Authors Live Extra: If All The World Were by Joseph Coelho and Allison Colpoys

Thank you. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be able to share ‘If All The World Were’ with you today.

Now, this is a book. It's my latest picture book. And all the illustrations are done by Allison Colpoys. So she's the illustrator. So if you guys like illustrating, that can be your job. It's my job to write stories and poems. So I had the pleasure of writing the story for this book.

Now, this book is about a little girl and her grandfather and the exciting times that they have together. It's a little bit sad because the grandfather does pass away, but, the little girl finds a way of making herself feel better when she's sad. With a little notebook with a homemade notebook. So I'm hoping that maybe later on you guys will make your own little notebooks and write and draw all your memories inside. Do you think you'll do that? Yeah?

Yeah!

Excellent.

Would you like to hear the story?

Yes.

Fantastic.

It's spring.
I take long walks with my grandad.
I hold his giant hand.
He says ‘you're too old to hold hands’.
We explore. Hand in hand.
The budding springtime.
If all the world were springtime, I would replant my grandad's birthdays.
So that he would never get old.

(This is one of my favorite pictures in the book because we've got springtime developing! Can you guys see any bugs? What bugs can you see? Butterflies. Snails, there’s butterflies and snails. And ladybugs? Ladybugs! Yeah, you see the ladybugs? There are ladybugs. Anything else? What about over here? I've got some beetles. We've got some lovely beetles there as well. I love that because I love spring and I like planting things. And our little protagonist, the main character, is planting in this spread. It's summer.)

Grandad buys me a racing track.
It's second hand with missing bits.
We fix what we can together.
We use our hands to zoom the cars up and down.
Up and down, up, up, up, and fire them off into deep space.

(You know what, guys? I think you could help me with that bit. What do you think? Do you think you can help me with the ups and the downs? So do you think you can say up for me? and down for me? We'll have a little practice.)

Up, down,

Up, down,

up, up, up, up.

Excellent. Okay.

We use our hands to zoom the cars.

Up and down, up and down, up, up, up,

Excellent.

And fire them off into deep space.
If all the world were deep space,
I'd orbit my grandad like the moon.
And our laughs would be shooting stars.

It's autumn.
My grandad makes me a notebook.
With handmade paper of brown and orange leaves
that rustle when I turn the page
bound with ruby Indian leather string.
Grandad gives me a pencil with a rainbow nib.

‘Write and draw.
Write and draw
all your dreams’.

If all the world were dreams.
I would mix my bright
Grandad feelings and paint them
over sad places.

(That'd be quite nice to do, wouldn't it? You could paint bright feelings over sad things again. Paint sad people's faces.)

It's winter.
My grandad tells me tales
from when he was a little boy
of Indian sweets and homemade toys.
There are ships, snakes, and tigers in his stories.
If all the world were stories
I could make my grandad better,
just by listening,
listening,
listening to every tale he has to tell.
But some tales are silent.
I help Mum and Dad clean out Grandad's room.
I find dried blue flowers between book pages.
A yellow toy racing car glued to a piece of track.
A length of ruby Indian leather string.
A ball of silver foil from every sweet he ever ate.
An open pack of rainbow nibbed pencils.
A kaleidoscope of memories.

(Do you guys know what a kaleidoscope is? It's like a little toy when you peer through it you see lots of beautiful colours. What I love about this spread is that all her grandad memories make up the kaleidoscope.)

If all the world were memories
the past would be rooms that I could visit.
And in each room would be my grandad.
On Grandad's chair
is a new notebook.
Newly made with spring petal paper,
newly bound with a length of Indian string.
My name is written on the front.
It's new and empty and was made by my grandad.

So I write
and draw
and write
and draw
and write
all my Grandad memories inside.

(And there she is with her notebook, writing and drawing to make herself feel better when she's sad.)

I write and draw
lots of different worlds and all of them
have my grandad
smiling and laughing,
laughing, laughing.
He says ‘You're too old to hold hands’.
But still I hold his giant hand
and we explore hand in hand.

