There And Back Again - Dennis Hamley
In four days time we’ll be back in the UK trying to adjust to the unfamiliar cold, wet and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747 darkness by 6pm. We’ll manage it in the end of course, but at first it will come hard, especially during the first week of jetlagged disorientation. We left Britain on the 6th of December, but in a sense, we were on our way some days before. Several blogs, including mine, have over the years talked about The Kids’ Lit Quiz, that marvellous institution from New Zealand founded by the ebullient Kiwi from Auckland, Wayne Mills, which now takes in pretty well every English-speaking country - and a few others as well. Wayne, a professor at Auckland University, reasoned that one cause of the decline in the reading habit in schools might be that other activities such as sports had status because of their competitive edge. The solitary privacy of reading didn’t. Perhaps it ought. Could it be that readers might compete for a trophy as prestigious as the Rug...