Ciana escapes with a good book

FORMER television presenter, psychologist and adult literacy tutor Ciana Campbell remembers well the days when she used to escape into the hotpress with a torch to read, because that was the only place she could get lost into a book in peace.

Ciana is one of the organisers of this year’s Ennis Book Club Festival. This is her fourth year being involved in the festival and she is confident that books and book clubs are still very much in demand and provide a much-needed form of escapism for readers.
Recent figures show that two-thirds of Munster mothers read to their children from a very young age and Ciana says that this time out with children is really important for their speech and language development.
“Reading to children is a very important experience for both the parent and child. It’s a wonderful experience in all sorts of ways. For the child, even a young baby, it allows them to hear the soothing voice of their parent and opens them up to a whole new range of words and sounds. For the parent, it is time to just sit and be with their child – not rushing anywhere, total time out.
“On a personal level, I found it lovely and very bonding with my two girls. I made a real effort to make it a very regular thing in our house from when the girls were only babies. For us it was down time, letting everyone unwind a bit. There was many a time we all lay on the bed together and read together,” Ciana recalls.
She acknowledges that it is hard for parents who are working but emphasises that even a short book will provide that much-needed bonding experience.
“It is hard for people these days when they’re working and very busy but even if it’s just for 10 minutes in the evening or at bedtime, it is a lovely family experience. We read to the girls from when they were very small babies, so it was always something they were familiar with. I definitely feel it brought on their speech and vocabulary. Research shows that but I’d go further than that and say that the girls did learn new words and expressions from the books we read to them. And before they could even read they knew a lot of the phrases and sequence of some of the books we read very often off by heart.
“It meant that when they went to school they really didn’t find learning how to read difficult at all and were very open to books and reading. My instinct tells me that reading to a child helps language development a lot,” she says.
As teenagers now, she said that her daughters love to read and she believes that their early introduction to books helped their literacy skills a lot.
“Even in terms of some of the more text-heavy subjects in school, such as history, they were well able for the volumes of reading. They also read the newspaper. I think what kind of things a child reads depends on what they see their parents reading.
“We have a range of books in our house, so the girls are used to seeing us read different kinds of materials. The same goes – if a parent reads magazines or tabloid newspapers, the children will probably grow up to read them too. In my view, however, it isn’t that important, what a child reads, once they do read,” she adds.
Through her work as a literacy tutor, she has found that wanting to read to their child can be the incentive for an adult to learn to read or to improve their literacy level.
“I have also worked as a literacy tutor and have found a number of adults whose motivation is to read to their own child. I feel that the earlier a parent starts to read to their child the better and it would be awful for a parent to miss out on reading to their child,” Ciana says.
She has also found that illustrations are key to developing a child’s imagination.
“Illustrations are also a huge part of books and often what the child identifies with first. They can really encourage a child’s imagination. The most important thing is to make books, including those with illustrations, available to your child. If they see interesting looking books around them, they will read them.”
Ciana has also witnessed a huge demand for audio books and for public readings.
“The bottom line is that people love to be read to. People love to hear how others interpret text – what accent they use or how something is phrased. Whether someone is two years old or eight years old, they love being read to.
“It is a form of escapism. I recall as a child, that I would escape into the hot press with a torch to read. That was the only place I could get some peace and quiet. There wasn’t much money when I was growing up, but we always had books and we loved reading,” she comments.
“My love for reading and the great start it gave me in terms of communicating definitely led me into the career I have been in. We were also used to being around writers. My uncle, Anthony Cronin, was a writer, a contemporary of Patrick Kavanagh. He was famous for his book Dead as Door Nails. He had many friends who were writers and poets so we were very much exposed to the whole scene of writing,” she continues.
This is the fourth book club festival in Ennis that Ciana has been involved in and she says that the demand is just the same as when she first became involved.
“There is a huge demand for book clubs these days and book shops are very busy. In this, a time of recession, books are very reasonably priced. I truly hope that the written word doesn’t lose its appeal. The format may change a little over time but people will always want to hear or read a story,” she concludes.