Patricia Forde

Thank you, Clare.

It's great to be here.

I find it very worrying for parents.

I think I feel really sorry for parents of young children at the moment.

I think they feel under terrible pressure not to have their children on screens.

And yet the whole world is on a screen all around them.

It's unnatural, including the parents.

So very slow to lecture people about being on screens and their children being on screens when we're all on screens.

Yes.

But I did feel very strongly when I was laureate in ANOG that we, the book community, have to step up.

And by book community, I mean the parents of small children and their teachers and the writers and the librarians.

We have to compete.

It's no good saying, oh, mine won't read.

They're always on the screen.

We have to fight for it and we're going to have to fight for it.

When I went out in the first year as laureate, we took a bus from Malin to Mezzan.

We took 26 writers and illustrators.

Every school had bunting up.

They were out on the road to meet us.

I wanted it to feel like the circus was coming to town.