Care Home Open Day and the arts

In-keeping with the Arts, as one of this year’s themes for Care Home Open Day, Jean Chesterman, a resident at Care UK’s Kingsfield care home in Faversham, Kent, has recently published a book of poems for children.

Roundabout, written under her married name of Jean Kenward, is the latest work in a writing career that has spanned nine decades. Jean has written more than 18 books and over 250 poetry anthologies but she is perhaps best known for her creation Ragdolly Anna, which was made into a children’s TV series in the 1980s.

Roundabout is a collection of simple songs and poems for young children, many about the natural world. The pages are beautifully illustrated with paintings in jewel-like colours by Barbara Sedassy, Jean’s longstanding friend and artistic collaborator.

Jean has written books and poems for adults too but she is mainly a children’s author and says “I’ve always felt an affinity for children, for the wonder that they have about the world and their sense of the absurd”.

Time seems to have made no difference at all to Jean’s output. As she goes on to say: “I write something most days. Writing seems natural to me, like breathing. A line comes into my head and the rest of the lines fly around it, like bees”.

Jean talks about her life at Kingsfield care home and thinks that it is important to see the good things in the world as we hear so much that is bad.

She says that: “I see good things here at Kingsfield in what the staff do. They are extremely understanding and very kind. They have a huge amount of patience and go out of their way to be helpful. They work very hard and I admire them. There is a lot of laughter here”.