“Almost four million children in the UK do not own a book, according to a report by the National Literacy Trust.
…Poorer children and boys were less likely to have books, it added.
…About a fifth of children said they had never been to a book shop or a library.”
This weekend it became clear to my wife and me that the baby a bigger bookshelf. Sophie isn’t even two yet. She’s just learned most of her letters. We read to her every day, every night. On her own, without any prompting, she will go to the shelf and take down books and look at them. Sometimes she’ll do this for almost an hour.
She’s been to bookstores. She’s been to comic book stores. She probably has almost one hundred books of her own. Also a handful of comics.
I don’t say this to highlight what wonderful parents she has. I just want to put some context in place around how surprised and horrified I was by this BBC News article about the ever-widening gap between children and books.
Books were my refuge and my world as a child. They still are. It simply hadn’t occurred to me that some children might not have any books available to them at all.
Naive. Sheltered. Privileged. Yes.
Guilty on all counts.
It’s obvious. I hadn’t thought about it before now, but if you’re poor, you’re not going to have fewer books. You might never have books.
I know there are good organizations out there, people who are dedicated to doing what they can to correct this. At least one of them will be getting some money from us this holiday season.
I’ll let you know who as soon as I know, so you can do the same.