For many people, stories and story-telling formed the basis of their childhood. But there are others whose childhood is devoid of books, and it’s these children that Oxford’s new Story Museum aims to help. As Robert Gore-Langton puts it, ‘beyond [Oxford’s] dreaming spires is an urban hellhole of burning cars, despair and unemployment’, and, he points out, ‘it is ranked number 32 in Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK.’ In his piece, he talks to Anne Fine, Amanda Mitichison, Terence Blacker and Keith Crossley-Holland on the joy – and importance – of reading aloud. Below is just one of The Story Museum’s attempts to get children reading.
What Maisie Knew is described in the bumf as ‘heart-warming’, a description that Deborah Ross says is highly inaccurate. In fact, it’s an extremely painful film, but it is also ‘compelling’, ‘exquisitely done’, and ‘brilliantly acted’ – the star being 7 year-old Onata Aprile, who ‘knocks it out the court’, not just once, but ‘over and over’.
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