When you think about books, how do you view them?
Are they a luxury, something that is nice to have but not needed? Or are they a necessity, where you must have them? Are they something that add to your life and home? Or do you feel they are just something that sits on a shelf, collecting dust?
Books offer a wide breadth of information, experience, and knowledge. But unlike many electronic mediums, books also offer a great depth of information, experience, and knowledge. Books inform us about other people, countries, customs and cultures. They help us to teach ourselves about history, the arts, science, religion, nature, mathematics, the list goes on. Books also help us to understand the effect that all those things have on us and our world.
What about picture books? Are they necessary for children? Or do you consider them to be a luxury?
Books give us ideas that we might not have had before. They might make us think about new situations or they might make us think about situations that we already know about but in a different way. In this way, they help us develop intellectually.
Literature is born from the human need to tell stories, to tell stories about one self or about others, All the stories, the myths, the fables and the novels, including those addressed to children are, in fact, the result of this wish and this basic need: they help us to live, to survive; they help children to grow up and develop.
In my life, books provided both an escape and a place to find new ideas. When I delve into a book, the four walls that encompass me seem to melt away. It’s as if I’m checking all of my feelings and emotions at the door, I enter a room and just lose all sense of everything around me. Hours can pass, and feel as if only minutes.
When I’m in someone’s house and discover they don’t have books, I feel a sense of sorrow for them. The house just seems so sad, as if there is void where something should be. For me books are just one of things that turn a house into a home.
Books change us in ways we are not always aware of. Imagine how Picture Books impact our children? Sometimes we pick up vocabulary that we weren’t using before. This type of change is easy to notice. Sometimes books create more subtle changes in us. We might open our eyes to a new culture or idea. We might see a time period or event in a different light. Books challenge and expand our minds.
So for me books are a necessity! What about you? Are they a necessity to you?
Carmela Dutra is a writer, and illustrator of children's books. Everyone dreams about taking adventures, having fun, and saving the day. If you can't take a real life adventure the next best thing is to read one. Carmela takes those dreams and brings them to life in her series The Adventures of Lorenzo the Bear. Visit the Website here and find the book on Amazon here!