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.
If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.
One reason education undoes belief is its teaching of evolution; Darwin's own drift from orthodoxy to agnosticism was symptomatic. Martin Lings is probably right in saying that more cases of loss of religious faith are to be traced to the theory of evolution ... than to anything else.
The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives.
To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
If you're an adult and you choose not to believe in science, fine, but please don't prevent your children from learning about it and letting them draw their own conclusions.
John Hall, my geography teacher at school inspired me to a lifelong interest in geography and a curiosity about our world which has stayed with me through my life. Geography is a living, breathing subject, constantly adapting itself to change. It is dynamic and relevant. For me geography is a great adventure with a purpose.
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