This, apparently, isn’t true for everyone and most people need a day to encourage reading. I’m not entirely sure it has been working. It first started in 1995, when children were encouraged to dress up as a book character. This gradually progressed to dressing up as someone from film or TV. Since then, reading, as a pastime for children has gone into free fall. The Guardian published an article with the headline, ‘Children are reading less than ever before, research reveals.’ (You can’t beat a snappy headline). It went on to say that only 26% of under 18s read each day and just about half the children surveyed said they enjoyed reading. I wasn’t surprised and suspect that the figure is even lower for adults.
When I was on a train the other day, I was surprised to see that I was the only person with a book. You used to be able to guarantee that a train was stuffed full of readers, all desperate to avoid eye contact. A little girl near me was surprised too. She asked her mum what I was doing. She sounded out the title.
“The piss-choll-gee of time travel,” she said.
Her mum laughed, “psychology!”
“What’s that?”
“It’s about brains.”
“Does that lady travel in time?” the girl whispered looking at me sideways with extra large eyes.
“Oh, no. It’s a story book. Time travel isn’t real.”
“Grown ups read stories?”
I got myself in a bit of a tizz this morning thinking what to wear. As a book lover, I had to dress up if it was going to encourage the children I teach to read. I have an issue with dressing up because all my favourite characters look like me but I put on a long black dress, cape, stripped socks and went as the Worst Witch. According to several children I didn’t look like Mildred Hubble at all. I agreed. I was far too old. I was more like Mrs McHingy. You probably don’t know her but she was in one of my favourite poems, from a book I brought when I was on holiday in Guernsey in 1977, when it rained for the whole two weeks.
It went something like this:
“Mrs McHingy, so crabby and cringy,
Dressed all in black from her head to her toes.”
There are several things you hear yourself saying on world book day, if you teach, that you can’t imagine ever saying in real life. Things like, “Please don’t pick your nose with your sword,” and “Yes James of course you can go to the toilet but leave your peach here because it might get soggy.”
It is hard to teach at the best of times but teaching kids who are dressed up, who can’t go outside because it is pouring with rain, when you are crabby and cringy, doesn’t make world book day the pleasure it should be.
Luckily, I had book club to go to. The new bookshop has finally found a space for me in their book club. I was a bit worried because I don’t like people and people could spoil my love of books but book people seem to be my people. This is another new thing I’ve added to my life since the Long Suffering Husband took early retirement. I can fit an extra book a month into my free time. I read and walk!
It was a great evening. There was Prosecco (or water with bubbles in) and crisps, served in an old box. We talked about all the brilliant books, passed them around and I watched people sniff and stroke them. We opened children’s pop up books and ahhhed over their beauty. I told them I was particularly fond of books about death and nobody seemed surprised. I added more books to my ‘to be read’ pile.
As we started to leave people were mingling and chatting about how they knew each other. Suddenly, the group was talking about art groups.
“Were you part of the 96 group, Pat?” the lady with the job that she could tell us about but she’d have to kill us asked.
She wasn’t but knew of it and named some of the members. Then they started talking about prints from a catalogue I’m very familiar with.
“I’ve got Red Shoes in my living room,” someone said.
“I bought Anniversary Waltz for my husband for our anniversary. He loves it.”
“She died so quickly,” another said, sadly.
My mum loved books as much as I do. I’m glad she found a way to come to book club with me.
If I read When the Coffee Gets Cold with her then we can go to the next one together too.
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