I read because one life isn't enough and in the pages of a book, I can be anybody.
Interpretation
Reading expands life experiences and allows for limitless exploration of identities.
In this quote, Richard Peck emphasizes the transformative power of reading. He suggests that through books, a person can transcend the limitations of their own life, exploring different lives, perspectives, and experiences from the comfort of their own reality. This highlights the profound impact literature can have on personal growth and understanding the world.
In practice
In a book club meeting to inspire new readers.
September 11 We thought we'd outdistanced history Told our children it was nowhere near; Even when history struck Columbine, It didn't happen here. We took down the maps in the classroom, And when they were safely furled, We told the young what they wanted to hear, That they were immune from a menacing world. But history isn't a folded-up map, Or an unread textbook tome; Now we know history's a fireman's child Waiting at home alone.
We need to let our children grow up to face the world armed with knowledge, with much more knowledge than we ourselves had at their age. It is scary, but the alternative is worse.
I never had a black teacher or lecturer, I never once met a black British person who held any sort of professional or managerial role.
And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.
The person who wins the Nobel Prize is not the person who read the most journal articles and took the most notes on them. It's the person who knew what to look for. And cultivating that capacity to seek what's significant, always willing to question whether you're on the right track - that's what education is going to be about, whether it's using computers and the Internet, or pencil and paper, or books.
We’re suggesting that [kids are] missing something if they don’t read but, actually, we’re condemning kids to a lesser life. If you had a sick patient, you would not try to entice them to take their medicine. You would tell them, ‘Take this or you’re going to die.’ We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.
Pedagogy must be oriented not to the yesterday, but to the tomorrow of the child's development. Only then can it call to life in the process of education those processes of development which now lie in the zone of proximal development
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