The power of a good book

In this episode of Oundle Voices, Head Dominic Oliver and Head Librarian Andrea Kimball reflect on the power of books in the National Year of Reading.

 Together they explore why reading remains central to education and to personal growth. From the joy of discovering a good book to the role of families, schools and libraries in shaping lifelong habits, the conversation ranges widely. They discuss the importance of reading for pleasure, the balance between guidance and freedom in what young people choose to read, and the ways technology, audiobooks and graphic novels are reshaping how we engage with stories.

 At its heart, this is a conversation about why reading matters. Not simply as an academic skill, but as something that deepens empathy, strengthens community and opens up the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hi, Muttons Anvil Voices is a podcast where we're here from those with interest in and opinions about our ever-evolving education. I'm delighted today to be joined by Dominic Oliver, who is head of Ample School, and Andrew Kimball, who is our head librarian, to talk about education and the national year of reading. So let's begin with you, Dominic. It is the National Year of Reading. What does reading mean to you? Why does it matter to you so personally?

SPEAKER_02 0:28

I think reading is absolutely foundational to who I am, what I'm doing here as an educator, what I've done throughout my life, who I who, you know, what the kind of it's in the core of my being, really, and that's manifest in what I, you know, studied, what I've done professionally as an English teacher. Before that, I worked in Oxford University teaching uh English literature and enjoyed that time very, very much. And at the heart of that is obviously the skill of reading and a passion for reading and the insights that it gains you. There's something, and this isn't the fluffy, uh, kind of magical and transformatory about it. And it matters, it is at the heart of how we function as human beings, it's at the heart of how we function as educators, uh, it's at the heart of how I want the school to be functioning to help young people to grow into the world. You know, and I'm delighted that, you know, we have our amazing new librarian. We're both new in the school actually this year. And I think one of the reasons that we're all here is there's a kind of sense of the National Year of Reading chimes beautifully with what we think schools should be doing. Do you agree?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

I absolutely agree. What a gift as a librarian to have a National Year of Reading handed to you. I think the impact for me personally, but then extends professionally in the work that I do, is the wide-ranging opportunity for impact that reading has. It promotes our physical health, mental health, emotional health, of course, academic improvement. It has the ability to grow empathy and to build community and social bonds. And it's hard to find, I think, in our world, one thing that can be individually tailored for every person at every moment in your life, and also has this huge impact on all the areas of our life.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Absolutely. Um, and how can schools and parents encourage pupils to read? Because the Secretary of State recently said that only one in three young people say they enjoy reading in their free time, which is a sad change of affairs.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Well, and that's nationally, and I think that is a sad state of affairs. Here, we've surveyed pupils pretty regularly about their attitudes to reading and so on. And it's not like that here. There is a curiosity and a pleasure and engagement with reading for purpose, but also for pure pleasure. But we also are kind of sort of seeking to fertilize that to make give it the best possible chance of taking root as a lifetime habit. Um, and we give space in the curriculum for just reading. And so there's encouragement, there's insistence that it happens to kind of you know help people into the right, the right sort of habits. And there's no doubt, is there, that there's a kind of temptation to do things that are perhaps taking a bit less engagement, a bit less uh activity. Stuff that's kind of, you know, you were talking under about things being tailored. Um algorithmic things on social media are tailored in a really rather terrifying way, whereas books is a different different matter. Um, and one of the ways this is ties in is our kind of generality technology, which is open and engaged, but also quite measured and controlled about what we let people access. So books very easily on hand, trickier to get to tech. And I encourage parents, just as we have here, to be bold, to take charge, to say, actually, sorry, you you can't have that in your hand. I know you'd love to have your phone or uh other device. And as I say, we control that quite carefully here, but you can have access to this vast, amazing, many thousands of volumes library we have here, and they have them in their houses and in classrooms and so on. And I think we both agree about this because that's that sense.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

