Christmas Greetings, 2000

Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year everyone!

I notice with shock and amazement that I haven’t written any Hot News since early September. Where and how did those three and a half months vanish?

It’s true that I went on holiday with Malcolm and two other friends to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and had a brilliant, stimulating time, but that was in September itself~ages ago.

It’s true that the Olympics happened in Sydney and was a wild success, but I was in the Middle East on holiday at the time and wept with pride as I watched the opening ceremony on television.

It’s true that my mum (85) and dad (88) still take up a sizeable chunk of my time every day, but that’s no different from usual and they are much the same: staggering on.

It’s true that I went to the USA (for the 58th time?) to speak at fantastic conferences in Florida, Oklahoma, Springfield Mass., and Portland, but it was my sixth visit to the USA this year so that wasn’t unusual either.

It’s true that I spoke a wonderful Early Childhood conference in Western Australia and also ran a day of teacher workshops for Scholastic in Perth at the same, which I adored.

It’s true that my journal has been driving me really crazy by taking up to an hour of my time every night because I foolishly resolved to write it daily for the whole of 2000: never again! I wrote it every day in 1984 and 1988 as well, and probably said, ‘Never again!’ at the time. (My short-term memory must be shot to pieces.)

I think the months must have vanished into the many drafts I’ve written of my famous (hah) book for parents. I have been killing myself over this book which I’ve been writing for the last three years and whose deadline is January 12th 2001, thank the Lord! I call it my ‘magnum opiate’ because I can’t leave it alone.

It’s now called ‘Reading Magic’ and will have a brilliant, ‘please-buy-me’ sub-title as well~one of the several dozen sub-titles my editor, my agent and I think of every day. At first the book was mostly about the importance of reading aloud to children regularly and often, from birth to five years, (ie. before they start school) but it grew slowly into a book about learning to read naturally, and then I added stuff about what reading really is how kids learn it best, and then it expanded even further into a book on parenting in relation to literacy. Each of its minimalist 35,000 words has been polished like a diamond~to such an extent, in fact, that I wonder why de Beers hasn’t taken out an option on mining rights!

My US editor (and close friend by now) Allyn Johnston came to stay for ten gruelling days in November to work on the book with me, side by side. I remember one grim day in particular when we decided to do a major re-shaping of it. She and I were so dismayed by the work involved we were almost in tears. We spread the entire book out all over my bedroom floor, and cut and pasted with real scissors and real tape, in the old-fashioned way, walking around and moving pages physically. It was the kind of massive job that’s completely impossible to do on a computer. Then we had to insert all the darn changes we’d made by cutting and pasting them on the computer. It took us two fifteen-hour days, an intensity of focus that nearly killed us both. (Malcolm’s contribution meanwhile was to accept with good grace that no food would appear and no friendship would be offered.)

The aim of all this, of course, is to have written a book that seems not to have been drafted in any way~a book that flows as smoothly and clearly through the minds of my readers as if it had fallen off the end of my Waterman fountain pen in one easy movement of hand and thought. I hope it achieves its aim of millions of children learning to read before school (without a single lesson) by providing powerful information for parents, and then in turn, enormous pleasure to their children.

Finally, the best news of all: Chloë (29) is home from Paris, and not just for Christmas. She and her heaven-sent boyfriend, who has migrated to Australia from France, will be with us for Christmas, and next year, and perhaps the year after. Who knows? Now that she’s home I’ll say less about her, for her sake. I couldn’t stand it if my mother hurled news of my private life into cyberspace every two or three months. Suffice to say that Malcolm and I are overjoyed to have them home and we’re about to have a very happy Christmas indeed!

Joy and peace to you, the world, Palestine in particular, and Bethlehem especially, for whom: ‘Oh, little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie’ has, this year of all years, become the cruellest joke imaginable.