Aidan Chambers has made a major contribution to the literature for and about young people and their reading. His experience gives this collection ( Reading Talk , Thimble Press pound;14.50) of seven substantial essays a distinctive slant.
In his own novels and those he has edited, Chambers is adamant that developing readers deserve more than instantly appealing crowd-pleasers; they need fiction to extend their reading, thinking and language awareness.
Elements of autobiography make this a varied and anecdotal collection. “Pick up a Penguin” charts Chambers’s development as a devourer of fiction, from the six-year-old who coloured the pictures because reading was too difficult, through the moment of epiphany when “everything came together and I heard voices talking in my head”, to his own collection in his teens of the new Penguin paperbacks: “democratic, unthreateningly attractive, affordable... how much I owe that extraordinary publishing phenomenon”.
Aged 15, he bought Sons and Lovers . Finishing it, he decided that “what I was - not wanted to be or would like to be, but was - was a writer”.
The final essay, “The Future of the Book”, further explores the relationships of author, text and reader. Chambers has much to say about the irreplaceable activity of reading in book form, and argues that its future is assured. Chambers the writer makes me want to write; Chambers the attentive reader makes me want to read. Enjoy this collection for its range, eloquence and wisdom, and for its unique “companionship”.
