Pearls of Wisdom
One of the things I love about children’s books is they often contain perfectly formed pearls of wisdom.
You can take them out of context and they don’t tarnish. You can take them to heart and you’ll feel richer. You can take them anywhere.
Recently I read an article about writing rules, specifically the one where you can’t grin a sentence, or grump one either. But if you do it right, in a way that works, I believe you can. Rules are made to be broken. I’ve happily grumped a sentence or two in real life and on the page.
It just so happened the next thing I read was a middle grade book for review, Olive of Groves and the Great Slurp of Time by Katrina Nannestad, illustrated by Lucia Masciullo. This is one of those wondrously clever and gloriously silly stories with lots of capital letters for emphasis (Steaming Lump of Lard) and tongue twister names (Basil Heffenhuffenheimer).
It was Basil who dropped a pearl of wisdom in my lap (with help from Katrina, of course). And here it is:
‘Ja! It can be,’ said Basil. ‘It is because of the Time Slurp’. He smiled sheepishly at Olive with a German accent.
I know what you’re thinking, but please, dear reader, just trust me. One can laugh, smile, shrug and even snore with a German accent … provided one is genuinely German, of course!’
Thank you, Basil and Katrina, for the license to grump if I want to … provided one is genuinely grumpy of course.
