Authors Electric

  The sheer beauty of the underwater world is amazing I taught myself to read in secret whilst sitting on the lavatory. The girl next door was six months older than me, and started school six months earlier. She lorded it over me, saying she could read but I wouldn’t be able to until I went to school, so I felt I wasn’t allowed to tackle books yet although I really wanted to. I would struggle through a sentence of Brer Rabbit until it made sense, and then the next time I locked myself away in the only room in which that was permitted I would read my practised sentence, and then struggle through the next one. Consequently, I could read before I went to school but I kept it very quiet. The very first book that I couldn’t stop reading was The Deep Sea Horse , by Primrose Cumming. I don’t know how old I was, probably about six or seven, but I remember my mother saying “Put that book down now Elizabeth, it’s tea time”, and my father (noticing how engrossed I was) shaking his head at her...