Neil Gaiman gave a very important lecture on Monday night. He was speaking about books and reading. One of the things he said was that we should let children read the books they love.
Yes.
He said: "I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children... There was a fashion for saying that Enid Blyton or RL Stine was a bad author or that comics fostered illiteracy. It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness."
Yes.
I wouldn't read when I was a child: but I loved football. My mum got me books on football: so I started to read.
Most adults get this. You give a child a book about something they want to read.
But some don't. That's where Gaiman's reference to snobbery comes in. I witnessed this once.
I was in a school talking about my football books. The event had gone well. I had convinced the children that reading and writing about football was just as good as reading about anything else. I had done my job.
Then, during the questions, the teacher asked "When are you going to write books about proper subjects?"
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