Comfort Reading

The following blog post was first published on my ‘Learning to Read and Write’ website in March 2018. In these strange and difficult days, I felt it was worth returning to.

There is something immeasurably comforting about re-reading a well-loved, old favourite.

Earlier this week, I was preparing a lesson using E.B. White’s, ‘Charlotte’s Web’ (by the way, it offers a great example of how to start a story with direct speech…) The familiar story drew me back in, as my love for Wilbur was rekindled. I devoured the pages from start to finish; the closing sentences leaving me with their heart-warming glow.

I am a firm believer in book attachment, as I have shared before:

(Click the link below to read my account of a 15 year old, who had been excluded from mainstream school, being reunited with ‘Owl Babies’.)

https://learningtoreadandwrite.weebly.com/julias-blog/falling-in-love-with-storybooks

As a young mum, I discovered the value of comfort reading for fractious children and stressed-out parents. One afternoon, I telephoned my mum in desperation,
“The girls have been taking it in turns to scream their heads off all day. I am tearing my hair out! I’ve tried everything I can think of! Nothing’s helped!”
“Try sitting down and reading a book together.”
“Really?” 
I wasn’t convinced.

I can’t remember which books we chose, but when we snuggled up on the sofa together and started to read, calm descended. It was comfort reading, pure and simple. The memory of that moment is still fresh in my mind, 16 years on.

Where are today’s children finding their comfort reading opportunities? Where are they learning the soothing strokes of what will become their well-loved, old favourites? Comfort reading rarely comes from one-off grabs from the shelf (and it’s even less likely to come from strict enforcement of 20 minutes of homework reading, 5 times a week). It’s a slow process of marinating in and returning to, read after read after read. That’s how well-loved, comforting favourites are made.

As Mrs Armitage might say,
​”What this world needs, Breakspear, my faithful friend, is a regular dose of comfort reading.”.