And that's the end of the book.
And right at the end there's the little girl, using her notebook to write and draw all her dreams.
Did you like that?

Yes.

Oh, I'm so pleased.

Now, a really important part of this book is having the ability to write and draw to make yourself feel better. That's what got me into poetry. I find when I write and draw, if I'm feeling a bit sad, it makes me feel better. If I'm feeling happy, I can write or draw happy things and that makes me feel even happier. If I'm feeling a bit angry. I can write and draw and it makes me feel less angry. It's quite a cool thing, right? And it's free.

Would you like to know how I wrote that poem? Well, I wrote it by doing a picture. By drawing. Can you believe that? I started off with a spider diagram. Now, have you guys done spider diagrams before? So, a spider diagram (some people call them mind maps). You put a word in the middle like 'paper', and then you give the spider lots of legs and you put lots of ideas around the spider diagram. Does that make sense?

So before I wrote that poem, I knew that it was going to be called ‘If All The World Were Paper’. I had the title in my head. So I knew that it was going to be about paper. So I started off by putting paper in the middle and then around the outside. I put lots of things associated or connected with paper. Can anyone remember what things were connected with paper in the paper poem?

Do you remember?
I might…
Oh, excellent.
You remember something?
Paper clips?
Well done. There were paper clips.
That's fantastic.
Anything else?
We've got someone down here.
Give you a little hint.
There were paper houses.
Oh, there were the paper houses. Yeah.
So we've got houses
Yeah?
Paper schools?
Paper schools, yeah.
We had the school in there. But were there any stationery type things? Do you remember anything that kind of helps hold paper together?
Things like…
Sellotape?
Yeah. Well done. There was sellotape.
There was sellotape.
There was things made of metal.
Things made of metal that holds paper together as well as paper clips, sellotape
If we make a mistake, what happens if we make a mistake?
What do we use?
A rubber?
A rubber! Excellent! We've got the rubbers and the liquid stuff that we might use?
Ink?
Ink, yeah, ink.
But what happens if we make a mistake with ink? (You’re not actually allowed to use this in school…) Called tip…?
Yeah. Yeah. Correction fluid, also known as Tippex. I also had things like fold, and what's related to folding, but kind of violent folding?
Ripping?
There was ripping.
And another word, which is like ripping?
Tear!
Yeah, I said I would tear every tear.
And that's a homophone. Do you guys know about homophones? So a homophone are words sound the same, but they have different meanings. And this is one. It's tear and it's tear. So I used the homophone. I would tear every tear.
Does anyone remember what I would do to my baby sister? I would…?
Laminate her?
Yeah! Laminate her. I do love her, honest!
I would laminate her in the stuff that you package…
Yeah?
Bubble wrap
Bubble wrap, fantastic.

So do you see, just by filling this spider diagram with lots of words. Lots of papery ideas. I was starting to form the poem, so I had lots of words. All these words with there on my spider diagram before I wrote the poem. But I had other words as well. I had words like crayons and I also had staples, but I didn't find a use for staples. I also had things like sharpener and I basically went through my head all the different things associated connected with paper. Does that make sense? Are you with me? And then all I had to do was look at the spider diagram to get the poem. The poem was hiding inside the spider diagram. It's a little bit like magic. So I would look at the spider diagram and go ‘How can I use these words to create a poem?’
‘Tear!’ How can I use that?
That's a homophone. I would tear every tear.
And then I wrote that down.
And then I looked at laminate. How can I use that?
I know I would laminate my baby sister and lay her to sleep in unbound fairy tale book pages, and the poem started to take shape. Does that make sense? It's pretty amazing, though, isn't it? Because from a drawing from a simple diagram, we start to get poetry.

