For Charles Durante, reading matters

Schools across Gibraltar marked World Book Day on Thursday, avid reader and retired English teacher Charles Durante described the importance of reading.

Mr Durante underscored the need to get children reading early, as is the aim of World Book Day, and praised efforts in Gibraltar to immerse youngsters into literature through various other initiatives such as writing competitions.

He also gave some sage advice to those who want to pick up the pastime of reading but do not know where to start.

While schools around the world continue to encourage children to read, Mr Durante said he does not see the future of reading in Gibraltar as “bleak” given the wide encouragement taking place.

“If you're lucky enough to have parents who read to you at home, you're going to pick up a habit, and once you get the bug, it’s difficult to give up, you keep reading more and more and accumulate more books,” he told the Chronicle.

“Reading is absolutely essential for the development of one's character, one's intellect, one's imagination, and also one's feelings.”

“The wider your vocabulary, the wider your grasp of the world is.”

“If your reading is very limited, then your personality itself will suffer and become rather narrow.”

“I find that if I have a day when I don't read, there is something essential missing from that day.”

For parents who may be unsure on how to get their child into reading, Mr Durante advised Roald Dahl as a good starting point, and acknowledged however that parents are spoilt for choice in picking out books for their young ones.

“Nowadays especially in English the range of books available for children is almost infinite,” he said.

“Once you get to about 13-14 then you can start reading slightly more mature more grown-up stuff.”

“But it has to be a gradual approach, you don’t want to plunge into the real stuff too soon in life, you want to slowly build up your vocabulary and your range of ideas.”

He added that the internet serves as a useful tool to assist readers, for example, in understanding complex vocabulary.

“The internet is a very wonderful tool for research and for exploration and also for learning and can assist in your reading.”

In an interview with Gibraltar Cultural Services ahead of World Book Day earlier this week, the rejuvenation of English classics among readers was touched on, something which Mr Durante acknowledged.

“By the time you’re 20, 25, you should be able to tackle almost any English Classic.”
“The classics are in themselves very special, they require more attention, more exploration, sometimes the vocabulary might be beyond you at that age, but if you start early it is valuable.”

Mr Durante recommended Jane Austen’s novel as a good starting point for those who may be new to reading classics.

Although Mr Durante has a collection of books totalling over 8000, like everybody else, he had to start somewhere, and he shed a light on his own journey into reading.

He recalled getting into reading late on, and in his teenage years took the plunge into Narnia and Alice in Wonderland.

“I recall that when I left school, I was not much of a reader. I started working as a junior clerk in a legal firm at that time, and I remember going into the office and the whole Britannica collection was there.”

“I started taking out some of the volumes and flicking through the pages and then I realised how ignorant I was, I’d never heard of Plato or Aristotle.”

“The more I read, the more I realised how much more I had to read, I then started reading at home, I started buying more books.”

“I learned how much I'd missed, I mean, my childhood has not suffered, but I hadn't had that imaginary sort of journey into another world, which these books provide.”

“If you look at the Narnia books, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, when the young children open the wardrobe, they enter another world, a different world, a world of the imagination.”

“Likewise, in Alice's books, when Alice looks in the mirror, she walks into the mirror and again she walks into another world, totally different than what she’s used to. Like when she falls down the rabbit hole, she ends up in a different world again”

“And that's a metaphor for what I do when I read something and I go into that other world, the world of Roald Dahl or C.S. Lewis or whatever.”

“I think that it opens a door to another world. It also stretches your mind.”