It is, and I'm always fascinated by the research around reading and its impact. And it certainly shows that when parents and teachers are readers, that that will impact pupils. And I think as when you're talking about technology, of course, that's a huge part of why we're not all of us are not reading as much. But I think it's important for us as the adults to take that responsibility. We created this world for the children. It's not, we don't need to put judgment upon them and make them feel shamed. So, yes, taking control and saying, we're going to be the adults in the room. We're going to make this work for you and not have you have the choice.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Absolutely. And I think one of the things you said to me, which really hit home, was about reading and pleasure and being non-judgmental, I think we should, that would be great to hear a bit more about that.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

100%. So all of the benefits of reading that we all know of, or maybe maybe you don't know how much it impacts, reduces stress, helps you go to sleep better. This research is done around reading for pleasure. And reading for pleasure must involve the agency of the pupil. If we are saying, here's the time you're going to read, here are the books you're going to read, now read, and we observe that and say, well, there we go, the reading. That's not reading for pleasure. Reading for pleasure is reading anything you want at the time that you want, at the age range that you want. There's no, there shouldn't be, in my opinion, and research certainly backs up that when we put these moral ideas about what we should be reading, what kind of reading is good reading, that we take away this agency, particularly teenagers need to have an agency around them.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Yeah, and I hear you on that. It's terrible, you know, as an English teacher, my background and someone whose you know specialism is Shakespeare and early modern drama, it's very hard not to sort of nudge people along. I mean, I guess I would be disappointed if I had a an 18-year-old who only read Harry Potter. But on the other hand, that's fine to have that as part of your reading Arsenal alongside whatever else it is you're reading. And I was thinking actually about this last night and your words last night. I was going to sleep, and I think, yeah, I, you know, what am I reading before I go to sleep? And a book that has grabbed me, and I've kind of resisted because it feels so much in my in my wheelhouse, to use uh, I guess an American phrase, that it almost feels too easy to do. And I was like, well, why why moralize yourself, Dominic? Exactly. Just just read what you want. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Because sometimes there's comfort reading, and the same way with food. We might eat the things that we know we should eat, and we might encourage ourselves to grow in that way. Reading is the same way. Sometimes you read for comfort because sometimes you read Harry Potter because it makes you remember how you felt when you were 10 and you write Harry Potter. I think in the academic setting, we're already encouraging pupils to improve their skills. But if they are, if they enjoy reading Harry Potter and they're allowed to, they will naturally grow forward. It's when we sort of force them into you need to read this that the resistance comes. And then they say, I'm only gonna read Diablo Wompy Kid. It doesn't matter if I'm 15. So I think it's a both and when we allow agency for ourselves as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

I will say English teachers are are I find to be some of the most challenging teachers to work with, where I find in in science, for example, they might be very happily reading dramas or thrillers. But the national year of reading motto is go all in. It's read what you enjoy. If that's what you enjoy and you express that passion to your community, I'm reading Shakespeare because I love Shakespeare. And here's why I think you should read it too. I think that allows you to promote what you think is beautiful reading without saying you should be reading this. And if you're not, you are not a good reader.

