“Reading offers you the opportunity “to build a self, because you create a self, you don’t inherit it.”
September 19, 2015
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.
Librarians are Fairy Godmothers in disguise.
September 10, 2015
Start the year off right—Make a librarian your best friend. Back to school is a busy time— new schedules and routines, making new friends, and new challenges. I highly suggest making a Librarian, your school or community librarian, your new best friend. Someone who will come to know you in a very unique way—knowing what […]
An important Back to School conversation for parents and children
August 25, 2015
One of the biggest challenges for parents is to be able to tolerate their children’s mistakes and failures, giving them the necessary space to fail. Avoiding experiences in which you might make a mistake may be the biggest mistake of all. The ideal to strive for is not to avoid making mistakes, but to be […]
Reading is more than just a nice thing to do with kids
August 18, 2015
Reading to young children is associated with good outcomes and new studies tell us a little more about what actually happens when you read a picture book to a small child. A recent study found more brain activity depending on how much the children had been read to at home. The part of the brain […]
Lucky the children who have parents and extended family and friends who read to them
August 11, 2015
I just received an email from a mother who took a children’s literature class with me when her children were young. Now they are in college but they have not forgotten the pleasure their favorite picture books of long ago offered and they certainly remember the love that came along with being read to. The […]
