The shapes arranged themselves into words, and the words spelled out a delicious and wonderful phrase: Once upon a time.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the enchanting power of storytelling and imagination.
In the quote from Kate DiCamillo, the arrangement of shapes into words symbolizes how stories take form and transport us into different worlds. The phrase 'Once upon a time' evokes a sense of nostalgia and magic, signifying the beginning of countless tales that inspire wonder and creativity in both writers and readers alike.
In practice
This quote can be used to open a storytelling session at a library.
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.
Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.
Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers.
To encounter 'Beowulf' is like taking a sledgehammer to a quarry face. You must bang in there.
I have been attacked in Turkey more for my interviews than for my books. Political polemicists and columnists do not read novels there.
Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.
Quite, quite,' she thought with a little sigh. 'It's always like this in their adventures. To save and be saved. I wish somebody would write a story sometime about the people who warm up the heroes afterward.
The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.
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