Polly was born in 2004, on a sunny spring day. She was named Polly after her Mother's favourite story character Pollyanna who thought for herself and was always positive and cheerful.
Polly was born into a world of books. People of my generation see that as a world of magic - and for many years Polly's world was magical. First there were board books that you could touch and taste, then came simple story books with happy, fun characters and ones that told you that your parents would always love you no matter what. Every night Polly's parents would read to her, initially brightly coloured picture books and then gradually books with more and more words in them. Polly explored the world, she went on adventures, she laughed, cried and learned with friends she had made in books.
When Polly was 4 she started school. Her favourite time was when the teacher would gather her class together on the carpet and read to them. Polly would come home and tell her parents all that had happened in that day's lovely book. As she grew up she found there were more and more books and more and more adventures and lives she could explore.
Then, one day, something dreadful happened. A man with a heart of stone took over Polly's future. His world was cold and hard. He lived by figures and acquisitions. He didn't understand how books could be read just for pleasure. He thought that they should be broken up and separated into individual sentences and analysed. It was important for Polly to learn fronted adverbials and causal connectives. She must learn to recite poems by heart, not just enjoy the beauty of them. Polly still loved to be read to but gradually she stopped listening in school as the beautiful stories were dissected before her. She would look out of the window at the clouds and imagine she could travel to a world beyond them, filled with magical people and sweet shops. Polly began to get into trouble for not paying attention and then she thought that she was a bad girl for not concentrating.
She asked her parents to let her read for herself now that she was bigger. After all they just read stories and thought they were fun. Polly knew now that stories were to be broken down and analysed. That was how you really read. And all the books her parents bought her were wrong. She knew what books she was to read - she had a set list.
Gradually Polly came to realise that reading wasn't for her. She was 'no good' at it and neither were her friends. She became very good at repetition and regurgitating information but the adventurer with the imagination that would have changed the world was lost, crushed beneath a world of rules and regulations. Her mother watched that adventurer die and, as Polly went out into the world of work just the same as everyone else, her individuality stolen, she cried.
