What is it about books?

At some point in 1983 the pictures in my childhood album start featuring a new motif. All of a sudden there’s a book in every photo. That’s me in the pink dress, reading Noddy to my grandmother.

Like many of you, I was a big reader as a little one. I’ve just spent a couple of days with my seven-year-old niece and she reminded me of that fierceness of feeling I had for books when I was her age. Can you remember learning how to read? It was so hard. The panicky tears, the pudgy, balled fists, lots of stamping and stubbornness. And then click. So begins a life-long love.

There is a headiness to those first few years of reading. I see it in my niece. Finding the right buy in a bookshop comes with all the fervour of a particularly high-stakes Easter-egg hunt. Those shimmering pink covers, those cover-mount giveaways and deliciously packaged, and oh-so-collectible, series reads. She carries her book out of the shop like it’s her most beloved piece of jewelry.

As a five year old, every Wednesday afternoon I’d practically hyperventilate with excitement before my trip to Battersea Library in London. Meg and Mog, Where The Wild Ones Are, Dr Seuss. And then later The Worst Witch, an Asterix and Tintin obsession, Sweet Valley High, Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton – who was contraband in school. Of course, the classics; The Secret Garden, The Borrowers, Narnia. Then, in come James Herbert, Stephen King and Jilly Cooper.

Can you remember your favourites? The ones that appealed to the bonkers five year old in you, the adventure-hungry eight year-old - the push, shove and wanderlust of the thirteenth year? Or the first time you realized that books could be very, very scary? Goosebumps, for me. The first book that made you sob till you were sick? Watership Down.

Storytelling used to be cave paintings and tree carvings, dance and song, and stories passed down the generations in front of the hearth. It was social. When I watch my niece read, I realize that books are also about the opposite. They’re about unplugging from the grid. She’s unplugging from computer games, TV, white-noise and household chatter. She’s withdrawing from us and occupying some space elsewhere.

In those early years books mean independence and taking control. They’re about important, grown-up, decisions in shops and libraries. They’re about new and fierce loyalties to characters and authors. Once you learn to read, a five-hour car journey isn’t the purgatory it was before. It’s transformed into midnight feasts and sea swimming competitions at Mallory Towers or sharks, desert islands and treasure hunts with The Hardy Boys.

When my niece and I get back from the bookshop she sits on the sofa, cracks the spine on her book and off she goes. She’s so focused on the faraway, her forehead is scrunched and I can almost hear her brain buzzing. She’s reading a bit above her age and I know the story has some scary bits. She looks so brave to me with her little white knuckles and her mind a million miles away. She makes me think of everything books gave me when I was little. I can see her heading past the blurred edges of the map and I realise that in that moment I’m watching her grow up.