A heart-warming letter from a librarian

Dear Mem Fox,

You have inspired me!…and I wanted to write to tell you what happened in our library at school today.

On Saturday I watched a room full of adults transfixed by your reading of your wonderful books. So, I decided to give it a go at school with the Year 1s (I run the library but am not a teacher).

I deliberately chose “Where is the Green Sheep?” so I could copy the way you did it. As soon as they saw the book, the complaints started: “It’s too babyish,” they said. “My Mum reads this to my little sister,” and so on.

I just started reading very quietly and within 2 pages you could have heard a pin drop, 2 more pages and they were all joining in. Some of them looked so wrapped you would think I had never read to them before, or even that no-one had ever read to them before.

When I have finished there was a general buzz about green sheep in the room and at the very end of the lesson, the quietest boy in the class, who has never expressed an interest in books and can never find one he wants to take home, came up to me and very quietly asked if he could borrow “the book about the green sheep.” A triumph!

We are onto Koala Lou next week, then I am going to get them all to join in with Hattie and the Fox and then I’m going to work my way through all my favourite picture books in the library, giving them all that “Mem Fox” sparkle.

Thank you, thank you,

Rosheen Rodwell
Librarian
Peak School
Hong Kong