Not Now, Bernard

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The next resident of 10 Downing Street will find the garden crawling with monstrous economic and political menaces. A chorus of Bernards is raising the alarm. Economists, MPs, former Tory ministers, charities, trade unions, businesses, local councils – all can hear rustling in the bushes where a beastly crisis lurks, ready to savage the new prime minister. Write a story that explains what happens next. How do Bernard’s family react when they realise what has happened? Sterling has depreciated, but without the compensating boost to export competitiveness that might be expected from a currency devaluation. Business investment has been flat since the referendum, in large part because the political climate has been so unpredictable. That volatility – two general elections and three changes of prime minister in six years – is a function of the struggle to turn an ideal Brexit, nurtured in the parochial Eurosceptic imagination, into a reality-based Brexit involving other countries and real people’s jobs. Having learned to despise received Treasury wisdom, Truss has graduated on to scorn for diplomacy as traditionally practised at the Foreign Office. Reports of her encounters with overseas counterparts suggest she stumbles at the subtle boundary between direct and brusque; candid and crass. Write a story for the newspaper that Bernard’s father reads, about the sighting of a monster in the local area.

Not Now, Bernard | Centre for Literacy in Primary Education Not Now, Bernard | Centre for Literacy in Primary Education

In the future I would really like to incorporate this book into talk and drama. I would like to create a conscience alley whereby half the class could be expressing why the parents haven’t made time for him and the other half conveying why Bernard’s feelings. Anyone who pays an energy bill and does a weekly shop can feel the claws of a budget squeeze closing around the nation’s windpipe. There’s an ogre in the health service. “Not now, Bernard,” says Rishi Sunak. There’s a fiend in the financial outlook. “Not now, Bernard,” says Liz Truss. There are devils in your policy details. “Not now, Bernard!”I would also like to integrate hot seating, where the children could use talking partners to come up with some key questions to ask the parents and also Bernard. In turn allowing the children to understand the potential underlying reasons for the strong emotions in the book. Role play conversations like the ones in the story as you go about everyday tasks with ‘Hello Mum or Dad’ and ‘Not now Bernard’ (perhaps inserting your child’s name!) as the reply. Your child might enjoy taking on the adult’s role with you as Bernard. Make a monster mask

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Use comic-creation software (e.g. Comic Life) to turn the story into a comic strip, or to create a story in one of Bernard’s comics. Read the story aloud to your child allowing time to look closely at the illustrations as you do. Children are often fascinated with these, particularly when Dad gets hurt with the hammer and bitten by the monster! Talk about the book using ICT the children might design their own monster and give him/ her a story using the paint programme Age 3-7 This classic picture book explores a theme which is very real to children, wanting adult attention and being ignored. Bernard’s parents are just too busy and distracted to take notice of Bernard even when he is replaced by a monster that has eaten him. A very amusing story which is just as appealing to adults as it is to children. Too soon, because the benefits of freedom lie unclaimed under the pyre of “retained” EU regulations that both Truss and Sunak promise to incinerate. And too late, because Brexit is the settled will of the people and any hint of a downside is sedition.Then there is that other monster, the one that has become such a fixture in the garden that even the opposition seems not to notice it any more. Can we talk about Brexit? Not now, Bernard!

Not Now Bernard - Teaching Ideas Not Now Bernard - Teaching Ideas

That tendency was on display at the hustings event last week, where Truss was asked whether the French president, Emmanuel Macron, is friend or foe. “The jury’s out,” she said. It was meant in a mischievous spirit, with an eye only for the Tory activists in the room. Foreign secretaries and wannabe prime ministers used to avoid imbecilities of that kind before Boris Johnson contaminated both offices with his marauding insouciance. And even he doesn’t hesitate to call France an ally. I was reminded of it by Rafael Behr's opinion piece in today's Guardian, 31 August 2022, six days before Johnson actually resigned as Prime Minister and Liz Truss took over, "Brexit is the monster under the bed Liz Truss is desperately trying to ignore" - see below. When you read the story again encourage your child to join in, perhaps with Bernard’s words or the chorus of ‘Not Now Bernard’. Children might also enjoy adding sound effects for example when dad hurts himself or when the monster munching Bernard. Watch the story Still in print more than 40 years later, an updated 40th-anniversary edition was released in 2020. In the new edition, Bernard's parents are now preoccupied by their digital devices, on top of the housework and D.I.Y. [5] Print off the diary sheet provided so that your child can draw some of the things the monster does in the story. Draw a monsterThe Tory party recognises only two possible positions on Britain’s relationship with the EU – heroic insistence on further severance and cowardly plotting to rejoin. Labour, unwilling to adopt the former stance and afraid of being cast in the latter one, says nothing meaningful on the subject. The illustrations of Bernard usually show him with unhappy expressions. Can you draw him in a happy mood? What will his face look like? What will his body language show? Bernard is a small boy who tries and fails to get his parents’ attention; they’re just too busy to notice what he’s getting up to! Even when a monster appears in his garden and wants to eat him, all Bernard hears is, “Not Now Bernard!”

Not Now Bernard | The Story Museum Not Now Bernard | The Story Museum

The sentences in the story are all quite short. Could you use a connective to join some of them together? Does this improve the story?Share favourite parts of the story or favourite illustrations. Talk about anything that puzzles your child, for example why Bernard’s parents don’t listen to him. Join in Bernard tries to attract the attention of his preoccupied parents who reply "Not now, Bernard". Bernard goes into the garden and meets a monster which eats him. The monster goes into the house and tries to attract the parents' attention but gets the same reaction from them, completely oblivious to the monster replacing their son. The monster lives Bernard's life, but more badly behaved, for the rest of the day and, at bed time, tries to tell Bernard's mother he is a monster but she replies "Not now, Bernard".