I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting.
Interpretation
Books have the power to transform lives, especially in children.
This quote by Russell Banks highlights the incredible impact literature can have on young minds. He expresses a preference for working with children who are profoundly influenced and changed by the experience of reading, suggesting that the potential for transformation through a book is not only fascinating but also fulfilling as an educator or mentor.
In practice
This quote would be great to use in a speech about the importance of reading in schools.
Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree to which the community itself is connected to the larger culture.
They were gone and I missed them but even so I was very happy. For the rest of my life no matter where on this planet earth I went and no matter how scared or confused I got, I could wait until dark and look up into the night sky and see my three friends again and my heart would swell with love of them and make me strong and clearheaded.
Motivations are too tangled and complex.
Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.
Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.
"Self-taught, are you?" Julian Castle asked Newt. "Isn't everybody?" Newt inquired. "Very good answer." Castle was respectful.
Reading is exercise for our brains in the guise of pleasure. Books give us insight into other people, other cultures. They make us laugh. They make us think. If they are really good, they make us believe that we are better for having read them.
When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
Whether I'm at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I'm looking forward to reading.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
What we can do is provide the tools, through our educational system, for people to be able to tell sense from nonsense. These tools include the scientific method, skeptical questioning, empirical evidence, verifying sources, etc.
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