Join Johanna Baker-Dowdell and her personal insights as she interviews
Dr Robin Morrow AM.
When I met Dr Robin Morrow it was like meeting an older version of
my bookworm self.
Dr Morrow, who founded The Children’s Bookshop in Sydney, was
holidaying in Tasmania, but made some time to meet me at Launceston Library, a
venue we both thought fitting.
I was interviewing Dr Morrow ahead of International
Children's Book Day, but our conversation extended beyond that topic to her
appointment as the Australian representative on the International Board of Books forYoung People (IBBY) and the importance of
books and reading for children.
She told me it was now as important as ever for
children to have books.
"Tactile paper books are important, especially
for babies and toddlers. They need to have the drama of turning the pages and
examining the end papers,” Dr Morrow said.
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| Image credit: Paul Scrambler, published in the Examiner 30 March 2019. |
"We have to fight to retain librarians in schools
and the libraries people have access to so every kid has access to books."
Dr Morrow
also told me how IBBY Australia helped pay for library vans
that could drive on rubble to visit children not allowed to go outside after
the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
"They went in with librarians and storytellers to
the children and it was the most wonderful thing. They even got children to
tell them their favourite book that they had lost, because they'd lost
everything, and they would try to get the actual book to that place. It's
goosebumpy stuff.”
She is the first Australian IBBY judge for the Hans ChristianAnderson Award since Dr Maurice Saxby in the 1980s.
I mentioned my grandmother, who was a teacher librarian and
involved with the NSW Education Department before she retired, had spoken about
Dr Saxby when I was younger.
This led us on a different trail, in which I discovered Dr Morrow
knew my grandmother well, as both had worked on different sides of the book
industry in Sydney.
Working as a journalist in a smallish regional city in a small
state means it is likely I will interview people I know, or who know my family,
but it was a thrill to meet someone who held my grandmother in such high
esteem.
Dr Morrow's own love of books started when her mother
read to her as a child, but it was an "amazing English teacher" who
fired up the passion for her future career.
"My theory is behind every keen book person there
is someone. Sometimes it will be a bookseller or a librarian or a teacher or an
aunt or a grandparent; somebody who just gives books, or drags you into the
library,” she said.
For me this person was my grandmother.
By the time we finished talking I felt like I’d gained a great aunt
as well as a kindred book spirit.
Johanna is a journalist and author of the book Business & Baby on Board.
Blog: http://johannabd.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohannaBD
