matrix wrote:Moving on, can you add anything to the subject matter, did you read any when you were young? How important were they, are they, to a childs education?
Well now, that's quite a wide-ranging raft of questions there, matrix.
I'm not sure I have much of value to say on the first question, so I'm happy to leave that to the experts.
On the second, I used to read The Dandy, The Beano, Radio Fun, Film Fun and The Knockout as a child, by which I mean under the age of nine, but only rarely, by which I mean when one or other of my friends had an issue or two, because I didn't get pocket money, and my father flatly refused to buy me any copies of what he referred to as penny dreadfuls. I probably read more adventures about Rupert than anything else, because the mother of a friend living five doors down the road got the Daily Express every day, and I was allowed to read the double-panelled strip regularly. As Father Christmas always brought Allan the Rupert Annual, I got to read that as well, and make the origami-type paper models. My father bought the Communist paper The Daily Worker, so obviously the Daily Express would never have been allowed across the threshold of our house. My mother was a Liberal, at a time when that was perfectly respectable, and bought the News Chronicle, where I was able to follow the activities of the Arkubs, and was allowed to become a club member. I've still got the badge and associated membership paperwork. When I was nine I graduated to The Wizard, Adventure, The Hotspur and The Rover, which cost twopence each. I was given sixpence a week pocket money, so obviously I couldn't buy all four in any one week, but I bought enough, probably two a week at best because I did enjoy two ounces of sweets or an ice lolly from time to time, to keep on top of the serials. Another friend used to get The Champion, delivered no less, and his elder sister had Girls' Crystal, so I also read those. When his younger sister started to get School Friend, I read that as well. Whenever I got more money, for example when I went to the Giant Axe to watch one of Lancaster City's Lancashire Combination matches, or to Lune Road in the summer for Lancaster's cricket matches, I usually managed to siphon a few pennies off for the following week's story papers. In fact, I've now got most of them from 1921 onwards, and a very large number of Thomsons' girls' papers from 1958 to 2001, and I still get enormous pleasure from reading them over and over again.
As far as your third question is concerned, they were extremely important to me. I believe they were very important to all children. I was a voracious reader anyway, but a full week's worth of Thomsons' papers amounted to an extra 75,000 words a week roughly, which had to help with spelling and the awareness of what language can actually do. From a personal point of view, I also learned some life skills, like becoming secretive because I had to find safe places to hide my story papers, otherwise my father would have put them on the back of the fire, and how to tell lies, which certainly didn't come naturally, and went very much against the grain. I still feel guilty about it all these years later, and this despite the fact that my parents have passed away.
I am a lot less impressed with the current output for children.