Here at Grandma's Nursery, yesterday was Unicorn Day. These creatures are ubiquitous, and Rosie loves them. She also loves books and storytelling. Whilst preparing, I came across a piece Michael Morpurgo wrote in November 2014, advocating the need for libraries - and he included a passage from one of his books. I know it is lazy of me, but I'm too busy and too tired to write my own post today. And MM says it far better than I can anyway...Every child’s right to literacy
Knowing as we do that reading is the key to knowledge and
understanding, essential to the fulfilling of young lives, and knowing too
there are at least a million children in this country not fully literate when
they leave primary school, we all accept that not enough has been done to bring
children to books and books to children.
It is the task of all of us as parents, grandparents and
teachers to do all we can to encourage their enjoyment of reading. But it is
the task of the community to support this endeavour. Illiteracy is most common,
we know, amongst those who live in poverty or close to poverty. It is
particularly those families that need libraries. The price of a book from a
shop may seem cheap to many. For many, such a purchase is simply not possible.
We have a duty surely as a society to make sure that no child is denied access
to literacy and literature because of social and financial deprivation. Every
one of them has a right to be literate.
Books should be available to all, free at the point of delivery.
Only then can young lives be turned around, horizons widened, understanding and
empathy deepened. Libraries and particularly the librarians who work in them,
whether in schools or in the community, are essential if we are to do this, for
us all, but especially for those who need them most: those with least, young
and old.
I Believe in Unicorns: a passage
One
afternoon – and that particular afternoon I had got to the library first and
was sitting in the very best place on the carpet, right beside the unicorn –
the Unicorn Lady reached into her bag of “special” books and took out a book
I’d never seen before. She held it up so we could all see. It looked rather old
and tatty. The spine of the book was heavily taped, and the cover so stained
that I found it difficult to read the title. And it was blackened too, at the
edges, I noticed, as if it might have been scorched a long time ago.
“This,
children,” the Unicorn Lady said, “is definitely my most special book in all
the world. It’s my very own copy of The Little Match Girl by Hans
Christian Andersen. You remember him, don’t you? He was the author who
wrote The Ugly Duckling, wasn’t he? And The Snow Queen. This book may
not look much to you, but my father gave it to me when I was a young girl. So
it’s very special to me. Very special indeed.”
“Has it been
burned, Miss?” I asked.
“Yes,
Tomas.”
“Why, Miss,
what happened?”
It was a
while before she answered me. I saw a shadow of sorrow come across her face,
and when she spoke at last her voice trembled so much I thought she might cry.
“When I was little, even littler than any of you,” she began, “I lived in
another country far away from here. It was a time when wicked people ruled the
land, wicked people who were frightened of the magic of stories and poems,
terrified of the power of books. They knew, you see, that stories and poems
help you to think and to dream. Books make you want to ask questions. And they
didn’t want any of us to think or dream, and especially they did not want us to
ask questions. They wanted us only to think as they thought, to believe what
they believed, to do as we were told. So one day in my town these wicked people
went into all the bookshops and libraries and schools and brought out all the
books they didn’t like, which was most of them. And there in the square, soldiers
in black boots and brown shirts built a huge bonfire of these books. As the
books went up in flames, do you know what the soldiers did? They cheered. Can
you believe that, children? They cheered. I was there with my father watching
it all happen.
“Suddenly I heard my father cry out: ‘No! No!’
And he rushed forward and plucked a book out of the fire. He tried to beat out
the flames with his bare hands. The soldiers were shouting at us, so we ran
away, but they came after us and caught up with us. They knocked my father to
the ground and kicked him and hit him with sticks and rifle butts. My father
curled up to protect himself as best he could, but he held on to the book and
would not let go, no matter how much they beat him. They tried to tear it out
of his hands, but he would not let them have it. This was the book he clung on
to, children, this very book. This was the book he saved. So that is why it is
my favourite, most special book in all the world.” As she looked down at us,
the shadow seemed slowly to lift from her, and she smiled. “And,” she went
on, “The Little Match Girl also happens to be a lovely story,
children, very sad but very lovely. Tomas, I wonder if you’d like to come and
sit on the unicorn and read it to us. You haven’t had a turn on the unicorn
yet, have you?” Everyone was looking at me.
They were
waiting. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t do it. I was filled with sudden fear.
“Come on,”
she said. “Come and sit beside me on the unicorn.”
I had never
been any good at reading out loud at school. I would forever stutter over my
consonants – I dreaded k’s in particular. Long words terrified me in case
I pronounced them wrongly and everyone laughed at me. But now, sitting up there
on the magic unicorn, I began to read, and all my dread and all my terror
simply vanished. I heard my voice speaking out strong and loud. It was as if I
was up in the mountains alone and singing a song at the top of my voice, for
the sheer joy of the sound of it. The words danced like music on the air, and I
could feel everyone listening. And I knew they were listening not to me at all,
but to the story of The Little Match Girl, because they were just as lost
in it as I was.
That same day I borrowed my first book from the library. I
chose Aesop’s Fables because I liked the animals in them, and because
the Unicorn Lady had read them to us and I had loved them. I read them aloud to
Mother that night when she came up to say goodnight to me. I read to her
instead of her reading to me. It was the first time I’d ever done that. Father
came and listened at the doorway whilst I was reading. He clapped when I’d
finished. “Magic, Tomas,” he said. “That was magic.”
Extract from I Believe in Unicorns, Michael Morpurgo (published
by Walker Books)
