Image from Shelf Awareness

 To read…what a gift.

Those funny black squiggles–do you remember when they turned into meaning?  Turned into tiny keys that flew off the page and unlocked doors in your mind?  There’s a magic moment, in a child’s life–the moment when she realizes the words she has memorized, those mysterious patterns, have life and heft and individual meaning.  They leap at her, they draw him in: those children have entered the league of readers.

It’s a league of connection…for behind those hidden doors in our minds, whole worlds wait.  Rowlings writes about Hogwarts, and we soak in her words, but the academy is already there. Rowlings’ words just open the door.  Who knew that unwieldy castle lived within us, those gray and rickety stairwells, those lonely creaking hallways?  We explore, with Harry, Hermione, and Ron, the terrain discovered in our minds.

We uncover whole continents of mind…