\n
Barbara Henderson shares her thoughts on how books can change the world, a perfect link to National Share A Story Month.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fcbg.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/author-pic-300x236.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Changing the world, one book at a time.<\/p>\n
Reading is a form of activism. I make no apologies for this fairly sweeping statement \u2013 I believe it to be absolutely true. By turning the page and giving yourself over to entering a character\u2019s mind, you surrender. It is a statement \u2013 I will step away from who I am and become someone else for a while \u2013 and with that comes a willingness to care \u2013 yes, to care about issues which the old me did not care about much. Every page widens my horizon. Not only do I learn and know more \u2013 I care more as a result of that knowledge.<\/p>\n
Take wonderful empathy novels like Boy, Everywhere by DM Dassu \u2013 I am not a Syrian refugee, but through turning the pages, I learn to imagine that a Syrian refugee is not so very different from me. In fact, it could have been me if the political situations were reversed and the UK had been the war-torn nation and Syria the safe place. The result of reading the book? I look on the wider refugee community with more compassion and understanding than I had before.<\/p>\n
Can this provoke new actions? Of course it can \u2013 it is even likely. Best of all, it will have the same effect on young readers.<\/p>\n
Take my own latest novel, I Don\u2019t Do Mountains. By turning the pages, young readers open themselves up to walking in my heroine Kenzie\u2019s shoes for a while. They head into the hills, navigate dangers and adventures, yes. But they also feel Kenzie\u2019s fresh outrage she encounters evidence of wildlife crime and raptor persecution, for example. I see the same outrage in the eyes of young pupils when I conduct my frequent visits to primary schools. I am very sorry to tell you, I say, that the picture you are seeing on the screen shows a Golden Eagle, deliberately and illegally poisoned. Why? To protect grouse stock on hunting estates.<\/p>\n
Facts and figure are useful, of course. However, information is only ammunition for action \u2013 but stories, both fiction and non-fiction, are what motivates us to head into battle and fight for what is right. I have seen it for myself: children hunched over their letters to a local politician, begging for a tightening of the law so that rare wildlife is better protected. My heart sang \u2013 a story did that. They wanted to make a difference because of my book!<\/p>\n
I Don\u2019t Do Mountains also raises wider issues around land ownership and rewilding \u2013 without preaching one viewpoint or the other. Children are merely presented with hints at the issues, and their natural curiosity and sense of justice is awakened. By creating teaching resources to accompany the book, I hope that young readers (and children are natural activists!) will find an outlet for their feelings stirred up by the story. This may take many forms: traditional campaigning, debates, learning about organisations which protect our natural environment, or even heading into the hills for themselves to learn more, care more, take action more.<\/p>\n
Can you hear it? The sound of rustling pages?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the sound of a better world to come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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