“Reading offers you the opportunity “to build a self, because you create a self, you don’t inherit it.”

While recently playing with a toddler I was so taken how everything they

touch, see, smell, hear and do is building the person they are growing into becoming.

It brought to mind a comment from a literature course taught by Professor Edward Taylor in the1940’s. His introductory remark lives on—

“Reading offers you the opportunity “to build a self, because you create a self, you don’t inherit it.”

Simply put, to build a self involves acquiring beliefs &values where you experience emotions so that the self becomes larger and capable to absorb more complex ideas of life and living.  The books we read to children, the books they hear and absorb, nurture their spirit of wonder, showing them who they are at a moment in time and who they might become.

A cartoon from the New Yorker shows a mom reading to her son with the caption:

“I can’t protect you from everything, but I can read you stories that make you believe I can protect you from everything.”  But its not just the story line that delivers the message of being protected; feeling protected and loved is also communicated inside the closeness coming from the experience of being read to.