all the other Narnia books. Much later, I discovered the John White Chronicles of Anthropos books.  Sadly they are hard to come by now but what great stories they are. All of them tell of ordinary children caught up in extraordinary events and being heroes, saving the day. They also all meet, amongst many others a special person. In Narnia it is the lion Aslan and in Anthropos it is Gaal. 

Aslan from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Gaal from The Archives of Anthropos series of books

These provided the inspiration for my Nick North books and his meeting with the Shepherd.

Have you a favourite book or character?