I don’t think I’ve said before, but I’ve started volunteering at my local library, partly because I love books, but also so that it’s something else for me to put on my personal statement. I rocked up today to find a librarian I’d never met before, felt a surge of confidence in just being myself, and pretended like I had a clue how to go about speaking to children about the Summer Reading Challenge. After a few mistakes (which luckily only had to be rectified quickly in my mind), I got the hang of it, and a little boy aged 7 spoke to me about the two Horrid Henry books he’d read in the space of 2 days (an avid reader, it seems!) At first he was shy, but then he happily shared his knowledge with me, and I dared him to try and read ‘How to train your dragon’ as his 6th book. Smiling at his shocked face, (400 pages?!) I inquired as to whether his little brother, playing silently next to us, would be participating in the challenge also, but he said no… before saying innocently “Do you know what autism is? Well, he has that so he’s got to read the really easy books”. And with that, after absorbing the idea that he was quite happily opening his naive heart to a completely random stranger, I realised that this opportunity was going to make my summer as perfect as it could be.