Not Now, Bernard: Board Book: 1

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You can also still join BIPC events and webinars and access one-to-one support. See what's available at the British Library in St Pancras or online and in person via BIPCs in libraries across London. Our Family Station in St Pancras is open from 10.00-12.00 every Friday and we're continuing to welcome schools, as well as families and adult learners to our courses and access events. All our in-person and livestreamed events are going ahead. Other services 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 We can interpret my son's words to say he thinks that parents always protect you, but that is not my son's view of the story or HIS interpretation of the book. He has not read between the lines and just expects a normal ending like in Spiderman or any other adventure he knows.

All of our upcoming public events and our St Pancras building tours are going ahead. Read our latest blog post about planned events for more information. Not Now, Bernard was first published in 1980 and has been translated into countless languages (not literally - I just haven't counted them). The translation can't have cost much, as the book is only 154 words long. 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?My first instinct was to ask my wife and kids where they stood on the issue. I framed the question in my head – 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. Before long, Bernard (played by Rhys Rusbatch) pokes his head out and squeezes through the screens. And in under a minute, he has the kids on side with a talking shoe routine and some splendid face-pulling. What he also conveys within seconds is that sense of boredom that manages to somehow take over a child's entire body, so that every lollop and sigh they make suggests they will soon explode with frustration.

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. 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". If this is a real monster the mother is showing how she ignores absolutely everyone, even a roaring monster.Conservative readiness to indulge Johnson is no measure of his reputation in the country, but the leadership contest is not a national election. For at least one more week, British politics is contained in that sealed chamber where there is a Boris legacy to celebrate, where the solution to poverty is corporate tax cuts, where the solution to everything is tax cuts, where tax cuts have no impact on public service budgets, where life outside the EU is all upside and can only get better.