Arvor’s School Days is intended as a book which I hope will amuse 7-12 yr olds.
Arvor's School Days
Since it refers to dyslexia and dyspraxia, it may be particularly interesting to children with these problems, and as it has fairly short chapters, it may also be quite easy for them to read. However it wasn’t written specifically for them.
You were a GP for 25 years so what made you change direction?
When I first became a GP in the early 1970s, I did one session a week in a child assessment centre in south London. The doctor running the centre was very interested in dyslexia, so I helped her with some research into local children for a few months and this gave me some idea of what dyslexia is actually about.
We then moved to Oxfordshire and I was too busy in my new practice to do anything more. However one day a woman brought her 10 year old son to see me to ask if I could get his eyes tested because he was getting his letters jumbled up and he was way behind in his reading. We took him to see my old boss in south London who confirmed that he was severely dyslexic. As a result he was sent to a special unit in Oxford where his reading age increased by six years in six months.
This pushed me into doing more research into dyslexia in the local primary schools and I found that about 10% of the children showed signs of dyslexia (the usual incidence). However I again became too busy as a GP to take it any further.
Nearly 20 years later, in the late 1990s, I suddenly realised that if I was to do anything more on dyslexia I had to make a full break and do it properly, so I gave up general practice and went on a dyslexia teachers’ course.
What drew you towards teaching and assessing?
Following training I did some private teaching, some teaching in a young offenders prison and a little research into dyslexia in Oxford. Then I started doing assessments in secondary schools in Banbury and became involved with designing a computer-based suite of tests of literacy.
You might be surprised to know that I find doing assessments the most rewarding job that I have ever done. It gives me enormous satisfaction to help teenagers understand their difficulties so that they can see a way forward and leave after a two hour assessment with a smile and a spring in their step.
What made you want to explore the theme of a boarding school in the book?
I didn’t really set out to explore the theme of boarding schools. My parents had a boarding prep school for boys (about 50-70 of them aged 8-13), which is where we lived and I was sent to another local prep school; so small friendly boarding schools were the only schools I knew as a child.
Please tell us a bit about the character of Arvor.
The character of Arvor, a dyslexic and dyspraxic dragon, just came into my head out of the blue.
Originally I wrote about him as a story to be read to my oldest grandson who was four at the time. However a few months later I used Arvor as the main character in another story, and then over the next year I wrote some more stories about him and assembled them into a book.
I didn’t set out to write about dyslexia, but clearly I was influenced by my contact with many children who have Specific Learning Difficulties (dyslexia, dyspraxia, etc).
How did you come to collaborate with Matt Rowe?
I went to an agency for illustrators and through them I approached a couple of artists who were good but they couldn’t do the work with the degree of collaboration that I wanted. Then the agency suggested Matt who had only just come onto their list.
Not only does he draw beautifully, but he has an amazing ability to make a picture amusing while still conveying the feelings of the characters.
Please can you tell us a bit about your process of working together.
We would go through 2 chapters of the book together underlining the bits of the text that we thought would make good pictures, which Matt then drew over the next month. Then we would review his pictures (making a few minor alterations), and plan the next couple of chapters.
I found it a real pleasure to work with him – physically I am nearly double his age, but I suspect that mentally we are both aged about 13 ½ .
What is next for you?
I have written a few short stories and am thinking about a sequel for Arvor but haven’t actually started writing anything yet. I would like to do some more books with Matt.
I am very busy teaching, bee-keeping and going to Montenegro (where my daughter lives with her family and where we have a holiday home).