Urban and gritty I'm not
I'm more chocolate and snot
But stories need bite
So I'm never trite
Because children matter a lot.
My name is Jayne Kirkham and I am a writer with over thirty years’ experience working with and writing for children and young people. I’ve written for theatre, film, television, radio and online. I’ve worked on projects ranging in size from small conservation films in Africa to museum installations to international feature films. For more information about what I’ve done, click on “What I’ve Done”.
Growing up on Exmoor gave me a lifelong love of nature, adventure and the mysterious. It also, one way or another, nurtured a love of cinema, theatre and poetry. Having studied Film, Drama, English Literature and Screenwriting to Masters level, my first commission was a play for Radio 4. But having worked with children all my life, and having never grown out of watching cartoons, I decided to write for children and families.
Commissions include original feature films, adaptations of novels, shows for preschool, and older kids and online. I will write for grown-ups (I adapted Marina Lewyka’s novel Two Caravans, into an animated feature for Blue Zoo) but please don’t ask me to be all urban and gritty. I don’t do gritty but I do do muck.
Snort: I wrote do-do! Do-dos! I do like to squeeze out something earthy. But it has to be done with finesse, aplomb: I’m on a mission to put the art back into fart. Or is it the other way round?
I’m also on a mission to put the grr back in girl. And boys actually: getting kids outdoors in stories and for real. I’m a canoe and kayak coach. I love the whoosh and wah-hay of white water. But I really love the woohoo of someone realising they are so much more than they ever imagined! I think stories should empower as well as entertain. I write stories that give kids a hug.
Stories with action about
Girls that can fly,
Ostriches, bunnies and apes.
War stories, more stories,
Comedy, drama and tall stories
Of doctors, detectives and grapes.
Toad and Friends, HoHo Entertainment/Cartoon Network
Toniebox
Showtown, The Museum of Fun and Entertainment
Treasure Champs, Three Arrows Media
Little Roy, Jam Media/CBeebies/CBBC
Tee and Mo – Plug-in Media, Cbeebies
CBeebies Radio – CBeebies
Bing – Acamar, CBeebies
Ajani’s Great Ape Adventures – Nature for Kids
Olive The Ostrich – Blue Zoo Productions, Nick Jnr
Roze and the Robots – Gravy Media/Passion Pictures
NOKSU – Evergreen Films/Epidem, YLE TV1
Bowerbird – Artemisia Films
Last Night – Deadline Films/Irish Film Board
The Deadline – Deadline Films/Metrodome
Fei – Peach Blossom Media/Evergreen Entertainment
6.6.04 – The Film Council
Where The Skylarks Nest – BBC Radio 4
News, views, stories and stuff
No piffle or waffle, flimflam or guff
All things considered and not off the cuff
No more of this rhyme scheme: enuff is enuff!
Hooray and hoorah, Toad and Friends is now screening in the UK on Boomerang. This was such a lovely project to work on: bringing Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows to a new 21st Century audience with all the humour, fun and love this beautiful book deserves. But, as is the way of these things, it was all rather a long time ago and, when I had loads to say about the process, it would have been imprudent to do so.
I remember I wrote six episodes including one in which I got to tackle the book’s Chapter Nine – you know the chapter that always gets left out of the abridgements cos it’s well, a bit odd, a bit mystical and who is the piper at the gates of dawn anyway? Yeah, that one. The episode is called The Song Stone and there’s not a piper in sight. Or is there…
They also let me write about the horse that pulled Toad’s canary coloured cart in the book. Ha, I knew all that messing about with ponies when I was a kid would come in handy one day.
And the choir – I dug out the choir and wrote them a song. Well, truth be told, I got Ratty to dig out the choir. Then I appropriated some words from Mr Grahame and gave Gareth Davies the pleasure of composing a tune for it.
Screenwriting is all about collaboration 🙂
And then there were the otters and the weasels and an adder and a heron and all the daft things I’ve seen and done living in the country and well, as Toad would say, “Poop poop!”
THE GREAT MIGRATION
Twenty-two toads were crossing the road
To get to their ancestral pond;
Along came a berk, driving home from work,
And the twenty-two toads were all gone.
Stunned by the shockwaves of wheels whizzing by,
Squashed by rubber on road;
Stuck in the tread, it’s fair to say all were dead.
And in the pond not one tadpole or toad.
Twenty more toads were crossing the road
And in danger of The Great Beyond.
I don’t like to brag but I had a bucket, not bag,
And took all twenty toads to the pond.
Centuries of lies have given toads a bad press;
No one cares if they’re squished in the end.
Misunderstood, in fact toads are good:
Eating pests, they’re The Gardener’s Friend.
But with housing developments, habitat loss,
Fast motor cars and new roads:
The future’s not bright and it’s really not right
That we’re losing our once common toads.
So please watch for amphibians crossing your roads
(Creatures of which I’ve grown fond),
Help stem this loss; help them to cross
And bring Life back to field, garden and pond.
Toad Patrolling- quite frankly, there are probably better, certainly warmer, ways to spend a night in early spring but I can’t think of them. The silence that falls after the last blackbird has roosted, the sight of an owl, a badger…and then they start to appear: walking with purpose, sitting up on the look out… and then you hear them singing. Frogs croak but toads sing. And that, my friends, you need to experience for yourselves.
If you have a mind to help the UK’s declining amphibian population (toads, frogs, newts), Froglife is a fantastic organisation. They’ll put you in touch with your nearest patrols. Otherwise – I mean also!- please support the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust or -and I mean also!- your local Wildlife Trust
Wahey! I’m getting better at these update bloggery things – only six months has passed since the last post.
Is it too late to say Happy New Year?
We’ve already passed the Ides
Well I’m going to say it anyway
It’s my blog: I’m the one who decides.
And ‘Twenty Four” looks to be a peach,
At least in my world anyhoo:
With that museum opening, and Toad on TV,
I have lots to look forward to:
Like a new commission just starting
Full of laughter, fun and good cheer.
So I’m going to blog you blessings
And wish you a very Happy New Year.
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