Fictional Fredded Bike
I was at a friends house recently, and she produced this book which had belonged to her children:
Mrs Armitage On Wheels by Quentin Blake is just the sort of story I used to read to Daughter. It’s about a woman riding a Very Sensible Bike that always needs to have just one extra thing added to it.
I won’t spoil the ending for you, but let’s just say that those endless additions lead to problems. I’ve always found that an additional bike is a far more practical solution!
Oh how lovely! I don’t think I’ve seen that one before.
Another good one is “Sally Jean the Bicycle Queen” Amazing how many stories you can find for kids with bikes in that make reading bedtime stories much more fun for all the family (ie. Dad). I even noticed a Brompton in one of the Charlie and Lola books we read tonight!
http://adamef.tumblr.com/post/18066004520
We used to read this one to our children. I’d completely forgotten about the Very Sensible Bike until now.
Note that even at the end she hasn’t added a helmet or fluorescent clothing. She only adds useful things.
“Note that even at the end she hasn’t added a helmet or fluorescent clothing.”
I suspect he wouldn’t get away with that nowadays (the book was first published in 1987). The year before last a children’s book illustrator on the Guardian cycling blog said that her publisher had recently sent back some drawings for a book featuring cycling kittens because the moggies weren’t wearing helmets: something about “best practice”. She wrote back and asked her publisher to ask these mysterious Custodians of Best Practice(whoever they might be) how she was supposed to fit helmets to felines: should she cut holes in them for their ears to protrude, or would that contravene best practice by weakening the helmet? We never did learn the outcome of this.
We are here to look after you. We are here to make you safe. So do as we say. Resistance is futile…