Immunise against reading failure
I love reading. I have always been a bookworm. I have been a librarian too. I love children’s books and - with some of them - wonder if they are really written for children and not for adults. (Drop by my Ebay store, Buy the Buy, and see some old fashioned charmers.)I married a bookworm and I have three well read children.
My daughter decorates houses. She says she sees quite a number of houses where people want things to look beautiful - but they are homes with not a book in sight! In many cases, she introduces books - if only as a decorating accent.
A house without books! For us, it might as well be a house without food. Books open up worlds of experience, ideas, values, emotions. They take us outside ourselves. Long live the book - even if it comes in digital fashion. But that will spoil things a bit.
I love a smaller book: one that is more or less the length of your hand (I have a large hand) and that feels a good weight as it lies open there. I love clear san serif font with lots of white (or creamy buff) space surrounding the text. And if I have all that and the pages are deckle edged - well, I am near to swooning with ecstasy and delight.
And bookshops! Well they are smack for literate addicts. In one delightful bookshop in Adelaide, I have never been more than ten feet inside the door, never to the back wall because I have usually exceeded the budget and I have to get out of there quickly. Ebay is a delight for buying books on my esoteric reading list - things like Rufus Jones and other old Quaker writers.
So transmitting this joy to new generations is something I regard of great importance and that’s why I want to post this item which tells pre-school centres to promote reading aloud to children as surely as promoting immunisation.
I second the motion!
