The Mummy Diaries by Rachel Johnson

Author:Rachel Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141909615
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

I have been sent a book by Bloomsbury, clearly in breathless anticipation of the looming summer break (the seven weeks, most of which I will spend here on Exmoor, will doubtless zip by in a flash!).

It is packed with wizard wheezes and feats of imagination, will be savoured by children and grown-ups alike, and it is, as you have no doubt guessed, an invaluable tool of a book: I’m Bored! by sisters Suzy Barratt and Polly Beard.

I came over all faint, though, when I saw that its subtitle was Over 100 inspiring and imaginative ideas for hours of fun with your children, in much the same way I do whenever I see an Annabel Karmel cookbook. Mrs Karmel is the poster-mother for child nutrition who has made an enviable pile telling us to decorate homemade pizzas and biscuits with ‘smiley faces’ and make pasta sauces with ‘hidden’ vegetables. I don’t know about you, but this calls forth a horribly twee image of baby carrots playing hide and seek, calling out ‘Hiding!’ as they peek from the sauce.

As it happens, Hide and Seek, or ‘Hide and Go Peep’, as moms say in America, is one of the ‘original and entertaining’ ideas listed in I’m Bored!, along with I-Spy, Kim’s Game, Pooh Sticks, Doctors and Nurses, and Grandmother’s Footsteps.

My first original and entertaining observation about I’m Bored! is, therefore, that very little has come along in the keeping-children-happy stakes apart from dreaded Game Boys and computer games, DVDs, cable television and mall shopping. The games have not changed and the authors have managed to come up with only a few I hadn’t played myself. I very much look forward to introducing Tree-Hugging and Celebrity-Spotting to my own grandchildren, Suzy and Polly!

My second observation is that this book is of the moment, in more ways than one. The activities can all be described in 100 words or so and the guiding principle seems to be that children (and, indeed, their mothers) get bored quickly.

The preparation for any activity is pared to a minimum, as is the projected time spent on it before your child will demand fresh entertainment. If preparation is needed, the authors are very apologetic. They point out that, in order for newspaper cut-outs to work, someone needs to cut out words from the newspaper first. Most games need no materials at all, presumably on the assumption that a child’s attention span is not nearly long enough to encompass mummy finding the scissors and paper and actually making the paper dollies.

When I was a child (cue violins, etc.), my mother’s equivalent of I’m Bored! was Something to Do, a pink Puffin paperback, illustrated by Shirley Hughes with delightful pen-and-ink drawings, and written by a collective of seven parents. Each month had a separate chapter, so the January chapter opens with a little poem called ‘Winter Streams’. It continued with some folkloric information (Janus, first-footing, Twelfth Night) and had a special bird (the blue tit) and flower (snowdrop) to look out for each month.

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