reading as a fount of knowledge

Deep need to acknowledge the arrival of grandson number three…wee William.

It’s a good life, my friends. 

And he, and all the babies in the world, is the reason I will forge on with this little series on literacy.  I used a term recently  that I made up (because I’m a grownup and I’m allowed to do that) – comprehensive literacy. 

What I’m thinking about it the literacy of the world around us.  How things work, who people are, how cultures live, why people are dumb or good or heroic or nasty, how governments work, where things are in the world, what things were like in the past and how things may be in the future.  Or outer space.

Literacy that gives us understanding of the world.  Starting with our neighbourhoods and towns, our country, our ancestors.  What matters, what doesn’t.  Reading to our children gives them (and ourselves) an opportunity to become a keen observer, to grow their brain.  I think no one says it better than Emily Dickinson in this little poem:

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry –

This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of toll –

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul.

Thank you, yet again, Emily dear, for your pithy and insightful glimpses.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin

We read and we learn of the world.  We can’t even help it!  Reading opens doors to other worlds, as every book has a setting, characters, conflict, drama, themes and truths.

Open all the doors.