SPEAKER_02 8:05

I I I I have learned this the hard way with my own children. Um who read in very different ways, actually. And one of them is a brilliant reader of film because they're a really interesting reader of books, but perhaps film is where they've gone to, but via that sense of textuality of how things are put together, how they echo. And the other one does read read loads of different things. Um, but when about I don't know, 12, 13, we had a kind of let's encourage to read thing. And look, if you get through this many books uh in this time, there'll be a you know something really lovely that will happen at the end of it, a treat at the end of it, and no, not nothing out of out of out of order, but it was just sort of an encouragement and we're all doing it together. But I made a big mistake, which was reading was going on, all sorts of different impressive English teacher would love it kind of texts going on. Um, but also some Jack Reacher, and I said, Well, I said that doesn't count. Oh, and that put the brakes on it in a way that was really wrong. And I remember thinking at the time, oh, did I get that right? Well, actually, but I'm sure it slowed things down a little bit. And actually, the fact there was that all kinds of things were being read, from thrillers to something quite serious history, something uh a bit challenging, some translations, all I mean, really interesting stuff. So I shouldn't have had made that judgment. It's it's not right, it's not helpful. Go all in, read what you like. I think it's the principle of getting there. And I think one of the things I think you were planning to ask us, Morewena, is about that question of holiday versus normal time and it being a luxury. I I what it would be fantastic is is this sort of sense of is like breathing, really. I mean, we do do it like breathing, right? Because we read functionally to survive, or we we should be, we have to, don't we have to, we have to. And that sense then of somehow it becoming a burden and a and and and a challenge of the wrong kind, but that kind of pleasure point, you know, to sound uh potentially pretentious, you know, there's ressources, Wollenbart said about it, that sort of joy in it. Right, right. That actually we need joy in our lives, otherwise they're kind of empty, getting in spending, we lay waste our powers, etc. I mean, I I think there's that sense of needing to get to that point that it's not a luxury, it's a necessity to have meaning.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yeah, I think that starts with us as adults as well. If we need to evaluate, are we putting off the idea that we're too busy to read? We're too busy with our work to read for pleasure. But I think one thing that I use with pupils, I think that helps them is we have a lot of pupils that enjoy sport. So I might say to them, Do you always enjoy showing up for training? Well, no, the matches are what's fun. Why do you go to training? Because the more I train, the more fun I have playing and the better the matches. And that's what I that example about reading. Sometimes it's the practice of reading, it's prioritizing what we know it will bring to us. And to say, I'm going to make this a practice. I'm going to show up to training because I know that the benefits will be down the road. Yeah. I'm going to show up for reading every day, every week, because I know how important it is. And then, just like sports, the more you train, the better you get and the more fun you have. Reading doesn't always just come to us. I think it's really important for us as adults to make sure that we are talking about that. We might sometimes just want the pupils to think, we all love reading and it's so easy to read. And why would you struggle with reading? To be honest, I sometimes struggle with reading. I might go through weeks or months where I'm really just not wanting to read. But because that's such a value of mine and I know the benefits, I'm willing to prioritize. I'm gonna come back to that. I'm gonna try something different.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

And some sometimes parents ask, you know, well, what do you recommend and and how how can we get personal daughter reading? And sometimes if I'm feeling bold, I'll say, Do you read much? Yeah. And do you read together? You know, that kind of modelling thing is really important. And again, it's tough. Holidays are actually are a good time to do this, you know. You're all sitting around the pool or in a in a in a space somewhere together and you haven't got your phone out. You you've got a book. And if they if your children see you doing that, that's great, I think. Uh but whether it's holidays or otherwise, younger, older, trying to get to that space where it's something that's part of the rhythm of family life. And actually, I am a bit cheeky sometimes when parents come to talk to me, and I know I've sort of and the children are there and I'm sort of sort of interviewing the child, but not really, just having a conversation, to be honest. I ask them what they're reading. And sometimes if I'm feeling cheeky, I ask the parents too. Because that seems fair, and then they can ask me too what we're what we're looking at. It's really important that carving, carving of space.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

And if we treat it as a luxury, it will be the thing that falls to the side when things get tougher in your life, and that's exactly the time that you need that practice and those.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

In school, too. I don't think it is a a luxury or a waste of curriculum time to carve out that we are going to get people reading because the the results are already manifest in the way the young people here are talking about their working.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Because if we were saying you need to read, but now you have to find your own time. We've made time for all of these other things that we prioritize, but not reading. Again, it's the same thing as the parents investing in it, modeling it, showing the pupils that it's important for me. Therefore, it's important for me.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Absolutely. Strong themes coming through here about the culture of reading and how we generate that and also how important it is to role model reading to younger people. Let's take a moment to think about technology. What do you think the role of technology is in either supporting or detracting from reading? Dare I say that audiobooks, you know, what is their role there? Are they valid?

