Juliet Blyth's World Book Day Lecture (excerpt)
Posted: Tuesday Mar 09, 2021
Who isn't reading and what can be done about it?
This was the theme for our CEO Juliet Blyth's World Book Day Lecture on March 4, delivered at Otago University's wonderful Centre for the Book.
Juliet shared her own story as a lifelong book lover, as well as news of the work being done and yet to be done in the arts sector to get more of us reading for the pure love of it!
While Juliet's talk was live-streamed online, it was not recorded so we thought we'd share an excerpt from its start, here.
World Book Day Lecture to Otago University Centre for the Book, Dunedin, 5 March 2021
Ngā mihi nui, kia kotou katoa
Thank you for this invitation to celebrate World Book Day with you and to speak on a subject that means so much to me.
Each day as I leave the house, and again when I get home, I pass by a slightly rumpled blue aerogramme, addressed to me, written in blue ballpoint, carefully encased in glass and an off-white frame. The letter is dated 30 November 1983 and carefully signed in the spidery hand of an old woman. Her name is Noel Streatfeild and at the time she signed the letter she would have been the grand age of 88. Born in 1895 in Sussex, she died 3 years after signing my letter, in 1986.
This letter is one of my most treasured possessions: something I would grab in a fire, along with family photos and a green jug that belonged to my grandmother. This letter is a daily reminder to me of how much reading has meant to me, and means to me now. I’m grateful to my mum and to my form 1 teacher at Tahuna Normal Intermediate Ms Gunn for encouraging me to write to Noel. I wrote also to American writer Lois Lowry, most famous for her book The Giver though special to me for her Anastasia Krupnik books. I was lucky to receive a response also from Lois, helped in part I’m sure by the faraway location of its young writer in Dunedin, New Zealand. I wish now that I had thought to keep a copy of the letters I wrote, to see what my young mind thought to say to writers I held in such high regard. A shy child, I marvel now at my willingness to expose myself by putting pen to paper. As an adult I have tried to express my affection to an author for their work - Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres comes to mind - and, overcome with self-consciousness at my clumsy attempts to convey how much I loved the book, I’ve never attempted it again.
One of the most popular authors of her day, and one of the first winners of the Carnegie Medal, Noel Streatfeild’s writing reflects a time and place that has less cultural relevance in today’s world. A recent re-read of my beloved Ballet Shoes confirms this but I love it anyway.
Dunedin is where my bookish life began so it’s really very fitting that I should return here to talk about reading and readers. Until the age of 11, Dunedin was my home. Some of my favourite childhood memories are of going to the mobile library after school on a Friday with my best friend Selina. Then, heaving my bookbag home up Tainui Rd, eager to share my reading choices with my mother, a perfect weekend of reading ahead. The library held so much promise, and whilst I was a voracious reader I was not a ‘precocious reader’ who read everything. I loved holocaust fiction: The Silver Sword, Hitler and the Pink Rabbit, The Diary of Anne Frank, My Name is David were all favourites as well as Nancy Drew, My Friend Flicka, the Famous Five, Trixie Belden, The Babysitters Club, Anastasia Krupnik and of course anything by Noel Streatfield.
Book buying was a huge treat as a child. This was in the late 70s and early 80s, before the rise of the big chain bookshops when book buying became mainstream. Choosing what to spend with a birthday voucher from Terrys on George St was an agonising delight. Libraries of course were central and remain central to my reading life.
I cannot really recall a time when I did not read - I have memories of a holiday spent reading Mills & Boon from a holiday rental bookshelf and plundering the Susan Howatch and Phillippa Carr from my mother’s bookshelf as a teenager.
Reading with my own children has been so much fun. Early and sustained favourites of theirs were the Snake and Lizard books by Joy Cowley. I vividly remember how much my youngest son and I enjoyed reading Mr Stink by David Walliams aloud and as they got older, the books they both returned to were series – in particular the Cherub books by Robert Muchamore. I read these to them at 8, 9 and again at 11. It's an action series about child agents, slipping under adult radar and getting information that sent criminals and terrorists to jail.
Some would deem the content not suitable for younger readers but I always carry the wise words of Wellington bookseller John MacIntyre, now passed, that children should read where their interests lie, and that parents should worry less about the content. I followed that advice. Reading about something doesn’t mean doing it; it means understanding what it’s like to live differently.
John was passionate about getting good books into the hands of children, especially boys, who often need non-fiction and adventure books to engage them.
‘Too few fathers model reading to their sons’, he said.
My two boys were enthusiastic readers until the age of about 11, the age at which many children’s reading for pleasure starts to ebb, I think. Sports in particular for my boys drew their attention away but also their influences outside the home expanded, the opinions of their peers gained more currency and digital distractions grew.
During the intervening years I have thrust many books into their hands in the hope that something will stick. It hasn’t. My eldest son is 18 now and a student of engineering at Canterbury University, and I suspect it will be many years now before he picks up a book for pleasure, but I shall not stop trying nor relegate him to the ranks of non-reader.
My boys, like many, are among the groups of New Zealanders who only read if they have to.
I’m a fervent believer in the power of reading to change lives.