When words come alive: A blog post for World Book Day

I suddenly realised it was eerily quiet in my home for a Saturday afternoon. Wondering what mischief my youngest was up to, I crept round the house, looking for trouble. And then I spied her through the door. Sitting cross-legged on her bed, just quietly reading. A look of utter concentration on her little face.

Quickly and silently I grabbed my camera. This I wanted to capture… this was the first time she had chosen to sit and read a book as a preferred activity to the usual running, trampolining, drawing and dressing-up.

She looked up briefly as I came in, but, used to seeing me with a camera slung round my neck, quickly cast her eyes back down to carry on. “I’m just going to get a few pictures, is that OK?” I asked. She nodded, too absorbed in what she was reading to look up again.

I spent 5 minutes capturing these images whilst she read and then snuck out again. And I know I will treasure them. The moments when she perhaps first realised that you can be really transported to a different place and meet amazing people and creatures, simply through the written word. The realisation that when those words are well written, you don’t want to do anything else but carry on reading them. The fact you can truly lose yourself in a book. Or more importantly, find yourself in a book.