thealvisin:

It’s not that children’s books are pure entertainment, innocent of any didactic goal—what grownups enviously call “Reading for Fun.” On the contrary, the reading we do as children may be more serious than any reading we’ll ever do again. Books for children and young people are unashamedly prescriptive: They’re written, at least in part, to teach us what the world is like, how people are, and how we should behave—as my colleague Megan Kelso (The Squirrel Mother) puts it, “How to be a human being.”

Really interesting article. I remember being into the Chronicles of Narnia and The Wrinkle in Time when I was younger. I’d imagine myself on adventures and exploring different worlds. I still love books like that.

I took an education class called Early Childhood Development and we discussed how important the material that children read growing up is in developing their values. There needs to be more avenues out there that can develop positive understandings of things such as diversity, identity, and peace. Maybe then we can have a more united world in the future.

This reminds me of when we were in the SAC lounge talking about the young adult literature we read :)

I identified with every word in this article. It’s true we do search for a higher truth, a feeling of magic when we are kids reading books like The Giver and Farenheit 151. Those books really did change my life. It makes me think of other children I know, grown-up children too, who didn’t read these same books like I did. It really was a privilege that I had access to these books, that a love for reading was fostered in me from when I was little. I’m definitely going to read to my children and give them all the classics that I loved. Let’s hope print isn’t obsolete by then.