Music and Matilda.

Imagine a girl of four years and three months going into a library and telling the librarian that she would like to read a book. To be more precise, ‘a really good one that grown-ups read. A famous one.’ How do you think the librarian might reply? In Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Mrs Phelps considers picking out ‘a young teenager’s romance’ but, to her surprise, finds herself ‘instinctively walking past that particular shelf’. Instead the ever-optimistic librarian chooses Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations. Four and a quarter year old Matilda enjoys the book, and begins to tackle volumes by other classic authors. Wading her way through a formidable array of books, she comes across Ernest Hemingway: ‘Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don’t understand,’ Matilda comments. Mrs Phelps reassures her literary protégée, ‘ …don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.’

Seems a pity to waste words. These didn't go into a short interview to celebrate Dahl Day 2007 that I recently did, but I think Mrs Phelps put her finger on the importance of not 'dumbing down'. Being able to approach words and music however you want is one of the best things about both arts.