When did we put reading in the corner? When did books make the journey out of libraries and into the dusty corner of every primary classroom? 

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course. The calculation of ”more books + closer proximity = increased chance of words entering brain through eyes” is one that’s fairly hard to argue with.

Except, how many of those reading corners are the literary launchpads they should be? How many of them stress the word “reading” over the word “corner”? How many of them are just home to wasted Wimpy Kids, decimated Dahls, and battered Guinness Books of Records (year unknown, the cover torn off aeons ago)?

Reading cornered

Perhaps as a result of a sense that reading corners were something that could be done better, a curious trend has emerged over the past few years, fuelled by the one-upmanship of social media; the reading corner as art installation. 

No longer were reading corners battered old bookcases relying on a few laminated posters to jazz them up. No, now reading corners were colossal oaks, great boughs of books branching out across the classroom. They were scholastic spaceships ready to blast off among a blizzard of scatter cushions and bean bags. They were jungle fortresses guarding their literary treasure with flowing veils hanging from the ceiling; always something hanging from the ceiling.

And, yes, I suppose dressing a bookcase as if it were a window display at Harrods is awfully impressive, but the thing is...

Nobody cares.

Too much fluff

Wait, that’s too harsh. 

You might care, and taking pride in creating something is never going to be a bad thing. 

Your SLT might care, too, in which case it most assuredly is a good thing that it is also the kind of thing you care about.

But the kids? They don’t care - at least not as much as you do.

Yes, your scale replica of the Library of Alexandria may be a marvel of crepe paper and double-sided sticky tape, but kids are fickle and soon it will just be another random object collecting dust in the corner of your room alongside the (probably deceased) stick insect and the life-sized model of Florence Nightingale made from lollipop sticks.

“But we want to enthuse our children with a passion for reading! We want them to develop a lifelong love of learning! We want them to see books as a gateway to a magical world.” To which I’d say…

Just open a book.

Focus on the reading

A well-curated reading area is the best ticket to anywhere, and requires no great bells or whistles beyond time to discover, time to read and time to be read to. You could spend those holiday hours making something so precious you daren’t let the children touch it, or you could spend that time deep-diving into children’s literature, finding the books that will pull your class into their pages and never let them go.  

There’s no need to dress a good book up as anything other than what it is; a teleporter across space and time.

Ian Goldsworthy is a primary teacher and tweets @Ian_Goldsworthy