So two things have happened recently. The first is that I started to read E (6) The Railway Children as her bedtime story. The second is that I have been reading Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading.
These are clearly related. For those of you unfamiliar with the Mangan, it’s her childhood told the books she read, the history of them, what they taught her and how they have altered over time and rereading. In many chapters it’s like holding up a mirror to my own childhood (we are similar ages) – she dislikes Seuss, was traumatised by Strewelpeter, but loved The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Little Women and Teddy Robinson. Lucy is also reading books to her own child, hoping he finds the same joy in reading as she did.
Which brings us back to The Railway Children, one of my favourites. For someone who dislikes TV tie in editions, some of my most treasured childhood books are TV tie in editions and I love them for it. The Railway Children has Jenny Agutter (as Bobbie) and co on the front from the 1970 film. E and I are five chapters in and she’s enjoying it, taking the historical differences in her stride, though she did ask why they were all wearing wedding clothes on the cover.
When she was born, my main ambition was for her to be a good reader. Others state that they just want their children to be happy but I feel that’s so woolly and out of your control, I figured that if I instilled a love of reading she’d at least have a means to happiness, advice, and life lessons and adventure and excitement and understanding and empathy. We read stories to her at bedtime before she could hold her head up.
When we were in Amsterdam on holiday earlier this year, we stopped in at Waterstones. This was twofold: first in a family of bookworms, it’s difficult to walk past a bookshop; and second, it had aircon and Amsterdam was very humid. S had stopped on the mezzanine, and I was ambling around the second floor browsing and cooling, while keeping an eye on E. She found a book to read, clambered onto the window seat and made herself at home. The sight of her so absorbed in her book filled me with joy, she seemed so serene.
Because that’s the other gift of being a bookworm. You get booky spaces too. When I was little, our village got a new library building where previously there had been nothing. We went along the opening where I refused to talk to local media about what the library meant to me. However, if the reporter had a secret camera he would have seen me frequent it for years afterwards on an at-least-weekly basis, until I left for university. It was a safe space, calming and full of possibility and new discoveries.
At university the second hand bookstall appeared every Tuesday and I haunted that, as well as the second hand shops in Brighton as I tracked down old books by Jeffrey Farnol for my grandpa. Later, finding myself in Ann Arbor, Michigan as an exchange student, I discovered that Borders stayed open until 10pm most nights. A nightmare for the staff but a quiet warm haven of classical music and coffee smells and books for the customers. So civilised.
This changes for a while when you actually work in a bookshop. For two years once I had stopped working for them, I found I had no interest in reading at all. And then the day came when I stepped back into Waterstones and found the new book smell had been restored to me. I haven’t looked back since.
This is part one (of… who knows?) on this subject. Next up, I will blog again about childhood books because thinking about them this week has made me very happy.
Susan E Barsby 