When I was a child, I discovered what so many before me already knew: within the pages of a story you can be.
You can be daring or just adventurous enough to make your heart skip a beat.
You can be safe, sheltered from fears in the comfort of a familiar place.
You can be silly and not laughed at, smart and not thought arrogant, odd and not discounted.
You can walk beneath a summer sun through cornfields to the barnyard to watch a spider spin the most wondrous web, climb through windows above the streets of London for tea and cake, lend your ear to the lilting melody of a cricket through the bustling din of New York City, feel the hot wind on your face as the wagon jostles across the prairie, taste the joy of a sugar snow in the Big Woods, or sail a schooner with the most enchanting mouse at the helm without ever leaving your room.
You can be with your dearest friends in the quiet of your own heart and be at peace, knowing they’ll always be there in the pages waiting for you to come back.
In a story, you can be.
It is a good gift, the fictional world. It might just be one of the single greatest gifts we’ve been given and that we can give. These stories we read, they connect us, give us a common language, a common experience, a common goodness that brings us together out here in the real world.
Reading is a social experience and a profoundly good one at that.
In the pages of a story, you can be and I can be, which means we can be together.
And that is no small thing.
Amanda Johnston 