The soaking rains and heat we’ve had over the past week have rocketed my garden into high gear, and gotten me thinking about growth of all kinds. I am still holding in my mind last week’s School Board-members-in-training meeting, at which Lifelong Learners were upheld as the uber-model of citizen-servant. It’s a model I hope I emulate, as a hungry reader.
I just signed up my daughter for the public library’s summer reading club – a fun way to keep track of the wanderings of one’s imagination during these generous months -- and my own reading list has diversified for summer, too.
In fact, I’m reading a book about reading right now – a glorious little meditation by French author Daniel Pennac, titled Better Than Life. (It contains a “Reader’s Bill of Rights” that is essential reading.)
Here’s a taste, to whet the appetite of any reader hoping to grow as fast as a pole bean in early June heat. Pennac is describing here the power of reading aloud to his son:
Without realizing it, we were discovering one of the essential functions of
stories – and more than that, of art itself – which is to call a truce in the
daily battle we fight.
Love was given a new
skin.
Everything was freely bestowed. (Pennac 36)
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