'All beginnings . . . never any endings'

“You become a reader by reading the literature, not by reading the handbooks about it.” – Aidan Chambers

 

Born in England on this date in 1934, Chambers won both the British Carnegie Medal and the American Printz Award for his wonderful Postcards from No Man's Land (1999).  And for his "lasting contribution to children's literature" he won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.

 

First a teacher and an Anglican Priest, Chambers left both teaching and the priesthood to concentrate on writing, lecturing, and editing in the late 1960s. 

 

Gaining a reputation for straightforward writing that treats young readers with the understanding that they can comprehend the same difficult world and ideas that adults deal with, he also wrote several books for teachers and librarians on the topic, including The Reading Environment and Tell Me: Children, Reading and Talk. 

 

Encouraging young readers to become young writers, he noted, “When you are in your teenage years you are consciously experiencing everything for the first time.   So adolescent stories are all beginnings.   There are never any endings.”