Canny Minds Blog

‘I loved the choice and ritual of picking a book’

Posted on 11. May, 2009 by Mark in Articles

The library was a lifeline for young Sophie Dahl

I was seven when my sister Clover was born. Until then I lived in the indulged solitary bubble of the only child. My stepfather was American, and we had been living in Boston since I was three. My first laboured reading, at the side of my nanny Maureen, was done in a thick Boston accent: Jane drank watah. Mommy pahked the caw”. When I entered the English primary system in Wandsworth, south London, at six, the first book I remember reading on my own was The Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. I longed to find the faraway tree, and spent hours on Wandsworth Common with Maureen, lurking by oak trees, hoping to catch a glimpse of Moonface.

Because my sister was so much younger than me, and because we had moved to the country, my lifeblood and companions were books. I was thrilled to be diagnosed with shingles at nine because the consolation prize was as many books as I liked from the bookshop on Great Missenden High Street to help me convalesce. I read the entire Ballet Shoes series, and cried until my eyes were raw after an allnighter with Goodnight, Mr Tom.

My grandfather, the writer Roald Dahl, celebrated and encouraged my love of books. We discussed them endlessly and I was thrilled when I was 10 to discover he had read Old Mali and the Boy by DR Sher-man, which I was reading in English.

“Very good book,” he said, as we walked down the lane, his hand resting heavily on his walking stick. He’d drop me off at the library on the high street, then creak off to the butcher’s, or to visit my Uncle Theo in his antique shop.

I loved the sanctity of the library, the still, dry whisper of it. I loved the choice and certainty; the ritual of picking a book. I liked to sit and read in the garden and my penchant was for orphans, preferably time-travelling ones, like the loner Abigail Kirk in Playing Beatie Bow by Cate Milte, or willowy Rose in the Root Cellar by Janet Lunn.

When I moved on to boarding school, an all-girls institution where we had to curt-sey to the headmistress, the place that felt the least alien was the library. Its shelves contained faces and a geography I knew, as traceable as the path to my own front door and the people inside it.

In our jumbled age of instant disposable information, libraries provide a bricks-and-mortar constancy, with an invitation to let the imagination roam. In that spirit, it is with great pleasure that I have accepted a role as a patron of the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Buckinghamshire.

As one of many ventures, we will be working in conjunction with HeadSpace, a national project run by the Reading Agency, to create places where young people from socially excluded groups can participate in affirming activities, from theatre groups to reading sessions and youth clubs. It’s a fresh take on the library, offering it as a haven to those who may have felt excluded from its former silent incarnation. If your children’s school is not yet registered for the Books for Schools scheme, it’s not too late. See details on how to register at freebooksforschools.co.uk.

The Sunday Times – April 19, 2009

Photo courtesy of sondrew

Tags: books, Books for Schools, creative thinking, imagination, literacy, reading