SPEAKER_02 14:05

I'm I'm a big low of audiobooks.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

I will die on the sill.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

Well, I mean, I it's not the same entirely. But on the other hand, if I've got a cracking book go, one of the things I'm not promoting a particular technology, but if you do have Audible and you have a Kindle, one of the amazing things about that is you're reading on your Kindle, and then you can you're getting in the car and you put the audio book on, it will pick up from where you left it on, and the and and vice versa. That's incredible. So there are there have been days when I've you know woken up and read something I'm really enjoying, and then I'm you know, I'm traveling or doing whatever, and I'd you know, almost huge tranche of that book he's got through, and the huge, you know, otherwise it's a you know pretty dull, it's gonna be a journey kind of day. I love that. Um I think it is different.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

It is different, it and therefore it has shared qualities that bring shared benefits, and then each one of these formats on their own have their own benefits. So the decoding part of reading that has its own benefits that you don't get from audiobooks, but audiobooks also the the need for comprehension to follow a voice, which is something that's really important for people to gain that you don't find through reading. The pronunciation, listening to someone narrate, understanding the qualities of what spoken words sounds like, you can't get those from reading. So, in my opinion, it's the both of them have shared and unique um benefits, but also the ability to improve accessibility across our student community, the more ways there are to read, and agree more we have to be progressive. And I think librarians have always been at the forefront. We used to have books change. We were some of the first people to use laptops, or I should say desktops in uh to in our work, you know, years and years ago. We need to use technology. We can and we can. There are ways, if the more we embrace it as opposed to saying it's it's bad, we're not going to do that. The and because I'm fascinated by research, the research behind audiobooks is abundant and robust, and there have been no downsides found, only benefits. And maybe ideally we're reading in print and audio, but maybe there are going to be some pupils and adults that are only reading in audio, and that's okay. Accessibility is important. In the same way that ebooks. We've just put forward an e-book and audiobook platform, and it's been really popular. And what you were immersive reading is another way that you can read a print book and listen to it. And that really helps some of our pupils.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

I haven't tried that, I think maybe I will.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

It's beautiful in so many ways, especially especially for our pupils who are more distracted because social media trains our brains to only pay attention to something for a small amount of time. It's just taking away some more of those distractions.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

It's really interesting, isn't it? I think there's a very this is visual technology as well as audio. But research is increasingly showing that people under 25 are watching TV always with subtitles on. And that's an interesting change too. So there is what's going on there, I don't know. But that means there's some kind of depth of decode desire. I mean, I don't know in some movies, it's pretty necessary. Um but I think in a sense, it's it's the the thickness of words, it's that sense of verbiage in a positive way. That's what we're trying to get to. You know, that this kind of forest is a is a wonderful, yeah, magical place to be navigating and enjoying, you know, the the the crunch, the feel, the sometimes the frightening, sometimes the kind of beautiful chinks of light. There's all those, all that kind of richness is there for us in whatever capacity to and audiobooks often will allow that for people who cannot read something yet.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

They they're not ready to read Shakespeare, let's say, for example, but to listen to it, it allows you to access reading far above your my my some of my children really struggled with the decoding aspect of reading or even the concept, but they were able to read books that were years and years ahead of their reading age, which is beautiful. They were able to hear words that they wouldn't have been able to pronounce or decode on like actually on Shakespeare.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

I, you know, as a child, I knew the stories before I saw the plays. I think that I'm probably in favor of people watching initially or hearing before they they read.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Yeah, my children listen to dramatized Shakespeare and they would just be rolling on the ground at six years old, which really where they wouldn't be reading at that point.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

But I mean Yeah, drama is an odd one. I think probably when we're talking about reading, kind of talking about prose, aren't we? Fiction, probably.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

