Your report quotes National Literacy Trust statistics showing that 8.6% of children do not own a book (Almost a million children in the UK do not own a book, 28 November). This was my own experience in the 1940s and 50s. However, both my mother and grandmother were regular readers. They did not own books, but used libraries. I was introduced to the local public library early on, and reading quickly became the centre of my life. I went on to become a librarian and worked in cooperation with national and international library organisations in later years after I became an academic.
That so many children today do not own a book is disturbing, but it’s just as bad, or worse, that their access to libraries is shrinking. A number of local libraries have been closed under pretty much every local authority, and book budgets are terribly constrained. This denies children the access to the enormous range of books that libraries have been able to offer in the past. Ownership of a few books is really no substitute for this.
Prof Paul Sturges
Stanton by Bridge, Derbyshire
• Your reader’s response (Letters, 28 November) to Polly Toynbee’s article on the importance of the arts in schools reignited my profound gratitude to a young primary teacher with a guitar in the 1960s who inspired a bunch of us to experience the joy of harmonising with him to Sloop John B at lunchtimes. Thank you, Mr Clayden – I only knew you briefly, but that minimal joyful experience fostered 60 more years of choral delight.
Jill Webster
Frogpool, Cornwall
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