E V E RY G I R L - E V E RY DAY

20th March 2020

Book Shelves Emptied!

While panicked shoppers were emptying supermarket shelves, our Croydon High pupils made a

real dent in the Learning Resource Centre bookshelves on Thursday. 386 books were borrowed in

a single day!

C. S. Lewis wrote that “we read to know we are not alone”; salient words as we face difficult

times ahead. Gavin Extence picks up on this theme in his humorous bitter-sweet novel The

Universe versus Alex Woods. Alex suffers from epilepsy (as a result of being struck on the head as a child

by a 2.3kg meteorite!) and, as a teenager, has to suffer a year of virtual isolation. He comments:

E V E RY G I R L - E V E RY DAY

20th March 2020

“The period of my confinement was also the period in which I

developed my insatiable appetite for reading. Reading, it turned

out, was one of the only things I could do… When I look back at

the year I spent in the box room, I think these were the books

that stopped me from feeling sorry for myself and got me to

thinking that, on the whole, my life wasn’t so terrible. When I

read these books, I no longer felt like I was confined to a very

tiny world…. my brain, with a little help from other people’s

brains, could take me to some pretty interesting places, and

create all kinds of wonderful things.”

Perhaps we can take a leaf out of Extence’s novel and use this

time of isolation to connect with other voices, people, and worlds

through the power of books.

Mrs Karen Abrams

LRC Manager