Why A Book is Not Just a Book
By Jo Ann Lim
The gift of a book is not just a book.
The words in a book take on their own life in the mind of the reader. No two readers see the world through a book in the same light partly because we all have different life experiences, interests, and values. Words from the same book evoke and elicit different emotions from different people. Books can cause laughter, happiness, excitement, or even sadness. Books relax and recharge us or they can stir up raw emotion. One thing is common though, books speak to the reader causing us to have a conversation with ourselves.
Books cause us to reflect on ourselves and our relationships and create bonds between people. For some, a book is a friend that momentarily causes one to forget their loneliness, the hustle and bustle of the outside world, or their problems as they immerse and lose themselves in deep thought, fantasy, awe, and perplexity. Books create and facilitate friendships. There are book clubs where people share their thoughts and feelings and through this process, they build human bonds and a community. Books teach you to see the world through the eyes of another and in doing so you develop empathy. Books
bond young children with their parents. A bedtime story is a nightly ritual in many households across the globe. Children ask their parents to read their favorite books repeatedly and in no time, parents can recite these books effortlessly by memory.
Books spark imagination and creativity which inspire innovation and solutions to problems. Reading books causes us to ask questions or can provide answers to questions about the world around us.
We gain a wealth of knowledge through reading books and we use this knowledge to empower us.
Books promote lifelong learning and stimulate critical thinking causing us to look beyond the surface.
We gain an understanding of what happened in the past and this knowledge of the past prepares us for the future.
Books take you to different places in the world and through different time periods in your own life and in the world. These places can be close to home or to unfamiliar places faraway. You transform yourself into a historical character of the past or you look through the eyes of a child or an elderly person.
The Hesser Foundation’s mission of education and literacy works to spread the love of books to children in poverty and the countless gifts that books bring into their lives. Together we can help these children become authors of their own success story.
The Hesser Foundation give school supplies and books to the children each year.
TheHesserFoundation.org