14 October 2023

Create.

Wyeth, N.C., Nathaniel Wyeth as a Child, Reading, 1921


Part of the magic of these tales is the sense that they have always been this way; it’s thanks to that continuity with the past that we’re able to touch the enchanted premodern world, a place that hasn’t yet been rationalized by capitalism and science.
Bloom, the Bard, said ...
The child alone with her or his book is, for me, the true image of potential happiness, of something evermore about to be. A child, lonely and gifted, will employ a marvelous story or poem to create a companion for himself or myself. Such an invisible friend is not an unhealthy phantasmagoria, but the mind learning to exercise itself in all its powers. Perhaps it is also the mysterious moment in which a new poet or storyteller comes to birth.

It's not happening in schools, so you must read literature to kids.  Electronic visual media and the profitability of ridiculousness have robbed kids of their patience, so they're unused to the magic of great storytelling and the development of the art.  Everything worthwhile takes time, and as devotees, we must enthusiastically demonstrate to them reading's unique gifts of imagination and wonder.  It doesn't exist in Captain Underpants.  Read to them and guide them in developing success' most essential skill ... a reading life.

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