Four Kinds of Readers: "There are four kinds of readers. The first is like the hour-glass; and their reading being as the sand, it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second is like the sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third is like a jelly-bag, allowing all that is pure to pass away, and retaining only the refuse and dregs. And the fourth is like the slaves in the diamond mines of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, retain only pure gems." (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) | “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” ― Philip Pullman“A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.” ― Ben Okri 'A house without books is like a room without windows.' —Heinrich Mann |
I'm missing being able to lay out books on shelves and have a proper Storyshack home, to see shelves of books. I too feel a bit 'windowless' without that. Although we are in a rented house with lots of books there are not quite as many as we have either in Storyshack or in our own house. In fact all books (and everything else) have been cleared from our downstairs and taken to Dunstable! I know - how funny. I was born there...I don't think that's why the removal company have taken everything there-it's just their base!!
It is funny not being surrounded by books. I once did some baby sitting for a young lad whose parents liked everything to be very clean and 'just so'. In fact there wasn't really much evidence of having a child in the house at all-something that tugged at my heart a bit. I took some books round to read before bedtime-I'm not sure he'd had a lot of sharing stories together at all. I can remember that room-clinical, stark-no books at all, no books in the house apart from a couple of cook books. It wasn't about money, just about what was important and books evidently weren't. No escape, he had nowhere to imagine, no characters to befriend, no new worlds to explore. The library would have given him this-books to take home, to surround yourself with but, alas, they just weren't part of his world. How sad. So, bearing that in mind and knowing that however much I'd love to it wouldn't be possible to send out books to every child in the land I would urge SCHOOLS to surround their children with books. It might be the only place children can have WINDOWS INTO THE WORLD OF IMAGINATION. Classrooms, corridors, libraries and, of course, Headteacher's offices full of the treasure troves of reading.
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. "—Groucho Marx