She lives with ink smudged on her fingers and dragons and spaceships in her brain. She is leading an army on her way to work, colonizing Mars while stuck in traffic, and when she is sad, she boards the Millennium Falcon, jumps on the train at Platform 9¾, she straps on her boots and takes to the forest with Legolas. She is a magician, having second breakfast with the hobbits, and when she needs to express herself she does not feel the urge to resort to violence, for she has been taught the power of words, and so she knows she can reach for Frost and Cummings, Lewis and Tolkien, Barrie and Bradbury and Gaiman and Pratchett. Try to tell her that there is something she can’t do, someone she can’t be – she knows better. She has been shown she is limitless, and so she soars from the tops of mountains and marvels when her wings open wide, and when she swims, she takes her pick of the oceans, planets and puddles. She can never be made to feel insignificant, because she was raised with mighty women warriors, myth-seekers and mathematicians, lovers and explorers.
Flick. The page turns. There are empires in her eyes.
Grown-ups, teach the children to love to read. ♥
