The One and Only TEA Room: Everyone Welcome (bring champagne and muffins please!)

[Jacksmama]

Wow, we're on our third thread!!!
Previous (second) incarnation of the tea room.

A warm welcome to everyone, whether you have one child, none, or ten. This is a tea-and-muffin or booze-and-sofasorcanapees sanctuary for all. But certain standards of behaviour continue to apply - anyone engaging in fisticuffs will be ejected by George Clooney, ably assisted by Mellors the Gardener.

Cheers all!

My friend bought DS a book called 'You're a Bad Man Mr Gum!' - telling me with delight that it's like Pratchett for children. (Yes I know he does children's stuff too but this is probably a bit younger). DS is 6 and absolutely loves it, looking forward to reading more, I think there are 5 in the series. Would highly recommend for any Pratchett fans, or their children!

I think someone was talking about Mr Gum in Childrens books the other day. I'll have to check it out.

Welcome to the tearoom Sam - latte or tea ?

Oh thank you. Macchiato please if we can run to it! I was slightly thrown by your name to start with, wondered if I'd got my forums muddled up. Good to see a fellow Pratchett fan!

By the magic of the tearoom, all is possible. In the evenings the booze runs freely too.

muffin ? Or there may be some of the special chocolate biscuits Bocca keeps for new arrivals here somewhere.

Theres quite a few Pratchett fans here. When I joined, I wanted to be EsmeWeatherwax or NannyOgg, but they had both gone. As had the Jasper Ffordde names I wanted (humph)

What else do you like to read ? I'm always on the look out for new authors to try

I love Terry Pratchett. Always wanted to know what that colour "octarine" really looks like. And the incompetent wizard.. ROFL!

Hi and welcome to the tearoom Sam!!!

Daisy, I did manage to make myself quite sad thinking about it, even now! She had rubbed her eyes so much that they'd bruised. Waah. She'd been at nursery two and a half years at that point, had settled in very easily, I was totallly at ease with her being there, my working pattern - day's crying and I was the worst mother EVER, should be at home, etc.

MT, your DS sounds like he's at a very similar stage with reading to DD - have been sitting thinking 'surely you're not going to sound that word out AGAIN ... oh, you are'. She also confuses b and d, and occasionally writes her name backwards. It's pretty normal I believe, though rather bizarre when a child who's been writing their name for six months or more suddenly presents a perfect mirror version of it and has no idea anything is wrong! She has some of those books as well (good old Book People), I think they're actually more accessible than some of the earlier stage ones that have come from school ('frying'? 'pancake?') and have far better little stories than farkin' Biff et al.

Any chance of another hot toddy, JM? That first one was excellent, I don't think I can be any more coherent at my school committee meeting this evening than I already am, so might as well go for another.

Hi Sam63 and welcome! - good to have some caffeine support

Oh, DCMB I know that WORST mother syndome. I went back to work when DaisyBoy was 7 months, pure economic need, yet the idea of him going to nursery has put me in a tail spin along the I-have-missed-his-baby-ness-and-it's-never-coming-back-wahh sort of mode....

Needless to say, he is happy as larry today, just burst into tears when I turned up from excess of everything if you know what I mean?

mistle the flying manta ray in the boat was South Sea Adventure if I remember rightly which was Number 2
(Amazon Adventure was Number 1 if you are interested )

By the way, BIG HUG to JM I know you like them

And what are the "getting to read" series you are talking about? Last books I had that were blue/ orange/ green and purple were my school Latin course... not that I ever got to purple mind - Erat Quintus Discuc Novus springs to mind as the explanation of the Gerund, but I never knew what the gerund was, so not much help really!

Daisy - you clearly have a much better memory of them than I do (or have read them more recently I suppose ).

Welcome Sam - nice to see you here. What enticed you in? Was it the peace lilly on the windowsill or the muffins on the counter? I see we've got even more reason to have a shelter from the angst of some of the other threads again and that another MN regular poster has been hounded and forced to namechange...

JM isn't Octarine actually described in 'The Colour of Magic'?

Octarine is sort of purple isn't it ?

The reading scheme I did started with Rainbow, and then you went from red onwards. Never got a chance to do Latin - Dh did Greek (clever clogs), but I went to a bog standard comp

Glad that Daisy boy had a good time - although DS has been at nursery since 4.5 months old, the prospect of the preschool room seems to mark the end of babyhood somehow

Are the Book People not the best company ever for childrens books ?

