Speak Out
August 2014
35
feature
It was late on an Australian summer
night in November 2008 when I found
myself in an unanticipated telephone
conversation with Bing Bunny’s people
in the UK and Ireland. They had
identified me as an expert in the way
young children talk, and wanted help
in giving Bing Bunny and his friends’
chatter an authentic ring that children
and parents could relate to.
I had enjoyed steady, quietly waggish
Flop and our rambunctious young
protagonist and his everyday ‘it’s a
Bing thing’ dramas and wide-eyed
discoveries since 2004, through the
brilliant stories and illustrations by
Ted Dewan – and the idea of Bing in
his own television series was exciting.
Seizing the chance to help in having
Bing 3;6 (slightly older than the Bing
of the books), and some new
characters: Sula 3;6, Pando 3;8,
Coco 5;6 and Charlie 1;2 speak as
children of their ages really do, I
briefed the producers and writers on
typical speech and language acquisition
– and from where I sat, everything
went quiet. Then, from February to
October 2013, near perfect drafts of
the 78 scripts were delivered to me
and I reviewed them for ‘language
authenticity’.
Apart from keeping schtum about Bing
in conversation with my grandchildren
who are big fans of the books, the
most difficult part of this enjoyable
process was that communication was
one-sided. I did not interact directly
with the scriptwriters¹ and had no
means of knowing the effect on these
creative individuals of my edits to
and comments about their carefully
constructed dialogue. Nonetheless,
I devised a motivational 5-star rating
system, reminiscent of those good
behaviour star charts some adults use
to keep some pre-schoolers on track,
and provided feedback – with the aim of
having Bing, Sula and Pando ‘be’ 3½,
Coco 5½, and Charlie just 14 months.
I am proud to be part of Team Bing
Bunny, and it was exciting to be at the
launch party at BAFTA in Piccadilly on
June 14, 2014 and to celebrate with the
cast and crew. This unique television
series is joyous, inventive and ground-
breaking in its faithful portrayal of what it
is like to be a pre-schooler, and for that
matter, what it is like to be with a pre-
schooler. The situations, and the adult
and child characters’ words, emotions,
behaviour and reactions all have a ring
of truth – and the one constant is fun.
Caroline Bowen
¹
Philip Bergkvist, Clare Bradley,
Denise Cassar, Gillian Corderoy,
Ted Dewan, Susan Earl, Lizzie Ennever,
Helen Farrall, Gerard Foster, Tracy
Hammett, Kate Henderson, Sam Hill,
Jayne Kirkham, Matthew Leys,
Lucy Murphy, Madeline North,
Sascha Paladino, Chris Parker,
Rebecca Stevens, An Vrombaut,
Catherine Williams, and Crispin Wood.
Dr Bowen has advised that the
ABC will start broadcasting Bing in
Spring 2014. For those who can’t
wait, some of the 78 seven-minute
episodes can be viewed here:
/
As the credits rolled
on the Acamar Films, Brown Bag Films and Tandem Films co-production of
Bing
on CBeebies …
how exciting to see included Language Consultant Caroline Bowen PhD CPSP!
The Association would like to congratulate Dr Caroline Bowen on her involvement as a Language Consultant on the new
animated
Bing
series (currently showing on the BBC, and soon to be enjoyed by children worldwide), and to express its gratitude
to Caroline for including her CPSP post-nominals after her name in the credits. It is so exciting for SPA to have CPSP receiving
international exposure. And now let’s hand over to Caroline to tell you the story in her own words …
Bing is no ordinary bunny
Bing and Flop.
