Your Child’s Day: A Book to Treasure

A few years ago, in a desperate bid to get my son (ever the recalcitrant writer) to put pencil to paper during the l-o-o-o-ng Easter vacation, I suggested that we make a book about a day in his life. We took a photograph every hour from breakfast until lights out, along with photographs of his toy wooden clock showing the correct time.

Then, we printed off the photos and glued them into a makeshift book. Alistair wrote out a sentence of text a day over the next two weeks.

When the oeuvre was finally complete, we re-read it at bedtime every night for a week and then returned it to his bookshelf.

Where it stayed until his sister discovered it a few years later, and was enchanted to see a younger version of herself cast in a key supporting role (primarily as the water gun target — but as a younger sister, she’s adaptable). Isla was so eager to show this opus to her nursery teacher that she forgot to have her daily pre-school tantrum, and discovered, to her surprise, that she rather liked school after all.
For my part, I can’t resist leafing through it whenever I’m straightening the bookshelves. With my firstborn on the cusp of adolescence, I now realise that this record of the early years was the best possible gift I could have given to my future self. Because at age five and a half, every minute of the day is a highlight. And we captured fourteen of them.

Click here for more information about this project.