“LET’S PLAY HANGMAN,” says my eleven year-old daughter, Claire. Heavy rain is falling and so we settle at the kitchen table and with pencil and paper play the word game that has been around longer than anyone can remember.

I look at this flaxen-haired child and her brother, Will, aged ten. Both are such avid readers that I have not the slightest doubt they will find all the answers they choose to seek. They have always loved books. On their birthdays I write stories for them in which they are the main characters, in charge of their destinies as they explore the Galapagos Islands, cross Antarctica or make their way up the Amazon. Before they could write they dictated their stories to their mother and me. We wrote them out and they drew the pictures. When we travel now they fill notebooks with accounts of the adventures we share and their discoveries.