Have you got your pencils ready?
Yes.
Are you writing a poem?
No.
Are you drawing a spider diagram?
Yeah
On your marks…get set…GO!
Excellent work.
Now, whilst you're doing that I will say some suggestions of things that will help you think of ideas. So if I put in the middle, I'm going to put ‘wood’. Things that will help me think about things connected with wood will be to think of colours. So think about the colours in your world. Think about the colours associated with the things you're thinking about.Yeah?
Do we need to draw a circle around it?
Yeah. Draw a circle around it because that makes it a lot easier, then keeps it all in place.

So think about colours. What colours are associated with the word you've put in the middle? What textures are associated with the word you put in the middle for wood, i’m putting rough. But wood can also be smooth? So I'm going to add smooth as well. So that's colours. That's textures. Smells. I'm going to think of smells. What smells are associated with wood? Earthy. Other smells. Woody colours, textures, smells. When I think of wood I also think of trees, I might put different types of trees.
Are there different examples of the thing that you put in the middle that you can put around the outside?
So I'm going to put an acer, which is a type of tree.
I'm going to put oak.
I'm going to put pine.
I'm also going to think about the different tools that you can use with wood.
So different tools might be things like a saw, nails, screws.
So think about any tools that you might use for the thing that you've put in the middle. Excellent. Oh, we've got some lovely ideas coming along here. Maybe think about how the thing in the middle makes you feel. How does it make you feel?

The wood. I think of the woods. It makes me feel very relaxed. So we've had colours, we've had textures, we've had sounds. Using the senses can be a wonderful way of getting new ideas. So here we've thought about what we smell. We thought about what we can feel. But maybe I could do something connected with… with taste.

When I think of woods and trees, I think of fruit that's associated with taste. So I might put apples and oranges.
Are there any tastes associated with the thing you've put in the middle?
I don't think there's a taste associated with blankets… or maybe cocoa and hot chocolate.
So what other senses are there?
We’ve done feel. We've done smell, we've done taste. What other ones are there?
Any ideas?
Yeah?
Hear?
Hear! Yeah.
What can you hear when I think about wood and sounds?

I think about sounds like creak and crack and sometimes rustling with the leaves. The rustling leaves. Okay?I'm going to come over and see what some of you guys have come up with. Let’s have a look over here.
What did you put in the middle of yours Blake?
Blanket. Excellent. Excellent.
So what things have we got associated with blanket?
Snug.
Snug.
That's a nice word, isn't it?
Snug. What else?
Fabric.
Fabric.
Snug, fabric. Excellent!
And another one?
Bedroom.
Because your bedroom could be made out of blankets.

That would be lovely. If your bedroom is made entirely of blankets, you'd feel nice and soft and relaxed. And that'll be really lovely. And are you starting to get ideas for some sentences? If all the world were blankets, everyone would feel snug.If all the world were blankets, I would always be happy.
Be nice. Wouldn't it?
Looking at your spider diagram, tell the person next to you.
Tell the person next to you three things about your world.
If all the world were something, something, something.
If all the world were something, something, something.
So tell the person next to you three things about your world.

Let’s see over here.
Have we got any sentences over here?
Sweets. We've got sweets. Blankets. Have you got any sweet lines?
If all the world were sweets. Oh, that's excellent. Excellent. So we've got some sweet. Would you like to say that line again? Yeah.

If all the world were sweetsthere would be lots of wrappers.

That is fantastic! So we had if all the world were sweets there'd be lots of wrappers. That is lovely. Any other lines? Yeah.

If all the world were animals, your home would be like a zoo.

Your home would be like a zoo. It would be. Your home would be like a zoo. That's fantastic. Yeah.

If all the world were technology,it would be very fancy.

Oh, I like that. It would be very fancy wouldn't it? If all the world were technology. It would be very fancy. Excellent. Yeah.

If all the world were blankets,it would be nice and warm.

Oh, that's lovely. If all the world were blankets, it would be nice and warm. Did you guys get some lovely lines? Some lovely sentences? I hope you guys in school there got some lovely sentences as well.