Books which are destined for the hands of children will not only contain magic, they will also be bursting with inspiration and opportunity for a better life.
Just off Sheep Street is the office of our favourite charity, ARCh Oxfordshire, a group of volunteers who will sit patiently with primary school children in the classroom and listen to them read. Young minds are never too young to develop literacy skills and the opportunity to grow confidence through reading should be available to all. In this country 1 in 15 children do not have a book of their own at home, that number rises to 1 in 10 for children who receive free school meals, and so it could be considered there is a direct connection between literacy and a family’s financial wellbeing. Even in what we think of as a comfortable part of the world, Oxfordshire has almost 16,000 children living in poverty – a staggering statistic. Each year during World Book Day bookshops just like ours give away millions of books to school children – this year over 2 million books were given free of charge to children in return for their World Book Day voucher, and in almost half a million cases, this was the first book a child will have owned.
This Christmas there will be many books given as gifts, some already wrapped and waiting beneath trees in homes up and down the land – those which are destined for the hands of children will not only contain magic, they will also be bursting with inspiration and opportunity for a better life.
‘Books Have Helped Me’ by Joseph Coelho from ‘The Big Amazing Poetry Book’
Books have more images between their words
than any smart phone could hold.
More flavours than a thousand jellybeans.
More lives for you to live
than any computer game.
Books have helped me.
I’ve read about characters
who have laughed, cried and sighed like me.
Characters who have battled
monsters larger than any I could imagine.
Characters who have travelled distances longer
than there are miles between me and the sun.
When I thumb through a book
their pages whisper to me
that I’ll be all right.
We had a special visitor the other day, Del Boy himself – Sir David Jason popped into Coles and signed a bunch of copies of his new book ‘The Twelve Dels of Christmas’ – he was completely charming and exactly as you would expect him to be.
Also this week a number of popular Coles Signed Editions are available again – books by David Dimbleby, Ian Holloway, Al Murray, Noel Fitzpatrick, Michael Stipe, Dan Martin and Tom Doyle have all arrived in the last few days. And finally, a number of the Taschen Collectors Editions are due for a price increase at the end of the year – if you’ve ever fancied running up those steps with Rocky, now might be the time!
The full newsletter with links to books can be found HERE
