Heidi is still with us

From an article, Our children won't succeed if they don't read books, by Frank Cottrell Boyce in the February 8, 2009 edition of the Times. His concluding anecdote is one of those that just catches you.

A while ago I was working on a film project about ethnic cleansing. I met a girl who had been taken prisoner when still a baby and brought up in a regimented institution. She'd been starved of all warmth yet she was personable and articulate.

I said to her, "You were in the home from a very young age. How did you know this wasn't normal? How did you know it wasn't right?"

She said - and this is the sentence that made me want to be a children's writer - "Books. I read Heidi."