Take a second and think about your childhood. What comes to mind? You may have thought about your favorite TV show, your first concert, or your favorite toy. I liked the Rugrats, Cheetah Girls, and my Barbie Jeep. You also may have thought about a certain book you were read every night before bed- I know most of you should be familiar with The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Green Eggs and Ham, and the Madeline Books. These are just a few of the books I grew up on. I remember making my mom reread them all the time and then never putting them down once I could do it myself. I look back on it now and couldn't be more appreciative that I was started on my love of books so early in life. However, it saddens me to see the kids of today growing up on iPads and electronics rather than a dog-eared (the bookworm in me cringes) book thrown around for countless car rides and bedtime stories. Some people call for a revival of faith in hard times, but we need an urgent revival of books.
Everyone has seen the lists and pictures on Facebook starting with "Only 90s kids will remember..." followed by some toy, TV show, or singer. Yes, us 90s kids had it pretty good when it came to all things childhood related. However, I'm afraid we might be one of the last generations raised on children's books. From a classic Dr. Seuss story to the Goosebumps series to Harry Potter, we have literally grown up side by side with some of our favorite book characters (Hermione Granger in my case). We connected with a protagonist (maybe an antagonist for you rebels out there) and went on their adventures with them. Can we say the same of the children sitting around playing games on iPads? What adventures are they taking?
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Growing up with books, we pictured the literary world in our head. We imagined what vivid colors some scenes might be and how scary some characters were. We created a character's face and sounded out their voice ( I learned at an early age I was bad with accents). Making voices and creating those worlds in our minds gave us our imagination. It gave us our own voice. The books we grew up with made us creative dreamers developing our own thoughts and visions for not only the book world, but our world too. We followed along with the words, yet made it our own. Even just the physical turn of the page drew us into the book with anticipation. We felt the emotions of the book and of our own eagerness to flip faster for the next line and action. You can't get that same feeling from any other form of entertainment.
We can not give up on books just yet. Even though technology has its advantages, the new and shiny can never provide the same a wholesomeness a book gives a person. We have to let children develop their own sense of adventure in creating their own world with a book. We can't simply keep them in a room with a screen doing all the creating for them. Stop pushing buttons and start turning pages. We can't lose our own sense of adventure either. Go buy a book, get lost in the smell, get lost in the feel, and enjoy the imaginative side of life for a little while again.
