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Ethe day i go to work, i go to primary school. The group of young children is being removed by the parents. They were met at the gates by the teacher who greeted them all by name before leading them up the stairs to breakfast. In the cold and dark of winter, the windows of the school are brilliantly lit, sometimes I admire these children in their warm and welcoming cocoon.
I thought about everyday events often while reading this book, which was inspired by Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s time as Waterstones’ award-winning children’s editor. During her campaign she campaigned with the charity BookTrust called Freedom to Read, to tackle the inequality of reading for children in poverty. He was inspired by the discovery that almost half of the children arrive at school without reading. Many did not know how books work. They try to move instead of turning the pages, or add illustrations by pinching them with their fingers.
Cottrell-Boyce, author of the children’s books Million and Cosmic among other things, it is the best face of such a campaign. A visitor who has been at the school for a long time, he enjoys how children who do not follow his style and cleanliness can be ignored. His worldview is a special kind of Liverpool-Catholic collectivism, which is characterized by economic differences and how to please and offend children. Another Birkenhead school he visits is near the ferry terminal where luxury liners float at anchor – “a good place to watch the money, but the money is passing by, don’t look at the rough streets”.
During the campaign, they earn rewards. A teacher told him: “Maybe don’t go on summer vacation because he hates it.” Summer, the travel season when the Famous Five investigate smuggling rings in Cornwall and the snow melts in Moominland, no longer seems like a glorious escape. For many children, it feels like being kicked out of their happy place, school, where people finally recognize them. With its morning and after-school clubs extending the day at both ends, the school has become a place of safety and security as well as education. He wonders if this is what makes the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books so beloved: they show school as a place of refuge.
Recalling that her parents spoke of their experiences as wartime refugees throughout their lives, Cottrell-Boyce says that “every crisis is like a barium meal, highlighting weak points in the body of the government”. Austerity imposed by the age of Covid has changed the lives of children. Schools used to be part of a support environment for children and their parents that included libraries, youth groups and Sure Start centres. Now, in many places, “the school is the last proof of the society – the Alamo of services”. They find teachers exhausted as they double as aides, caterers and staff, trying to undo the effects of massive social injustice. Primary school teachers, especially in reception, have become caretakers, as many children do not arrive “school ready” – that is, toilet trained. They meet schools that have cleverly put away laundry, or keep a store of “favorite clothes” for the school.
Cottrell-Boyce specializes in the housing crisis that has plagued many children in cheap hotels and other temporary shelters. Of children who move house more than 10 times between reception and year 11, only 11% pass five or more GCSEs. This leads to poverty of seats. Tenements are often allowed to be “idle”: empty and unfurnished. Cottrell-Boyce finds it very surprising that many children are denied a small kingdom – Robert Louis Stevenson called it “the world of the counterpane” – that is their bed. The Merseyside charity Time for Bed donated 582 bundles (beds, mattresses and blankets) last year.
If I’ve made this sound like a sad book, it’s not. It is interspersed with vivid historical records, particularly the author’s early years living in a flat near Liverpool’s Dock Road, sharing a room with his parents and brother. Remembering sailors wearing turbans or fezzes, and merchant sailors all dressed in white, he now sees that this showed him one of the oldest stories: of a stranger arriving on shore, from Odysseus to Sinbad.
Back then, he says, the next parish “might as well have been the Orinoco” and “Bootle was a miniature Narnia”. He and his brother used to sit by the window and watch his aunts, uncles and cousins in the crowd of people passing by. His human space was so crowded that he did not know that he lived near the Mersey until one day, outside the window, he saw bright red metal moving over the rooftops. Then his family moved to a half-finished house where, amidst the smell of raw wood and fresh putty, they finally had clothes that the entrance to Narnia could imagine.
These images support the whole argument of the book: a child and a camera with an open shutter. “Every child is a Galileo,” says Cottrell-Boyce, watching her grandson miraculously learn language and drive. Professor Sam Wass of the University of East London Baby Development Lab tells her: “Days or weeks ago, you were a creature of the sea, and now, suddenly, you are in east London. The baby is a magic sponge, soaking up the world. The downside of this miracle is that bad things – black mold, cockroaches, flying to the moon, violence, debt – stay with the baby in the house forever.
Refreshingly, Cottrell-Boyce does not see reading as a moral lesson. Some of the most beloved tales in the Arabian Nights, he says, delight in lies, deceit and selfishness. One of the most famous, the story of Abu Hasan, is about a fart. Many musicals depict babies being killed or kidnapped. Frank L Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, was an apologist for the killing of Native Americans; Roald Dahl was a committed antisemite.
The importance of reading a child is something that cannot be measured in our new era of “utilitarian rationalism”, he argues. It has little to do with the content of the book and everything to do with creating a moment of shared interest and mutual understanding. June O’Sullivan of the London Early Years Foundation calls it “sofa learning”. He’s against the disjointed, regular time of the digital world (Cottrell-Boyce isn’t a fan of Cocomelon, the YouTube channel for kids, mainly because it can be watched endlessly). The most important thing is a familiar habit, which can only happen if the children have furniture such as beds and sofas, and clothes stored in other things than bin bags.
The book’s themes are “archives”, Cottrell-Boyce admits, mostly written on trains and in Premier Inns during his award-winning career. They are chatty, unsupervised, slightly repetitive, and overly fond of one-sentence positions. But he argues how British childhood has changed, and why it matters, with courage and bravery. Children who favor their school meetings are more likely to have him.
