Once upon a time and happy ever after. Dragons and beasts, fire and growls. Flawed witches and white Christmases. Girls that fly and animals that speak. Sad frogs and homespun spaceships aimed towards a moon made of cheese. What worlds to take a child to, what colour to heap upon their imagination. As you read, their heads become vivid cinemas, their hearts pounding pistons stoked by radiant fires. ‘Do the voices,’ they implore. ‘Do the voices!’ Your ‘angry mother’ is a triumph, your ‘brazen burglar’ shames seasoned actors.
Sneak a look at their eyes as you begin a new story or once more navigate a recognised one. It is as if the boulder has been rolled to reveal Aladdin’s Cave, lighting the child’s face with amber rays. They inhale the pictures, colours and rhythms, and jump into the pages before them, walking among giants and ogres, giggling with chatty crows and talking to mournful oak trees.
Field all of the child’s questions, give way to their interjections – stop-and-start telling does no harm. It buries a young mind even deeper in the story, it lets them drag it where they like, to become authors by the age of eight. Agree to the second story, the third and the fourth. Sleep can wait when the princess must be saved.
You, the child and a book snuggled in bed or perched on a cot-side chair, tucked away in a bedroom, everything shelter and safety. You are hidden statues rigidly in thrall to the adventures before you. The book could be newly bought or borrowed, or – a delight within a delight – one from your own youth. In such a moment, two children are united across thirty years by paper and ink.
Slowly sleep overcomes tiny eyes, the next fixture already in place: same time same place tomorrow and tomorrow’s morrow. Perhaps the story runs onwards in their dreams, perhaps they blow down the house or fool the troll.
We have a few sacred years before words are unlocked and they learn to walk fairytale woods alone, that hand of yours no longer needed. You are embedding a ritual and igniting a love more intimate than any other. Tonight, you help them fly.