Culture Street

We are delighted that Jemma Wayne, author of Chains of Sand, was able to share with us her favourite books from childhood.

After studying Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University and Broadcast Journalism at the University of Westminster, Jemma Wayne began her career as a journalist at The Jewish Chronicle, and later as a columnist for The Jewish News. She is now a regularly featured blogger at The Huffington Post and continues to contribute to a variety of other publications. Her first play, Negative Space, was staged in 2009 at Hampstead’s New End Theatre, receiving critical acclaim.

Jemma’s debut novel After Before was longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award.

Chains of Sand by Jemma Wayne is out now in paperback. The book can be purchased in Australia here and in the UK here.

The Sneetches by Dr Seuss

I loved everything by Dr Seuss. So did my father, who often read us the wonderful rhyming tales. Seuss simultaneously channels the most nonsense realms of imagination, with the most fundamental notions of morality. The Sneetches, whose bellies either do or do not don stars, is a tale of difference, of prejudice, of segregation, and ultimately of the realisation that what really matters, has nothing to do with stars (or skin colour, or ethnicity), but what is inside a person’s heart. It was a story that resonated with me then, and in our modern times seems eternally salient.

Dogger by Shirley Hughes

The magic of Shirley Hughes is the insightful capturing of the ordinary. The making special of the everyday. I remember as a child pouring over her illustrations, and when my first daughter arrived, this book was one of the first I reached for. Dogger is the story of a little boy named Dave who is devastated when he loses his most beloved friend – his stuffed animal, Dogger. This is an introduction to loss and grief. But the part that I always loved, and waited for, (and still tear up at), is when Dave’s big sister Bella comes to his rescue and persuades the little girl who has bought Dogger from a second hand stall, to swap it for the huge shiny teddy that she has won. Love, self-sacrifice, and sibling bonds at their best.

The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton

The entire Faraway Tree series is a treat for the imagination. Three children move to the countryside and discover a wood with a magical tree that they climb. On the way up they meet all sorts of fantastical characters, and at the top of the tree, they find that different lands come visiting. We are with the children as they dare to explore, as they take risks, as they see wishes fulfilled, as they discover unintended consequences. They learn a lot about themselves, and through them I remember thinking a lot about the balance between daring and wishing, and valuing the things we already have.

The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks

This was a class reader at school when I was about seven, so I had to wait between lessons to hear the next instalment. The story follows Omri, a nine-year-old boy who discovers that a key from his mother fits a cupboard his brother gave him, and somehow turns plastic toys to life. Toys coming to life is every child’s fantasy! But perhaps what struck me even more than that, was the realisation that when these tiny playthings became real, there were real consequences to their adventures. Though small, Omri had to understand and respect them. It is a good lesson I think about power and responsibility. Re-reading the book now as an adult to my five-year-old daughter, I’ve found myself censuring some of the stereotypes about Native Americans, but the heart of the story remains just as powerful.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

I read this when I was exactly the same age as Anne Frank was when she wrote it, which probably made it doubly impactful. It was the beginning for me of a period of obsession with Holocaust literature, and also of discovery about my own Jewish history. Anne begins the diary on her 13th birthday, just before she and her family go into hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. After two years, they were found and shipped to a concentration camp, where Anne ultimately died of typhus. It is impossible through Anne’s eyes not to feel the hope and the fear, the awfulness of her reality, and also to see the parts of her that make her an ordinary girl too, just like the other children trapped by this and other wars.