Why children love traditional tales

If we want to justify the continued study of traditional tales, we need only ask a child to sing a nursery rhyme in a room full of adults and see how many people join in, says Polly Dunbar...

When I was asked to illustrate Edward Lear’s poem The Owl and The Pussy Cat, something chimed inside me – a childhood excitement and recognition. The poem not only has a place in my heart, it is part of my imagination.

I’ve been trying to work out why Lear’s nonsense poem holds such power. Perhaps it’s because it has always been there; when I was learning to walk and talk, I was also setting sail in a pea green boat. It is ingrained into my understanding of the world (or at least how I would like it to be). It takes me back to a place and time full of possibilities, before I had experienced learning and logic and how to become a sensible adult. For me, the Owl and The Pussycat is as familiar as an old friend and as real as the alphabet.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my niece, Mabel. At just two-years-old she is absorbing everything around her, including books. It is astonishing to me how nursery rhymes have already become a huge part of Mabel’s life and language; they are her staple diet along with ‘now’, ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘bye bye’. Mabel has a little book of rhymes, given to her when she was born, and knows many of them off by heart. She will bring you the book, recite the poems and, at the same time, jig along to the rhythm. To Mabel they are the best thing ever.

She has the same joy in discovering these traditional tales as the generation before her; they are as fresh and new now as they were to children a hundred years ago. When Mabel is getting down and dancing to Ding Dong Bell, Pussy’s in the Well, a room full of people will join in – adults who didn’t even know they knew the words. These poems unlock a bit of childhood in all of us.

These days there are many different ways to learn, communicate and tell stories. It can be quite overwhelming. I’ve recently been working on an app based on some of my characters. It is a completely different way of interacting, quite staggering in its cleverness and scarily addictive. As authors, we can still peer at apps as though they are some form of witchcraft, not to be trusted. Mabel took to the app without blinking an eye. It offers a different way of learning: logical, linear with flashing lights and jingle bells as rewards. The answers are either right or wrong and, if you choose correctly, you get congratulated and told you are brilliant. Mabel loves it and cries when it gets taken away.

So what’s the difference? What do traditional tales give us? They don’t give prizes or teach us how to add up – the gift of a nursery rhyme is far reaching in a different way. Once a child knows the words and the rhythm off by heart, it becomes a part of her soul, a building block of the imagination. Nonsense poems teach us that there are more answers than ‘yes’ and ‘no’; surreal and idiosyncratic ways of thinking are just as valid as left and right. They offer no dead-ends, no wrong answers, just new openings.

So why is it important for children to read traditional tales in schools? The simple answer is because they might not hear them at home. In this time of learning, where young minds are being shaped so quickly and in such extraordinary new ways, it is vital that we hang on to poems that have stood the test of time, tales that belong to all of us, nonsensical ditties that rejoice in simplicity and the endearing absurdities of humankind. I’m a grown-up. I don’t know what a ‘runicible spoon’ is; it doesn’t matter, I can make it up. I would leap at the chance to dance in the moonlight with the Owl and a Pussy Cat. I’m sure classrooms full of children will still dance along with me, and maybe even their teachers, too.

Polly Dunbar’s version of The Owl and the Pussycat is available as part of the Collins Big Cat series. For more information, please visit collins.co.uk

About the author

Polly Dunba is an author-illustrator known for her self-illustrated books Dog Blue, Flyaway Katie and Penguin.