Will look at Tom Holt new books - I loved 'Expecting Someone Taller' and then got a bit put off a few years ago

The 'getting to read' series is the Oxford Reading Tree 'Songbirds' Phonics series.

I think Octarine is a version of purple too...

Tom Holt new books: 'You don't have to be evil to work here but it helps'; 'The Portable Door', 'Earth, Air, Fire, Custard'.

I was subjected to 2 yrs of Latin. Hardly remember any of it at all!

So many things to say!

to Daisy for buised arm.

William Mayne. So excited by subject that I can't remember who spoke about them first. Hob and the Goblins is probably the best one for dc's. Don't think it could be scarey and the language is wonderful. Lots of others, some very non-magical, some quite magical, some quite scarey. I am reading The Worm in the Well right now and it would be scarey. But again the wonderful language.

Uni - at last I meet someone else who has heard of, let alone likes, Dianna Wynne Jones. (Apart from my sister.) I was reminded of Howl's Moving Castle the first time we moved the tea room. It was exactly like that.

Hello to Sam. How lovely to see you.

CMOT - so that's what your name is about!

Now I just need to find out about Bocca's name. I mean, it's obviously foreign, but why exactly that. (Apart from the fact that it is obviously the epitomy of cool.)

Tea, are you a primary teacher or an efl teacher? Not that it matters and a definitive answer will probably spoil the fun of trying to work it out.

William Mayne was me - my mum (mad as she is) is on a one woman mission to make the world aware of the wonder of his books and of Margaret Mahy - both have won the Carnegie medal of course, but seem to be little known these days

I've read the Portable Door - think it was one of my pretrip emergency book buying purchases (my nightmare is being somewhere with an insufficiency of printed material, and audiobooks don't cut the mustard somehow)

Lucy Boston ? Another fabulous (although for older DC's , tho maybe not BabyBocca) writer much overlooked

is the bar open?
Oh, whoops, wait, I have to go back to work. wishful thinking I guess.

I'm an avid reader (like cmot I have a horror of not having anything around to read) but compared to you all I read pure trash.

I'm reading one of the 'Bones' books at the moment !!! Very different from the series.

The Bones books are nothing like the TV series. I like the books (mostly), love the series.

Anyone else?

On a different note, did any of you read the "Mallory Towers" books when you were girls? I read them in German (loved them) and have always wanted to find them in English but don't know what they are all called.

Yes, I read Mallory towers. And all the others (although a long, long, long time ago!) I loved the Green Knowe books (that's another good book for onlies, had forgotten about that)

So what are they call called? I think I'm going to post the question in Fiction.

Full list of Mallory Towers here

So, JM, you must be very fluent in German. (Actually I don't think this smiley looks like 'envy'. I think it looks more like 'I thought that prawn smelt dodgy'. Anyway, I am very envious. You must teach Jack German, even if it is only lots of nursery rhymes, songs, etc. He will miss such a great opportunity if you don't. I'm sorry to be bossy, but you MUST. It is my total conviction (and my job) to get lots of foreign language for young children.

I also loved Willard Price. He is great for a certain age; about the same age as I liked Ivan Southall (Australian disasters such as boy marooned by plane crash, etc.) Neither of them stand much re-reading as an adult, though, not like the great William Mayne. Or, as you say, Margaret Mahy, who also does scarey stuff for older readers.

I was also very into pony books and loved the Silver Brumby books. Not even any very good tips there for looking after Earl Grey, since they were all wild.

We have identified that the only education area that we are not competent in is languages, and therefore are choosing a school that does early years languages

I'm completely fluent in German, I was born in Germ and we emigrated to Canada when I was 12. But - I think we've talked about this before - I wasn't planning on teaching Jack German. He will get French in school (we are thinking of French Immersion), and I will encourage him to take Spanish and at least one other language, but I don't see how German will be particularly useful for him in Canada. Hindi or Mandarin, given the majority of immigrants, might be, though!
I agree with you on teaching children other languages, definitely.

MJ is doing BBC Muzzy course in German at home and French lessons at school.

I liked the silver brumby books too. Although it was a book called Rosina Copper that I still have. Did you like the Black Stallion books too?

MJ is doing BBC Muzzy course in German at home and French lessons at school.

I liked the silver brumby books too. Although it was a book called Rosina Copper that I still have. Did you like the Black Stallion books too?

Whoops!