Last Wednesday I was feeling stressed out by onrushing book deadlines and went to the Story Museum at Oxford. I felt quite silly and self-conscious as a grown-up going by myself into a museum that is clearly ‘for kids.’ Never mind, I told myself as I marshalled my excuses. No. 1. I have a very good friend with a lovely little girl who will very soon be old enough for this museum. So it’s research. (I’m an academic; if you’re not seeking funding, research requires little justification.) No. 2. I write for children. So it’s market research. (Capitalism also seems to get by without much need for justification.) So I’m even probably starting this post all wrong; reader, if you’re a time-harried parent looking for info about important things like toilets (they’re excellent) there’s loads of great blogs that will tell you all you need to know but this isn’t one. You’re still here? Excellent. Thank you for staying with me, maybe we’ve time to sit comfortably -and even get ourselves a pot of tea as there is nothing quite as good as tea* when you’re stressed out. At least take some time to let go of our inner adults and lose ourselves thinking about stories.

This is a museum I’d wanted to go to for some time and was lured in by the ‘Here be Dragons’ exhibition co-designed by Cressida Cowell. I never could resist a good dragon. But as anyone who is or once was a child knows, you do not simply waltz up to a sleeping wyrm. In this case, you must first traverse the whispering wood of folklore with trees that tell stories from all around the world. I liked the fairness of trying to have the whole world in the wood – as any child instinctively knows and is ready to point out, unfairness is one of life’s great evils and everyone should have their turn and equal portions of the important things like stories and great sticky marmalade rolls.

This gallery acts as an introduction to stories, which people told, before as one of the curator-guides** put it, they were trapped in books. It was very quiet when I visited and I stopped to listen to a tale from India about a hat seller and some monkeys and trickery. I won’t spoil it by telling it here – if you are in the museum it has a deliciously satisfying twist to it and if you are not in the museum then there is Google or if you are lucky, one of your aunties and uncles. The trees had some animatronics and doors to open and scenes to peek at, which were probably delightful if you’re a real boy or girl but I was impatient to meet with dragons and moved on.

For as you can see, everywhere be dragons. Stories of dragons that join up the world. This gallery was a tour through a world of dragons that was stuffed with things to see and do – boxes to sniff with smells of dragons from different places (Chinese dragons smell like biscuits in case you were wondering.)

There were lots of things to pick up and play with, places to write your own poems and entries for a dragon bestiary, as well as dragon-story books to read. The museum being in Oxford it also has a letter from Tolkien confessing he had never seen a dragon nor wished to!

However, I signally failed to capture the delights of this gallery with my pictures that are of the more boringly grown-up orientated bits of the display that captivated me – a roof tile dragon tile from north China and a glorious pickled dragon in a jar that was probably my favorite thing in this room.

This was my favorite. It was like stepping into a fantastical library, with exhibits that brought out the life contained in a good book’s pages and took me straight back into remembering how I read as a child (and how rarely do I read like that now).

I am confessing to nobody how many times I’ve scrolled through eBay hoping to find one of the plates from Alan Garner’s ‘Owl Service’.

Throughout the gallery were rooms to enter including through War Drobe to the absolutely magical Lantern Waste. This was the closest I’ll ever get to Narnia and was where I had the only slightly jarring moment here. I am fat and children’s books until very recently (and even now) are not kind to fat adults or to fat children, and seeing myself in this room’s mirrors made me again self-conscious. I turned away from the mirrors and enjoyed instead the recreation of a childhood favorite book. I have on my tbr pile though, Sarah Moss’ memoir ‘My Good Bright Wolf’, which talks about her eating disorders and children’s ‘literature.’ Stereotypical role models of heroes and villains are powerful and unwholesome teachers of children.

Thankfully, since I was little, excellent children’s books are being written with exciting stories and characters where seeing yourself feels ok, and these were also rooms for these in the gallery – Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses being one.***

The room for Lisa Williamson’s ‘The Art of Being Normal,’ has put a book on my radar that I probably ‘should’ have heard of but hadn’t (I’ve not read much YA for some time). I was glad to find out about it and will now read it.

There was more in the museum – including a ‘choose your own adventure’ with boxes to open to make things more adventurous – but my time had run out. As I left though, I wasn’t feeling so unwelcomely grown-up, and I had managed to escape for a little the stresses of my own book deadlines (a thoroughly academic archaeology book about the military households of Roman army commanders, now in press), which is what I think a good story museum should do.

*it’s too early for gin or whisky and definitely never time for any of those ‘live laugh lobotomise’ signs advertising ‘wine-o-clock’.

**I indulged my worst habit of talking at the curator/guides about what I’m writing about and I probably owe them an apology. They were great though and I did really enjoy talking about children’s books with them. If they happen to read this: thank you.

***I’m white. Black children deserve to see themselves as central characters in books too, is what I mean.