Is it true? Does a book build a child?

Once in a while, a quote comes along that sums up all I've been thinking about lately as a teacher. 

It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations-something that will help them make sense of their own lives and encourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from their own. ~ Katherine Paterson ~ 




The title was inspired by an article I read in the New York Times. The excerpt below is from a piece titled, A Good Mystery: Why We Read.  

“The Uncommon Reader” posits the theory that the right book at the right time can ignite a lifelong   
habit.  “It can be like a drug in a positive way,” said Daniel Goldin, general manager of the Harry W. Schwartz 
Bookshops in Milwaukee. “If you get the book that makes the person fall in love with reading, they want 
another one.” Most often, that experience occurs in childhood. In “The Child That Books Built,” Francis Spufford, a British journalist and critic, writes of how “the furze of black marks between ‘The Hobbit’ grew lucid, and released a dragon,” turning him into “an addict.”