Book Shelves Emptied!

While panicked shoppers were emptying supermarket shelves, our Croydon High pupils made a real dent in the Learning Resource Centre bookshelves on Thursday. 368 books were borrowed in a single day!

C. S. Lewis wrote that “we read to know we are not alone”; salient words as we face difficult times ahead. Gavin Extence picks up on this theme in his humorous bitter-sweet novel The Universe versus Alex Woods. Alex suffers from epilepsy (as a result of being struck on the head as a child by a 2.3kg meteorite!) and, as a teenager, has to suffer a year of virtual isolation. He comments: “The period of my confinement was also the period in which I developed my insatiable appetite for reading. Reading, it turned out, was one of the only things I could do… When I look back at the year I spent in the box room, I think these were the books that stopped me from feeling sorry for myself and got me to thinking that, on the whole, my life wasn’t so terrible. When I read these books, I no longer felt like I was confined to a very tiny world…. my brain, with a little help from other people’s brains, could take me to some pretty interesting places, and create all kinds of wonderful things.” Perhaps we can take a leaf out of Extence’s novel and use this time of isolation to connect with other voices, people, and worlds through the power of books.

Mrs Karen Abrams

LRC Manager