She wrote, in the article, about an experience she had:
I once did an author event in a bookshop, and a child came up to me afterwards. “Are we allowed to touch the books?” he asked. I realised he’d never been inside a bookshop, and this strange environment was as alien to him as stepping into a betting shop would be for me. A book token is a passport: the 15m tokens that will be distributed among all school pupils in the UK and Ireland will enable them to go to any bookshop to choose a free book. For many, this will be their very first book – around 15% of UK children have no books of their own. It’s a shocking and depressing statistic.
It's an important initiative. And a chance to dress up as a character from a book!
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| The science department of Camborne Science and International Academy do Lord of the Rings (via) |
2 comments:
It's such a brilliant initiative, isn't it? Despite my DD's not being short of a book or two, they love the idea that millions of children are participating in one big book event and cherish their voucher / choosing their book / usually going to on to buy another book too.
I also help that as many schools as possible show children local libraries too - you don't need to own books (lovely as that is!) in order to be able to access them - at least so long as we are able to enjoy our lovely libraries without them being closed due to funding cuts.
In a world where books are becoming less important to many, I think it is wonderful to put books in the hands of children. I know the librarians are happy when books are checked out instead of DVD's! They have told me they feel like they are running a video store instead of a library.
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