3:53pm Thursday 26th June 2008
By Emma Clayton
Call me old-fashioned but my heart always sinks a bit at the sight of young children staring into little hand-held computer screens, shutting out the world as they tap away to a soundtrack of tinny music and inane beeping noises.
I spent much of my childhood with my head in a book, and scribbling short stories into notepads, and I'm not sure I'd have been fussed about computer games if they'd been available back then. I hope not anyway. I got so much pleasure out of reading books, from an early age, and I think children who don't read for leisure miss out.
So I was heartened when my nephews, aged seven and five - who are certainly no strangers to Nintendo DS - excitedly showed me their library books the other day.
There's something special about joining a library as a child and being allowed to choose your own books. I remember my mum taking us to Eccleshill Library when I was little and it seemed such a huge place, filled with endless books from floor-to-ceiling. The fact that we weren't allowed to speak made it even more of a thrill. We'd leave my mum in the historic novels section and make our way to the children's room, walls covered in Dr Seuss posters, where we'd leaf through the books - and try and get each other to break the rule of silence. We'd choose three or four books, then hang around getting bored while my mum chose her sky-high pile of historic novels, then we'd get our books stamped by a lady speaking in a quiet voice. It was a simple pleasure but the memories you cherish most from childhood often are. I enjoyed our after-school trips to the library, choosing our own books and knowing that, for a short while, they were in our care.
It was a different story when, a week after the return date, we were frantically tearing our bedrooms upside-down looking for the books which we'd lost, with my mother bawling at us that the fines were coming out of our spending money. Joining their local library has opened up a new world for my nephews Jack and Sam. Rummaging through their library books, I found The Magic Roundabout and Adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine among Jack's selection - while Sam had gone for The Story of Slavery and a huge hardback tome about the First World War. Not really what I'd been expecting when I offered to read them a library book as a bedtime story.
While Sam's interest in world history and military weaponry and strategies is commendable, a quick look at both books convinced me they probably weren't the best choices to send two little boys peacefully off to sleep.
After convincing Sam that his books might be 'a bit too long' for a bedtime read I ploughed through Thomas the Tank Engine instead. When it got to the bit where an old rusty engine was going to be cut up and sold for scrap, Jack was close to tears and had to be reassured several times that she'd been cleaned up to be used as a workman's hut instead. Everything had turned out okay.
"She's not going to be chopped up into scrap bits is she?" he asked again, as I was putting the light out.
Something tells me he's not quite ready for The Story of Slavery…
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