(via theguardian.com):
«Philip Pullman, the author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, has joined fellow celebrated British writers Michael Morpurgo and Julia Donaldson this weekend in calling on government to legislate immediately to ensure all schools in Britain have libraries.
“The school library is absolutely essential at every level of education, and it needs legal protection and status,” said Pullman. “It is too easy to think that books and reading for pleasure are not essential, whereas nothing is more certain to improve children’s ability – and desire – to read richly and well.
“It’s also been too easy for some school heads to downgrade the school library into some sort of ‘information centre’, with the focus on computers and technology rather than books.”»