I am fascinated by the part relationships play in the complex process – the skill and the will – of learning to read. If you retraced your personal reading journey, who would you find signposting the way for your reading development and your enjoyment of books? You may have forgotten the contributors who helped direct your route into literacy. Whether you remember them or not, whether they were sages or guides or both, I believe they left their mark.
In our ‘Read Aloud Ledbury’ group on Friday 31st January, I shared ‘We Are What We Read’ from a collection of short stories by Sir Michael Morpurgo. I had the pleasure of meeting Michael, before he was knighted, when I spent a week at one of his Farms for City Children.
Back in 1996, I was teaching at Burbage Junior School in not-so-trendy-then Hoxton, Hackney. Here’s a photo I took of Michael reading children from the school bedtime stories after a hard day’s work milking cows, feeding the animals, collecting eggs, mucking out sheds, digging up vegetables, clearing stones from fields…
Farms For City Children, 1996
In the extract I shared at Ledbury Library in January 2026, Michael fondly remembers his mother reading aloud to him at bedtime when he was a young child,
‘…she spoke, words that sounded to me like familiar music. I treasured then and now those precious moments alone with my mother, the only time we were truly alone in a busy household. And it was the story that bound us, the story and the tune of the words. The book was the living link between us.’
Michael Morpurgo ‘Singing for Mrs Pettigrew‘
But his boarding school years stripped away the guide from his side,
‘…words and books became a threat. They were no longer magical, and certainly not musical. Words were to be spelt forming sentences and clauses, with punctuation, with neat handwriting…
‘The music had died; the magic, the joy and the comfort had gone… Books became a source of dread to me.’
Michael Morpurgo ‘Singing for Mrs Pettigrew‘
There’s a necessary discipline when learning to read, but it’s a dreadfully dull and dreary road when there’s no joy in the journey.
During his school years, a fleeting glimmer reminded him of the treasure in words. Sir Michael Morpurgo (knighted in 2018 for his services to literature and charity, award-winning author of over 150 books, and 2003-2005 Children’s Laureate) shares with us his deeply-engraved memory of a sage on the stage’s contribution to his future formation as reader and writer,
‘I did just once briefly discover that early love of words my mother had instilled in me. I was taken to see Paul Scofield playing Hamlet at the Phoenix Theatre… I would have been about twelve. I listened entranced, enchanted, to the concerto of poetry he was playing that night. I have never forgotten it.’
Michael Morpurgo ‘Singing for Mrs Pettigrew‘
Not all of us are destined to be literary greats, but how many of us – like Sir Michael -came to know reading as a comfort and joy in early childhood because of the storytimes we shared, snuggled up beside someone who loved and cared for us? In your experience, was it the sages on the stages or the guides by your sides that had the profoundest impact on your future as a reader?
The pleasure of the company of a key contributor to my reading journey has left me convinced that every reluctant reader needs a safe and trusted guide by their side. I’m ending on a note of deep and heartfelt appreciation for my mum and for all the side-by-side reading experiences she gave me.
‘And all travelers can witness that the best of guides today
Is not the one who tells them, but the one who shows the way.’‘Sermons We See’ by Edward Guest
Am I making opportunities to share the comfort and joy of reading?
I ask again as I’ve asked before, how can I make more?
Read with Julia 