Last week I attended a very enjoyable day course run by Jane Davis at the University of Bolton on the Get into Reading Project which has achieved moving and powerful results across Liverpool and now is aiming to reach across the entire UK. Get Into Reading ( GIR) centres its whole ethos upon reading aloud in groups once a week in libraries and community places where reading has perhaps never happened before. It brings people together who meet once a week and listen to a novel or a poem or a story read aloud. This simple yet powerful activity helps individuals enjoy stories. It helps them enjoy words. It even helps heal lives that are often broken or isolated. We all need words to know ourselves. And listening to Jane reading it felt comforting. Like being ‘held’ somehow. just listening to a story growing; meeting people; thinking about them; waiting to see and feel what they might or might not do….
And one of the books Get Into Reading recommended very highly was Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Millions which I asked my son to dig out and began on Friday. It seems to be about losing someone very special; your mum. And it is about two boys and the ways in which they manage to keep getting to school when their mum has gone. And then one finds money..lots of money…and this sign seems a miracle and starts to change things…
Saints feature highly in the book and there is something awkward and raw too. I haven’t finished the book yet but the awkwardness is powerful and very affecting. Shifting. There.
Get Into Reading!!