TES Magazine 28 March, 2024 Michael Morpurgo
As important as reading is, it’s not something that comes naturally to everyone. When I was little, I had a wonderful mother who read to me, and gave me a taste for the music of words and the excitement of stories. I used to love every book she read, purely because it was her who was reading it to me.
However, like so many kids, I was rather put off reading when I went to school because there it became this “subject”. It wasn’t for enjoyment anymore, it was for testing. It was spelling, it was punctuation, it was comprehension…
…And what do you do when you read? You travel the world, you talk to people in your head who have a different religion, a different take on life. It gives you a wide sense of the planet that can’t be gleaned from a programme on television. It’s closer than that, and that’s what’s so important.
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