Wendy Cooling obituary

Teacher, author and anthologist who founded Bookstart to give babies and toddlers their first reading experiences

Wendy Cooling, who has died aged 78, transformed many lives as a teacher, author, anthologist and, especially, as the founder of Bookstart, the flagship national programme of the charity BookTrust, which puts books into the hands of babies and toddlers, to encourage a lifelong love of reading.

Cooling had learned early in her teaching career that book poverty touched all levels of society: the comfortably-off, whose busy lives led them to outsource such time-consuming activities as bedtime stories, and cash-strapped families for whom book buying was an unimaginable luxury. Her work, like that of the educationist Margaret Meek Spencer, bridged children’s literature and literacy. She was driven by her core belief: “If you can read, you can do anything.”

Continue reading...

from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3f3Q6Je