Letter to a Child of the Future. By Tamsin Holroyd, Teacher and Librarian

March 16th 2022

LETTER TO A CHILD OF THE FUTURE. Tamsin Holroyd, Teacher and Librarian here at Sherborne Prep, writes for the Sherborne Times this month.

Reading doubles your life, over and over. You enter other worlds and encounter different people. Are the characters just like someone you know, or perhaps they are you? The world of books is the world of imagination, both believable and unbelievable. The characters are lifelong friends, forever ready and waiting to take you by the hand and lead you into their reality. They are constants in your life, at your beck and call, always on your terms. You will never be alone with a book in your hand and words in your head. When you read a story you step into someone else’s shoes, seeing their world from their perspective. You become them. Reading gives a powerful, concentrated type of understanding. Your feelings, and the characters’ situations and emotions, mixed with a special type of literary fairy dust, make for vivid perception. Intrinsic to books, this alchemy of second-hand/first-hand insight creates deep empathy.

Books are a place of safe retreat when life gets tough. Taking you out of yourself, stepping into the familiar reliable world of an old favourite provides an invaluable source of comfort and healing. Your mind escapes and returns refreshed, stronger than ever. Your world may change but the worlds in your books will not. Emma Watson says, ‘When times get really dark and times are really hard, stories give us a place where we can go, where we can rest and feel held.’

Reading emphasises life’s pattern, leading to recognition. A thrill of connection is felt on discovering that someone has read the same book as you. If all the books you have ever read were piled up in a room, would anyone else have read the same books, in the same order? The combination of books you read is as unique to you as your fingerprints. Books tell that we have something in common, that we are not alone. Have you ever read a poem and thought, ‘I’ve had that exact feeling and here it is expressed perfectly in so few words’? Your special books, the ones that nurture and shape you most, leave their imprint so indelibly that even many years later they remain fresh in your mind. Often, the way you felt about the book lends it significance. Where you read it may be part of the memory placing the important book on your life’s timeline. As a child I read The Hobbit all night, by torchlight, lying on a military camp bed downstairs in a transit flat in New Zealand. It took my breath away. How could a book be this good?

When you thread your time through with books, your life from ‘kiddie-car to hearse’ as Nancy Mitford puts it, will be not only enhanced and enriched, but far more fun.