The Wonder of Reading by Berlie Doherty
My mother used to tell her friends that I was a terrible reader, and I used to squirm with embarrassment. She didn’t know until her later years how to lose herself in that parallel universe of the imagination. In actual fact I was a wonderful reader, in its literal sense, and have never lost that wonder.
I love to see a child caught in that same trance of reading or listening, drawn unwillingly back to the world that other people live in. I think true reading may be a gift, like true piano playing, but we can all participate in it at some level, and unlike piano playing every one of us, as writers, parents, teachers and librarians, can be the giver.
I don’t understand the mechanics or the chemistry that relay the enchantment of writing a story to the equal enchantment of reading it – how simply an arrangement of letters on the page can communicate not only place, character, and dialogue but the full range of powerful emotions, and how, long after the individual words have been forgotten, the emotional memory lingers.
A story can overwhelm the reader to the point of grief or terror. They can shut the pages of the book, but many times it’s too late. Something new has entered their experience, and it has changed them. When we give stories to young readers, we must recognise all this – the need to feel at ease in a created universe, the need to let go of the other, and most of all, the need to wonder.
Berlie Doherty
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