A British Childhood by Frank Cottrell-Boyce review, are we raising a bookless generation?
Article excerpt
Frank Cottrell Boyce's *A British Childhood* sounds an alarm about children losing access to books, safety, and simple delights in modern life. The reviewer opens with a haunting image: walking past a primary school where children no longer play outside during breaks, a symbol of childhood's shrinking freedoms. Boyce argues that reading itself, that gateway to wonder and imagination, is vanishing from young people's lives, replaced by screens and structured anxieties. The book reads as both cultural critique and passionate defense of literature's irreplaceable role in childhood development. The reviewer treats it as a clarion call worth heeding, one that challenges contemporary parenting and education practices.
This clarion call about the loss of delight and safety in children’s lives is also a reminder of the sheer magic of reading
Every day, on my walk to work, I pass a primary school. A group of little people are being dropped off by parents. They are met at the gates by a teacher who greets them all by name before leading them up the steps to breakfast club. In the cold and dark of winter, with the school’s windows glowing invitingly, I sometimes envy these children their warm, welcoming cocoon.
I thought of that daily scene often when reading this book, which is inspired by Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s time as Waterstones children’s laureate. During his laureateship he ran a campaign with the literary charity BookTrust called Reading Rights, addressing literacy inequality for children in poverty. It was prompted by the discovery that nearly half of children were arriving at school without having been read to. Many had no clue how books worked. They were trying to swipe rather than turn pages, or expand illustrations by pinching them with their fingers.
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