Angry about book poverty? Do something about it with #justonebook

I am an author – and of course I want everyone in the entire world to buy my books. Over the past weeks and months, though, I have come to realise there is such a thing as book poverty.

I currently want people to buy children’s books instead of my own because I am angry that any child today should not have access to lovely new books in school for financial reasons.

Teachers are striking for better pay and conditions but also for more resources for the kids they teach. There just isn’t enough money for books in schools.

As an author I undertake many school visits. Recently I visited a Highland primary school (which will remain anonymous – no school deserves to be stigmatised for not having enough funds for new books) and was shown around by a delightful but exhausted teacher who took me into the school library.

The content wasn’t great. Very few new titles. Some books were old school prizes from the 1950s. Some were passed-on school stock from elsewhere. Several had teachers’ names in them: teachers buying new books for their school libraries out of their meagre wages because it’s the only way they can replenish the library! One was the same ‘My Learn to Cookbook’ recipe book I was given myself aged about nine. It’s a fun cookbook, if a bit sugar and fat heavy, but I am now 61!

The amazing school staff doggedly wipe and sanitise and stick back together these poor old books as much as they can but some will vanish home, never to be seen again and there’s little to no budget to replace them. Books which have been in a library for years get to look like they have, too – slightly dingy, slightly battered, slightly forlorn. Let’s be frank: old and shabby books are boring.

As the teacher said to me, the kids deserve better.

If you don’t hook a child on books early in life they will never catch up educationally or emotionally. Fact.

I cannot be the only person to lie awake and worry that society is destabilising to such a degree that some schools will soon close entirely through staff sickness and shortages, just as it is becoming nigh-on impossible to find a medical practice in certain areas. If we dare envision a future where children no longer attend a school at all but roam the streets, and where those of us who are sick may not be able to rely on medical care, we are looking into the abyss next door.

I am not a celebrity, nor am I a super wealthy person and I certainly have no political influence, but I thought: there has to be something I can do that is positive in this hideous mess that we are in. And I racked my brains for a small thing I could try, and I thought of the school library and its old, battered, uninspiring books.

If you see a poster soon in a bookshop which says #justonebook it means you can buy a child a primary school level book there – anything from early years to P7, fiction or non-fiction – and leave it at the bookshop. It will soon be collected, giftwrapped and delivered to a Highland primary school in desperate need of books. All the school will know is that it comes from ‘the magic book fairy’.

A very simple transaction in which you get to feel virtuous, a child gets to feel excited as they undo the parcel, a teacher gets a sense that other people care as much as they do – and I get to sleep just a wee bit better at night.

If you would like to know more about giving #justonebook to a Highland primary school then please get in touch by commenting below. Thanks for reading this 🙏🌹😊