Writer in Residence: A Defence of Rereading

Mr Jackson, Writer in Residence 

To Read, Reread and Read Again

When I was nine years old I was obsessed with an author called Michael Hardcastle. He would write exciting stories about young lads who were playing football for school sports teams, for local Sunday league clubs, in tournaments, cup finals, and the like. The titles for his books were always short and snappy. United, Shoot on Sight, One Kick, Second Chance, and Away from Home were some of my favourites.

However, one particular novel, In the Net, became something of a fixation of mine. It tells the story of a football-fanatic, Gary Ansell, who follows his sporting passion against the pressures of his rugby-loving family and his new rugby-loving school. It was a faced-paced tale with lots of lively descriptions of high-octane football and rugby matches, yet it also had well-drawn, developed characters and important messages to the reader about friendship and being true to yourself.

I loved it so much, I read it back then – when I first found it in the school library – four, five times in a row. It was a life-changing book for me in many ways and is central to one of my most formative school memories.

It was one afternoon far into the summer term and we were having a quiet reading lesson. I remember vividly my teacher’s shadow looming over the open pages as I settled down comfortably to another escapist session with In the Net.

She looked worried.

In a grave voice she asked to see my reading card, which was a bit like a large bookmark with a log of all the books I’d read that year. Every time we started a new book we would carefully write the title and author down, followed by the date. Well, being the honest student that I was, I had proudly recorded each time I’d read, reread and read again In the Net on my reading card. Hardcastle’s short and snappy title dominated the thing:

In the Net…

In the Net…

Danny the Champion of the World…

One Kick…

In the Net…

The Wind in the Willows…

In the Net…

In the Net…

In the Net…

My teacher had had enough. She could not hide her horror and advised that I choose something else to read, a different book perhaps, something more ‘challenging’. I remember obediently rising at her instruction and miserably putting In the Net back on the shelf.

I can’t tell you which book I picked up in its stead.

To add insult to injury, said teacher even wrote home on the end-of-year report to my parents, mentioning the incident specifically, warning them that if I did not change my attitude to reading in the next academic year my vocabulary would suffer, remaining forever stunted and limited to mere football jargon, and that my chances at life would be completely in ruin!

How sad.

The irony is that, as an English teacher, even here at Queen Anne’s, I have occasionally found myself falling into this teacherly (some would say preacher-ly) way with the odd lower school student in the library reading sessions.

I have accosted those roguish types who only read Jaqueline Wilson, The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or the Harry Potters and have asked the same questions, made the same demands, given the same instructions.

I can hear myself now:

“You there, what’s that you’re reading? Wimpy Kid! How many times have you read that? Can you choose something different, please? A classic, perhaps? Shakespeare? Something a bit more… challenging?”

Well, this frightening epiphany of mine was prompted by a brilliant poem I read the other day on exactly the same sort of thing. It is by the American writer Jacqueline Woodson and it is called ‘Reading’. I thought I would share it because I imagine many of you might be able to relate to the message:

Reading By Jacqueline Woodson

I am not my sister.

Words from the books curl around each other

make little sense

until

I read them again 

and again, the story

settling into memory. Too slow

the teacher says.

Read faster.

Too babyish, the teacher says. 

Read older.

But I don’t want to read faster or older or

any way else that might

make the story disappear too quickly

from where it’s settling 

inside my brain,

slowly becoming a part of me.

A story I will remember

long after I’ve read it for the second, 

third, tenth,

hundredth time.

Some of the lines here really touch home. Woodson is perceptive in describing how an attitude to reading and our relationship with books and stories should be fun and personal – a pleasure. How mere love of a simple story is enough.

The thought that those books we love and have read, reread and read again are the ones that ‘slowly’ become a ‘part’ of us is very profound. And, we can only become this intimate with a text through rereading some would argue. Woodson’s last lines embrace the idea that to read two, three, ten, or one hundred times a story is the start of this intimate, symbiotic relationship between the reader and the text.

To have read a book one hundred times is not a source of shame, but a source of pride and a thing to celebrate!

And so this is what I will do for my summer reading this coming holiday. I am going to return to Michael Hardcastle, dig out In the Net, reread and drift back to those familiar, comforting words.

As the summer holidays approach for you too, I advise going back to a fond old text – a story that you love, know well and have read before – to read it again, regardless of your age, the book’s age, the target audience or whether it’s deemed a worthy classic or a trashy tale.

So read, reread and read again, without shame, simply because you love it!