Stanley's Stick

"It’s a great story. A little boy called Stanley finds this stick that was once part of something tall and grand. Stanley and his stick have loads of adventures together. Stanley pretends his stick is a whistle, he uses it to go camping. John Hegley’s approach to language is unique and makes this book absolutely lovely to read out loud. As soon as you read his work, you hear his voice, simply through the way that he uses words: the sounds, and the rhythms. I think it’s a really remarkable book. Stanley has all these adventures with his stick. Then he and his family go on holiday; they go to Blackpool. Here there’s this remarkable moment in the story where Stanley hurls his stick into the white tide. “Gosh, what a tiny splosh for something which has been so big in Stanley’s days.” And now Stanley is stick-less. This happens about halfway into the book. When I consider it, it seems such a weird thing for John Hegley to do at this point. He has created the boy character, he has introduced you to the stick character, and then, before you’ve even got halfway through the book, the stick’s gone. It’s a really unusual thing to do in terms of story structure—and it works, it’s a really emotive point. But this isn’t a sad book! Stanley finds a new stick, “Alone upon the shore, which is quite different from the stick he had before.” This is a wiggly stick and Stanley calls this stick Fanta-stick, Stanley’s Fanta-stick. I think this story is about one of those incredible moments that can occur in a child’s life—but that the grown-ups just aren’t aware of. Stanley is there, on the beach, with his parents looking on and you wonder do they have any idea what is going on? Stanley has had this massive creative epiphany—and his parents are just worrying about sandwiches and suncream."