Making Sense: What Happens When You Read?

Abstract

what the story was: Goldilocks or The Cat in the Hat would have done just as well as Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood or Gulliver's Travels among the Lilliputians. What matters most is the association of reading with caring, with the appreciation that reading is something that people can do together when they love each other. And age is no barrier. If memories like these are strong for you, the chances are good that you still read for pleasure as well as for information. Some years later, after you'd learned to read by yourself, you may also have memories of reading on stolen time. I have some like this. They include at least weekly detours into my home town's children's library, even though my standing instructions were always the same-to come right home after school and only then to go out to play with my friends. I recall, for instance, with considerable nostalgia the detours that so often brought me home with arms full of books: with stories of far-away places, with explanations of how a radio or a telescope was built, and-almost always-with stories about animals. And those childhood memories continue for me