Classic children’s books are being serialised by a West Country daily as part of a bid to improve child literacy on its patch.
The Citizen in Gloucester has launched a campaign with Usborne Publishing to encourage parents and grandparents to read to their children and grandchildren at bedtime.
Since 6 October the Local World title has been publishing a chapter a day of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens among its pages.
This will be followed by Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne, and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novel Anne of Green Gables.
The chapters are taken from Usborne’s specially adapted children’s versions of the tales and are published alongside a half price book offer with the company.
As part of the Bedtime Reading campaign schools, coffee shops, offices and libraries are also being encouraged to set up book swap bins where people can bring in a children’s story they have read and exchange it for another which has been donated.
Jenny Eastwood, editor, hopes the campaign will result in an increase in newspaper sales.
Said Jenny: “The family market is really important for us and we wanted to produce a campaign which would appeal to mums, dads and grandparents.
“The stories are classics which we believe every child would enjoy.
“By putting the chapters in on consecutive days we are hoping for a good newspaper sales result.”
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The kids will be OK as long as they do not read local newspapers to learn proper English. Its use passed out of fashion about ten years ago.
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Proper English doesn’t matter any more. I’m at university now and essays I have seen are awash with apostrophes in plurals, American spellings, to instead of too, and so on. It doesn’t seem to affect marks. People litter their work with these mistakes and still get firsts and 2:1s. My lecturers frequently tell me that people have been “hung”, and won’t be told when I say they are wrong. I’m called a Grammar Nazi but I try to explain (in vain) that this isn’t grammar. It’s just plain wrong. Grammar is something else entirely.
Young people these days…..and that’s just the lecturers.
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Agree idle rich. It is not just young. Some of the people in charge of young reporters have no idea of good English. So mistakes by kids go uncorrected.And they think they are doing OK, get put in charge…and so it goes on.
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