To catch a woozle
IN her book Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise, children’s author and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Katherine Rundell makes an impassioned case for adults to pick up a children’s book every now and then, to remind themselves why they fell in love with reading in the first place—the unabashed imagination, the extraordinary courage and that unparalleled sense of wonder. The best children’s fiction, she writes, ‘helps us refind things we may not even know we have lost’.
We need only consider the global outpouring of grief in recent years when authors Michael Bond and Judith Kerr, creators of Paddington and The Tiger Who Came to Tea respectively, passed away to appreciate the staggering affection we have for the characters they gave us.
For many, there is one children’s book in particular that we continue to hold dear throughout life, a source of comfort in timesand turning straight to chapter three, , to read about Pooh circling the tree round and round, unknowingly tracking his own paw prints. For me, there is no other story that quite so charmingly evokes the simple joys to be found in life—I owe much to that silly old bear.
