I didn't have many books when I was young. The public library was quite a long way away, too - too far for me to walk by myself, anyway. Why, it was right on the other side of the Magic Roundabout.
No, that's true. Really.
So most of the books I read came from the shelves at the back of the classroom. There were never a huge number of books, and they certainly weren't all new, but there were always more books there than I could read in the year I was in that class.
And those books were just SO IMPORTANT to me.
They were a way of learning things (I still remember the pride of knowing what a chauve souri* was. That came from Jennings); they were a way of escaping to wonderful worlds (and, boy, did I want to escape); and they were a way of finding out what other people thought was normal, which made me able to judge my own life.
But do you know what? Not long ago a teacher said to me: oh, we don't have any budget left for books once we've done all our photocopying.
And THAT'S TERRIBLE! It's terrible that teachers should think books aren't important.
It's TERRIBLE that because of this we should need a law to make sure that every school in England has a library.
Truly, truly, terrible.
But, so sadly, we do.
Word To Use Today: library. This word is from the Latin word liber, which means book.
*Literally, a bald mouse. We call them bats!
What can one say but HEAR HEAR? A school isn't a school without proper libraries...ideally one in each class and one general one for the whole school with a PROPER QUALIFIED SCHOOL LIBRARIAN to run it.
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