What On Earth Books

BOYS are so-called ‘reluctant readers’. Ask most primary school teachers and they will confirm that, generally speaking, we have a problem when it comes to persuading the less fair sex to get stuck into a good book. Why should this be?

Come and Celebrate a GIANT launch for the Wallbook of Sport at City Hall, London on Monday 30th April!

A day packed with fun, talks, games and activities will be taking place for schools and families at a GIANTedition …

“There’s nothing right in my left brain and there’s nothing left in my right brain…..”

STAYING as a guest in someone’s home is so much more uplifting than being accommodated in a soulless, modern hotel. This week I am away from home touring schools and giving talks at festivals.

IT’S a stinky one. I must have become contaminated at least two weeks ago – these things usually take a few days to incubate – but by a week last Friday I was erupting all over the place – from the snotty nose and spluttering cough to an unnerving shiver that got worse at night-time. It wasn’t so bad as to make me retire to bed, but it was bad enough for everything last week to become something of a struggle.

I HAVE ALWAYS had a great deal of respect for the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu. I recall him giving up his summer holiday – in August 2006 – to set up camp inside his own cathedral in a protest against violence in the Middle East, following Israeli intervention in Lebanon. He is a man of peace, there is no doubt. But not, it seems, a man of history…

IT IS A TRADITION of sorts for seers to commit themselves to prophesy at this time of year. A New Year is a new start – an ideal vantage point from which to gaze in to the future and make sweeping predictions about what on Earth happens next…

NORWICH CATHEDRAL has a Christmas Fair which is proving ideal for presenting Wallbooks as potential Christmas gifts. I am here for three days, residing in our family campervan in a not-too exotic carpark within 5 minutes walk of Cathedral Close. Now I have closed the blinds – it is half past nine in the evening – and all around feels like home.

I HAD the pleasure of visiting a local school recently – not, for once, as a visiting speaker, but as a prospective parent. Matilda, our eldest daughter, is now 16 and she is considering her options for A levels. I am happy that she wants to study history. I am less happy, though, at the approach the prospective school’s history department takes to what its A level students study….

I HAVE BEEN inundated with people offering me their own thoughts after the last Wallbook Weekly: Why Children Fail? I can’t thank you enough – it is wonderful to hear from so many sympathetic H. Sapiens! But now I feel I should attempt to tackle the same conundrum but from the other way round. What makes children succeed?

THE START of another school year swiftly follows a catastrophic August blighted by riots and civil disorder. As expected, Britain’s politicians are now bustling about as busily as ever dreaming up yet more strategies for reforming educational standards for the future.