Aladdin's Cave is closing down - Griselda Heppel laments the loss of the Book House, Summertown
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| The Book House, Summertown, soon to close. |
Two weeks ago I
had the melancholy task of collecting a book from the Book House, Summertown,
Oxford. Before I am deluged with outrage
that I could ever describe a bookshop visit as melancholy, I’ll explain that
this wonderful, deceptively spacious (as estate agents love to put it) jewel of
a bookshop is closing in June 2018, and they’d asked me to take back the one
copy of Ante’s Inferno still on their
shelves.  |
| Aladdin's Cave: the Book House, Thame |
A younger sibling
of the glorious Aladdin’s Cave that is the Book House in Thame, the Book House,
Summertown, has been a fixture of this part of Oxford for nearly 30 years.
During that time the Summertown shopping centre – as so many throughout the UK –
underwent a sea change in character, with traditional stores giving way to
coffee and charity shops. When I arrived in the 1980s, there were 3 butchers, 3
greengrocers, 2 newsagents, 2 off licences, a toyshop, pet shop, post office
and, oh joy, a bookshop. All have gone now, with the Book House holding out
valiantly years longer than the others. Life has changed, our shopping habits
have changed and – saddest of all – so have our reading habits. We are all
reading less than we used to; according to the wonderful Book House assistant Renee Holler (herself a prolific
children’s author), sales are down even in children’s books, supposedly a
growth area in the UK market. Competition
from ebooks, Amazon and supermarkets offering cut-price paperbacks add to the pressure
and increasingly, it’s all too much for delightful independent bookshops like
the Summertown Book House to withstand.
One reason for
the decline in reading among children, according to the annual Understanding
the Children’s Book Consumer survey from Nielsen Book Research, is that we
are reading to them less than we used to. In 2013, 69% of preschool children
were read to daily in 2013; five years later, only 51%. Parents of three to four-year-olds apparently ‘struggle to find energy at the
end of the day.’
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Call me a dinosaur (ooh, yes please) but this statement
puzzles me as much as it saddens. Do these parents not put their toddlers to
bed? In my memory, the nightly chaos of clearing up (rarely happened), cajoling
squalling youngsters upstairs, into and out of the bath and finally to their
beds, that moment when at last we sat down together and read Janet and Allen
Ahlberg’s Peepo or Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea was the
gentlest, easiest and most relaxing of parental input. So relaxing, in fact,
that I’d frequently read myself to sleep, much to the annoyance of the child on
my lap who’d turn and pinch my cheeks awake again. How do these parents, who
lack the energy to read to their children, settle them into their beds without
it?
Now I have a 2 year-old grand-daughter, bedtime isn’t (yet)
one of my tasks. But during the day she only has to set eyes on me to demand ‘Old
King Cole’ (her current obsession, narrowly running ahead of Humpty Dumpty and
the Grand Old Duke of York) before taking my hand and leading me to the sofa for
a surfeit of nursery rhymes. I’m only too happy to comply, having always found
reading aloud much less effort than creating imaginary games of Shops, or Lions
and Zookeeper (to pick two of my daughter’s favourites when young). Their time
will come, of course, along with the joys of television, ipads etc which for
now the parents can control. But when it does, I’ll do all I can to keep alive this
early love of books.
Meanwhile, a heartfelt plea: I totally get why Amazon is so
successful. Online ordering is so convenient; I love having things delivered
direct to my house instead of having to traipse round city centres trying to
find them. So why not use the online ordering system operated by bookshops such
as Blackwell’s and Waterstones? Often the prices match Amazon’s; you may have
to wait a couple of days more for the delivery, that’s all. The difference is
that you’re supporting not only the bookshops but also publishers, since while
bookshops and wholesalers demand a 40 – 55% discount on the RRP of each title,
Amazon is the greediest with its insistence of 60%.
And above all – as an 8 year-old girl at Pegasus Primary School (part of the Blackbird Academy Trust) advised the Duchess of Cambridge on a recent visit – read to your children!
Find out more about Griselda Heppel here:
and her children's books:
Comments
The decline of reading to children is, if anything, even more tragic and a disturbing symptom of the sickness which has enveloped our lovely country. Reading every night to mine remains a treasured and significant memory. Knowing that my grandchildren have been granted the same privilege by the same one-time children I read to so many years ago is a wonderful comfort.