MS Readathon

I love to read, always have. When I was a child, I would read in bed, in the car, at the breakfast table, in the bath. Some of my fondest childhood memories are quietly flicking the bedside lamp back on after everyone went to bed and staying up half the night with a book.  

I don’t have a favourite genre; I will read anything and always did. Even if I actively dislike a book, I will read until the end, and if it is part of a series, I will read them all! My Dad’s family are all big readers and books are so important to us. I have inherited a huge number of battered ‘Nancy Drews’ from my aunties and recently passed them on to my own daughter. I think it is easy to fall out of the habit of reading as an adult. There is so much media to consume at all times and it can feel like my phone is permanently glued to my hand. Since my daughter learned to read for herself though, I have made a concerted effort to read more for myself too, to make sure I don’t lose this part of me.  

I am so delighted that my little girl loves to read too. She is such a strong reader and like me, will read anything. She attends a Gaelscoil, and so reads in both English and Irish, and I have even picked her up some books in German and French! This will help her when she graduates to the ancient copies of the Chalet School series that are waiting for her. When she was really little, she always insisted on holding the book herself and being in charge of turning the pages and so I ended up learning a few of her favourites off my heart so I could “read” to her while unable to see the words on the page! I can still rattle off “The Cat in the Hat” at any time. She also loves audiobooks and story time podcasts and loves a long car journey full of stories. Her bookshelves are bursting with all kinds of books, but her personal favourites are “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “Dogman”. Working in my daughter’s school, I was part of the team who set up a centralised school library a couple of years ago, which helped the kids achieve huge numbers of books read during the Readathon in 2020 and 2021. 

We always participate in the MS Readathon. I loved it as a kid, reading books was part of who I was and in my primary school, it was run as a competition, which appealed to me too. I didn’t know what MS Ireland was or where the money I raised went, the reading was the important bit! When I grew up and was diagnosed with MS, it was funny how many of my peers recalled the Readathon when I said “multiple sclerosis”.  

It means so much to me to share the MS Readathon with my daughter, her classmates, all the children at the school. My daughter burns through books so quickly that I have had to staple additional sheets to her Readathon tracker to list them all! And so, late at night, after the house is in bed, lights off, curtains closed, when I hear the click as my daughter turns her reading lamp back on and sneaks another few chapters, I smile, because these will be her childhood memories, and I am delighted to share them with her.  

To find out more about the MS Readathon or to sign up visit: https://www.msreadathon.ie

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