Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.
Interpretation
Reading should be seen as an enjoyable gift to children rather than a mandatory task.
Kate DiCamillo emphasizes the importance of fostering a love for reading in children. She suggests that when reading is presented as an obligation, it can turn into a chore, discouraging children from engaging with books. Instead, by framing reading as a treasured gift, children are more likely to develop a lifelong passion for literature and learning.
In practice
A speech at a literacy event aimed at promoting reading among children.
If you sit down and read with your kid, either having your child read to you or you reading to your child at a regular time each day, it deepens the relationship. You don't have to talk about stuff; the story will do that work for you.
I want to remind people of the great and profound joy that can be found in stories, and that stories can connect us to each other, and that reading together changes everybody involved.
If you want to be a writer, write a little bit every day. Pay attention to the world around you. Stories are hiding, waiting everywhere. You just have to open your eyes and your heart.
I was lucky enough to have a mother who took me to the library - the public library - twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. And also bought me books. And also read aloud to me.
There is no right or wrong way to tell a story. You have to find your own way. You can get your idea from listening, looking, or imagining. Stories are everywhere. All you have to do is pay attention.
I have no talents. But I do have hope. And wonder. And love. Maybe those are talents?
We urgently need a paradigm shift in our concept of the purposes and practices of education. We need to leave behind the concept of education as a passport to more money and higher status in the future and replace it with a concept of education as an ongoing process that enlists the tremendous energies and creativity of schoolchildren in rebuilding and respiriting our communities and our cities now, in the present.
It's a good idea to revitalize community colleges, to cut back, to modify the student loan program so it doesn't go through banks.
Donβt just create content to get credit for being clever β create content that will be helpful, insightful, or interesting for your target audience.
I knew chemistry would be worse, because I'd seen a big card of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them.
Literacy is not a luxury, it is a right and a responsibility. If our world is to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century we must harness the energy and creativity of all our citizens.
We want a book to be a book. We'll have all the interactive bells and whistles but our intent is to engage young people in reading, not to show them a movie.
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