At Christmas time, where magic is in abundance, I think it’s worth shining a light on the magic that surrounds us all year round. The wonder that is books.
Just take a minute to think about the fact that there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, but they can be endlessly rearranged to transport us to so many different times, places or universes. And even when we’re reading the same arrangement of those letters, we’re all having our own uniquely personal experiences, courtesy of our imaginations. That blows my mind.
I absolutely adore reading. It’s a fundamental part of who I am. If I don’t get the chance to read my book on any given day, even if only for a couple of minutes, it makes me grumpy, (and my family will tell you that my default setting is already at Grinch levels of grouchy). It’s akin to being denied the chance to go outside and get fresh air.
I’m not quite sure at which point reading and books became so important to me, I only know they were always a presence in my life. And for that, I credit my mum. She recommended lots of books to me (it didn’t always work – I have no time for The Secret Garden or Anne of Green Gables) and went out of her way to teach me a word a day. A habit I have passed on to my own daughter.
Worryingly, the National Literacy Trust puts levels of reading for pleasure amongst the under 18s at their lowest for over a decade. In a post-pandemic world where levels of anxiety amongst young people are higher than ever, reading, and a love of it, is ever more important, as studies show that it can help to alleviate that anxiety. Not only that, it helps to foster empathy and fuel imagination.
As a school community, I think we all have a role, as parents and educators, to encourage our children to develop a love of reading. To see it as more than just another thing they have to do at school, and instead as an opportunity to access worlds as yet unseen.
It can be hard trying to balance the mechanics of teaching children to read with engendering a love of reading. But seeing how the children responded to the library loans from the North Pole last week, and the displays that celebrate reading across the school, I think we’re on the right track.
As Sylvia Plath once wrote, “What I fear most is the death of the imagination…”. We’re a long way from that at Kea.
