Children begin to dream their dreams and grow their hopes and aspirations inside the books they read.

The books children read have a lasting influence and help shape and change them to become the person they are capable of becoming. A story shows a child who they are at a moment in time and who they might become.  Reading is how children better know themselves. “There is no intellectual equivalent to allowing oneself the time and space to get lost in another person’s mind,” because reading introduces us to the one character we might recognize but are not always eager to know better— ourselves.

Reading Books Is Fundamental tells the personal story of how books saved the writer from a life of poverty, stress, depression and isolation. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/opinion/blow-reading-books-is-fundamental.html?_r=1 Reading fiction is transformative by the very nature of its fundamental ability to connect us to others— to understand and share the feelings of another, what we call empathy.  As James Baldwin said:  “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me the most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

Lets not waste precious time trying to convince children of the importance of reading. Just read great stories and they will feel the rewards and pleasures of stepping into the life of someone else.   If you like to eavesdrop on the lives of others and you like to travel to new places and meet new people, you are on the road to becoming a Lifelong Reader.