"I do not think that there was anything in my childhood for which I have more reason to be grateful than my mother's regular reading aloud, and the habit of eager reading to myself that her reading encouraged."

 "Whenever we were not out of doors we were reading or listening to my mother reading aloud. Fortunately for us my mother enjoyed this and read extremely well. For one thing, she would never read aloud to us a book that she did not enjoy reading to herself. This simple rule, which should be observed by all mothers who read aloud (and I am sorry for the children of mothers who do not), saved us from a deal of rubbish. Any book worth reading by children is also worth reading by grown-up persons."

From The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome,  Jonathan Cape, London, c. 1976, pp. 35 and 37.

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