I would I think the reading for pleasure, the research is about the story, primarily. Yes, there are formats, but it's about when you're talking about growing empathy, it's about hearing someone else's perspective. And that can come in any format. So it's not about the decoding or the prose at that point, it's about the story. So it's complex, isn't it? There's which is what I love about this topic is it's it's there's so many things.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

And things shifting and changing.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

I mean in those educators from cognitive science that if we're teaching a concept in the classroom, if we do it in a multimodal way and we have got pictures, we've got images, we've got visuals, we've got somebody talking and delivering the expert content, then the people's are more likely to comprehend it and they're more likely to retain that information. So the same would apply for reading, that if they are listening to it and they're reading it, then they're more likely to remember it into the future. Which leads us to graphic novels.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Yeah, I was going to when we have I mean, just and the research again behind it is so brilliant to improve reading age when it comes to text on paper. Graphic novels are brilliant. If we if I have a people come into the library looking for an English text and I can tell they're kind of struggling, I will always say, and we also have this in audio, and we also have this in graphic novel. And they say, well, I've already read the story. Yes, but read it in a graphic novel because now you're taking in images that will interpret things for you. So exactly, the more ways that we can provide access, the better. Yeah, and young children really enjoy reading, and a lot of that is probably due to the fact there's more picture books. Exactly. In so many ways in education, don't we? As it gets older, we make it less fun and it has to be less serious. Graphic novels are being used at university level now. It's such a brilliant modality.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

I love it. And finally, we can't wrap this up without asking. What are you reading at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 20:42

I was just thinking actually, because there's a discussion about graphic novels, that I just had a thought that I wanted to reread Mouse by Art Spiegelman, an amazing book, quite controversial, I think it called Banned in America temporary, and then there's a huge upsurge in that. And that's an amazing graphic novel about that. But actually, what I'm actually reading right now is The Pretender by Joe Harkin, which I won't reveal too much, but it's set in Tudor England, early Tudor England, and it's about someone who is a claimant to the throne. It's a story I happen to know really well, which I was talking about in relation to going into some area that um you know feels almost too comfortable because it's right in my area of interest. Um but it's funny, it's it's surprising, there's wit, there's some fear, there's some bleakness in it, I think. It doesn't dodge dodge a kind of toughness and it addresses it, it assuages it somehow. I'm being being made to really think as I love it. So actually I I stayed at last night. Reading. What what about you?

SPEAKER_00 21:55

I am reading this way up, which is about maps that have gone wrong over the last three centuries, and it's quite interesting. Entertaining in some ways, but also there are some serious themes about issues that have been quite politically charged, caused by erroneous maps. So educational and interesting.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

I'm reading two books at the moment, which I rarely do, but they're very different. One is My Beautiful Friend by Elena Ferrante. I have found recently this desire for literary fiction because the world is so crazy, my life is a bit chaotic, and this really slow, not a lot is happening, not plot-driven, slice of life books have been providing a lot of comfort for me. So I've been hearing about that for years and I've finally taken the diet to it. I'm really looking forward forward to it, yeah. And I do love to read books in translation as well. And that one is translated from Italian. And apparently there's a bit of controversy about the author. She, or they are, well, it is a woman, have been writing under a pseudonym. So I found that to be interesting. I love reading a book that makes me go to Wikipedia and read read something like you were saying. And the other one I'm reading is a YA book, which is long listed for the 2026 Carnegie Medal. It's called When It's Your Turn for Midnight by Belassi Msariri. It's said in Zimbabwe, it's an intergenerational story about growing up and finding your place within your family and your belonging within your country. So I'm really looking forward to finishing that one.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Wonderful. What a mix. Well, thank you so much to Dominic and Andrew for joining us today. Um I look forward to continuing these conversations throughout our time here together at Outall, but especially during this internal year of reading.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Thank you, Melin.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Thank you.