Over the weekend, I read an interesting book entitled Bird by Bird by American writer Anne Lamott. Published in 1994, this text is a humorous and practical guide to writing and to life. Lamott affirms the critical importance of reading and writing and their interrelated nature. The following extracts capture Lamott’s privileging of these two most significant aspects of literacy and learning.

Books were my refuge. I sat in corners with my little finger hooked over my bottom lip, reading, in a trance, lost in the places and times to which books took me. And there was a moment during my junior year in high school when I began to believe that I could do what other writers were doing. I came to believe that I might be able to put a pencil in my hand and make something magical happen.

In college the whole world opened up, and the books and poets being taught in my English and Philosophy classes gave me the feeling for the first time in my life that there was hope, hope that I might find a place in a community. I felt that in my strange new friends and in certain new books, I was meeting my other half. Some friends wanted to get rich and famous, but my friends and I wanted to get real. I devoured books like a person taking vitamins. I swooned with the excitement and the nourishment of it all…

I still encourage anyone who feels compelled to write to do so. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward…Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve thought that there was something noble and mysterious about writing, about the people who do it well, who could create a world as if they were little gods and sorcerers. All my life I’ve felt that there was something magical about people who could get into other people’s minds and skin, who could take people like me out of ourselves and then take us back to ourselves. And you know what? I still do.

The challenge for parents and teachers today is to redress the trend which sees reading decline as students move through adolescence. Reading matters! It supports literacy and learning and enables young people to develop their own informed perspective on life. Writing also matters because it helps young people think and make sense of their experience. If, like Ludwig Wittgenstein, we believe that ‘the limits of my language are the limits of my world’, then there can be no greater life-affirming gift than the gift of the parent, carer or educator privileging and encouraging a love of reading and a passion for writing.

Clare Murphy

English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach