The Power of Children’s Books

What is it about a good children’s book that has such a seismic effect on so many lives?  What is the special magic of children’s books that we remember all our lives and that is more intense than even the most profound reading experience as an adult?  I think it is that those early books are the first that transport us out of the egocentric life of the child, conjuring worlds of experience and events about which we had never dreamed.  Although that magic transcends the self-centeredness of the child, it also allows that self to roam and become part of the story and the magic.

— Michael Gorman, Our Own Selves:  More Meditations for Librarians, p. 19

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