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Why Children’s Books?

London Review of Books • Published on 29 Jan 2025 • ~5750 words
Katherine Rundell writes about the enduring value of children's books, highlighting their capacity to foster imagination, critical thinking, and a sense of wonder, ultimately aiding our moral development and societal understanding. What do we stand to lose as fewer and fewer children read books?
… if you cut a person off from reading, you’re a thief. You cut them off from the song that humanity has been singing for thousands of years. You cut them off from what we have laid out for the next generation, and the next. It’s in the technology of writing that we’ve preserved our boldest, most original thought, our best jokes and most generous comfort. To fail to do everything we can to help children hear that song is a cruelty – and a stupidity – for which we should not expect to be forgiven. We need to be infinitely more furious that there are children without books.
I do not find writing for children easy: I feel that I fail the vast majority of the time to pin down exactly what I wanted, in tone and pace and truth to the page, and, as I do not enjoy the experience of failing, the experience of writing is sharp-edged. But it is worth it, in part for the rare shock of joy when a joke or a plot line falls into place, like wooden hinges perfectly matched, and so I go on.

Read on London Review of Books

Added on 31 Jan 2025 10:17

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