Under plans drawn up by Education Secretary Michael Gove, around 200 pregnant women in Surrey will be provided with hi-tech “listening mats” – contoured fabric containing micro speakers that transmit sound waves into the womb.
Each of the listening mats will have more than 50 classic texts pre-installed.
The tomes featured are being selected by a working group of experts including the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow, and children’s commissioner for England Maggie Atkinson.
So far Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, two Enid Blyton adventures and several of Shakespeare’s sonnets, have made the final reading list.
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