Winston Churchill once said that there is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies; I believe that this is also true with getting books into the hands of children.
So this last week brought upon a mass migration of people of all ages heading to their local bookstore to get their copy of the last installment of Harry Potter. This, I believe, is a good thing. Any time people turn off the TV, shut down their computers, and pick up a book, they are bound to get smarter -- even if that book is technically a children’s book.
Being that I’m a quick reader, I had it finished early and actually flipped on the TV (very rare for me) to see if I could catch the weather. And there on the nightly news, was a playful exchange of news people talking about how they couldn’t wait to get home and dive into reading. Yep, the people who make their living trying to get us to keep watching TV were telling us that they couldn’t wait to turn off that TV and read a book. It was wonderful and so subtle that I don’t think that anyone else really caught it. Intrigued, I flipped over to one of the 24 hour news channels and there they were showing video of children reading with a scrolling message along the bottom with the projected sales of the book, how long the book is, and some general information about the author and thought to myself: in culture of immediacy and technology, a good book still trumps all.
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