EDITOR’S LETTER – Nicky Furniss

When I was little, I loved bedtimes, because bedtimes meant stories. First story books, and then novels that my parents would read us one chapter a night – and sometimes two, if we begged hard enough!That is how I first heard Roald Dahl’s The BFG. When I was old enough, I re-read it myself, but whenever I think of it, the excited anticipation of knowing the next chapter was coming up each night is what I best remember. When we were old enough to read to ourselves, my parents made us a deal. We had to be in bed at a certain time, but if we choose to read, we could stay up for an extra half-an-hour – which at the age of seven or eight felt extremely grown up. As did reading all three books of The Lord of Rings when I was 10. Granted, the 1,000+ pages meant that it took me more than three months to do so – and I will admit to getting very bored over the bits about elvish history and the songs of Tom Bombadil – but I made it all the way through, nonetheless. When I was in primary school, the end-of-year academic prizes always came with a book voucher for Shooter and Shuter’s, a long-established favourite book store in Pietermaritzburg. I loved that bookstore – especially with a voucher in my hand! The store always smelled heavenly and held such promise. Over the course of my primaryschool career, I acquired all nine of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books – a collection I have re-read multiple times. Before we had access to school libraries, my mum took us every week to the Pietermaritzburg Public Library, an impressive building up a flight of stone steps, its voluminous entrance hall seeming to loom above my fouror five-year-old self. Adult books were to the left (and it was such a honour when I was finally old enough to browse in this section), and children’s books to the right. I had a small green cardboard library sleeve, in which the stamped library cards of no less than three books could be slotted in each week.

It was hushed and cool and had that distinctive “book” smell, which I still find so delicious that I have to alternate every electronic book I read with a “real” one, so I can feel its weight in my hands, and smell its lovely papery smell.That library was such a happy part of my childhood that when it came time to write my master’s thesis, I’m sure it played some role – subconscious or otherwise – in my topic choice. Because it meant that I had to spend days there, downstairs in the archives, donning white gloves and reading through original copies of The Natal Witness newspaper more than 100 years old. Reading also played a massive role in my current career. Without reading, I would never have discovered a love for words, and an obsessive need to “collect” as many as possible, to store them up in my vocabulary for the moment when one would be just right. And my need to use all of those words, lead to me wanting to use them in print, and to ensure that the words of others could be the best they could be. It’s little wonder then that I turned out to be a writer and editor. It may seem like a simple thing, but perhaps one of the best things you can ever do for your children (and indeed for yourself) is to read to them. Awaken their imaginations with tales of far-off places, instill in them a love of books and for the words that fill them. Give books as gifts as much as possible, and encourage your children to read to themselves when they are old enough. There is so much more to be discovered in the pages of a book than just a story.The seed of who you or who your children may become, may be hidden there too, in-between that yummy bookish smell and all of those beautiful words.

Happy reading! Nicky