FOR THE past 18 months in my role as Children’s Laureate I have been travelling the country telling stories to young readers and young writers, telling how this particular weaver of tales writes his stories. Like some superannuated strolling player, I have set up and performed wherever anyone would let me: in tiny village halls, grand concert halls, in tents and bookshops and school halls and, once, in an old people’s home; from audiences of 14 children in the small island school on Jura in the Hebrides, to 2,500 people in the Albert Hall. I have talked to families — grandparents, parents and children together.
In Broughton-in-Furness and Ulverston in the Lake District, I spoke to children from 24 village schools. All came wide-eyed with excitement and expectancy. I strutted my story stuff as best I could, read to them, and answered their questions: “Were you good at writing when you were young?” “No. But I was unbelievably good at rugby,” I told them, and sent them and their teachers away, buzzing, I hope, about books, enthused to read more and feeling that they, too, have a story to tell and a voice with which to tell it.
Today, World Book Day, hundreds of my fellow writers, and storytellers, illustrators, librarians, teachers and booksellers, are doing just what I’ve been doing. Indeed, they do it all the year round: this is not a one-day wonder. This kind of sustained effort to bring children to books and books to children is much needed and is, in my view, the most effective way of persuading children to become readers and writers.
It is effective because it is personal and because the children know it is meant. Here is someone in front of them who loves stories, who tells them with such passion that the world of reading, the sheer joy, fun and wonder of it, can be opened up to children who may never have enjoyed books at all. A young life can be changed that way, enriched for ever.
When you think of the extraordinary talent among our children’s writers, storytellers and illustrators, it is not surprising that so many children turn to books and become readers after just such an encounter.
Writers and illustrators visit schools all the time, the books exist, various and brilliant enough for all ages and tastes, the publishers design them beautifully, there are dedicated librarians, teachers and booksellers working their socks off to engage children in reading and there are bold and imaginative initiatives such as World Book Day, the wonderful Book Start project and Storyquest. So why do we fail to engage so many children? Why do millions of them never become readers? After all this commitment, why is there this divide in our society: books beloved by some and ignored and regarded as irrelevant by others? Why are stories not central to our culture, unless they are on television? Why do so many feel alienated from their literary heritage? The convenient answer is the usual answer. Blame someone. Parents, teachers, librarians, publishers, bookshops, the media or the Government. The uncomfortable truth, I have concluded, after years as a father, teacher, writer and, now, as strolling player, is that we are all responsible because we are not being honest about this. Parents who do not read to their children enough at night, teachers who use books simply as educational tools for the literacy hour, librarians who allow their libraries to become drab, publishers who publish too much rubbish (there are 10,000 children’s titles a year) and writers — for we are complicit in this overproduction — are all responsible.
It is easy to put a child off reading with a bad book, and there are too many bad books. Some bookshops still hide children’s books away, and we have a Government that still insists on a narrow literacy curriculum that is target-driven rather than creative. The question then should not be “Who is to blame?” but “What can be done about it?”. What practical steps can be taken to make reading and writing more inclusive and attractive for our children? If we want our children to be literate, to love stories, then bring storytelling back into the mainstream media. We had Listen with Mother, we had Michael Rosen’s excellent Treasure Island, we had Jackanory. Where are they now? Radio and television can help hugely here. Bring parents in on the act. One of the most fruitful events I hosted recently was in St Mewan’s Primary School, St Austell, when a hugely enthusiastic librarian, Paula Smith, invited families into school for an evening gathering. They packed the hall — parents, grandparents, children — all listening to stories and loving them.
I know for sure that some of these parents will now be reading to their children at night. And that is how reading should begin, almost with the mother’s milk, that intimate story between parent and child. Because we have to accept that such reading will never be universal, given the easy access to, and immediate attraction of, the television and DVD player, we know it will often be through the teacher that a child first hears a story. Many great teachers find the time to read stories and to read them well, so that children will hear the music in the words, and will laugh and cry with the teacher. Many other teachers, sadly — and it is not their fault — are not readers themselves, yet find themselves in front of a class “doing the literacy hour”. There should be a course on children’s literature for every trainee teacher — they have made this obligatory in France. We should do so here.
Thus enriched, the teacher can pass on his or her own love of stories to their children, can talk of books and writing and reading with confidence, fervour and delight. Teach the children a love of story, of the music of words first, give them the delight, inspire them to write themselves, then the need for literacy begins to make sense — literature before literacy, then.
How can this be done? Unchain the teachers, take the fear of targets away, unlock their creative potential, give them back their freedom to teach what it is they love. Trust them. Let there be half an hour at the end of school simply for telling and reading stories, a wonderful wind-down at the end of each day. But don’t ask questions afterwards, just let the children listen and enjoy, and lose themselves in the magic of it.
And please, don’t sit children down, as still happens in the Year 6 English SATs test, to write a story against the clock. I have written more than 100 stories — I’m an old pro. I need weeks for my stories to incubate, months to dream up my tales and weave them together. At school in the 1950s I had to fill up two sides on a given subject — a giraffe, say — with the instructions that it had to be “neat, properly punctuated, or you get detention”.
Fear crept up my spine like a warm hand. We’re still doing it to children all these years later. They may not get detention any more, but they do get failure. There is no greater deterrent to creativity, to self-confidence, to finding your voice, than repeated failure.
Tony Blair said recently that we should ensure that every child has a minimum of two hours of physical excercise at school a week. Surely we need at least as much time to exercise our children’s imaginative powers through reading and writing. For what is education if it is not to broaden our horizons, give us knowledge, understanding and insight and the opportunity to empathise and learn about ourselves and the complex world around us. I know no better way for a child, or a grown-up child, to do this than through books.
© Michael Morpurgo February 2005
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