Children should experience and learn to love literature
Has this ever happened to you? You’re in the airport terminal waiting to board a flight, or perhaps you’ve just taken a seat on a city bus. Across from you sits a woman reading a book. You tilt your head to scan the title (you’re always curious about what people are reading), and suddenly your heart skips a beat. It’s your favorite! Customary reserve takes a back seat as you gasp, “I love that book!” She looks up, eyes suddenly alight. “So do I!”
The next few minutes might strike bemused observers as a long-lost-relative reunion or charismatic revival service: sentences stampeding, hands fluttering, swoony sighs. It’s the meeting of two book lovers. Rare in person, but they meet continually online, over exclamation-studded reader reviews and blog reminiscences of lonely childhoods transformed by Jane Eyre or Robin Hood. They are living portraits of the Emily Dickinson poem: “There is no frigate...