As a children’s author I spend much of my time in schools talking to young people about writing and explaining my love of reading and why that started me on my journey with words. Mostly I do these talks in school libraries, which means I am mostly booked to speak at schools that still have libraries.
I’ve visited beautiful school libraries, magical places with trained librarians who spend their time planning quizzes, book hunts, competitions and author visits. These libraries are well used. They are places of worship because the students value them. Visit at lunchtime and they are heaving.
One of my books, Sick Bay, has a character who spends much of her time in the school sick bay to avoid other people and to avoid bullying.
At school visits I am sometimes asked why this character isn’t frequenting the library if the schoolyard is such a hard place for her to be. I explain that at the public primary school my character goes to the library is a small scrap of a place that isn’t open at lunch or recess. It’s just somewhere to return books, maybe borrow another, but not browse or lounge or hide. That library disappeared long ago to make room for more classrooms. And the librarian no longer has a job.
Students are often surprised to hear of schools without libraries, without librarians, but there are many in Australia and they are commonly in areas where libraries are needed most. In areas where students do not have access to books at home. More and more schools in Australia are doing away with their libraries and librarians. Schools need the library classrooms for some other purpose and books cost too much because libraries are no longer funded adequately.
The library has long been an ally to students needing an escape. A place surrounded not just by books but by adults who understand, who read, who talk in measured whispers. These librarians know their collections, can pass the right book into the right hands and discuss stories with students for hours. But more than that, these librarians demonstrate to students the importance of reading.
It is not just because of funding shortfalls that libraries are being closed (although I would guess many public schools do not have adequate dedicated library funding). It is also because we no longer properly value the importance of reading. In a push to schedule students to be better, to achieve more, we’ve forgotten that libraries are a place to stop and just be.
Perhaps it is hard to quantify just how important a library and dedicated librarian can be to a school community. The value of reading isn’t easy to measure, even if we intrinsically understand its importance. Reading helps us to learn vocabulary and grammar and understand the nature of a story. It helps us to learn empathy as we delve into the worlds of others and travel to new lands.
Each year as the Naplan results are announced we seem shocked that there are growing numbers of students behind in reading and mathematics. For most teachers, however, these results are not a surprise. They understand their classrooms. They see students falling behind. They know more attention and funding is needed for rural, regional and Indigenous students who have been falling behind for many years.
I didn’t have much of a school library growing up because I was at a small public primary school on the outskirts of the suburbs. And we didn’t have a public library either because our town was too small. Instead we had a mobile library that rattled in once a week and parked out the front of the tennis courts. Visiting the mobile library was the highlight of my week, and I would fill my bike basket with as many books as I could.
But by this age I’d already had a mum who read to me for years. Taught me to read alongside my teachers and encouraged my love of story. We cannot expect that students who have no access to books and libraries will just pick up a book, the right book, and start reading.
• Nova Weetman is an award-winning author of books for children and young adults, including The Edge of Thirteen
