“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” -Fahrenheit 451

Maybe it's a bit ironic that one of my favorite books in the world is based upon the concept of burning books themselves. Though maybe, it is not quite so strange. Among the numerous messages delivered by the story, the importance of literature being a necessity for a genuinely fulfilled, curious, free-minded society, was perhaps the most prominent. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (a favorite author of mine as well), is just one of the books that I have read throughout my 20 years of life that has thoroughly impacted the way that I think, live, and act. The very idea that a series of pages bound together can be so powerful is simply astonishing to me. So to every book I've ever read, I'd like to say a few words of gratitude.

Thank you for teaching me to think. As an avid reader since the age of five, I believe that every book we have ever read has had some impact on us, even if we don't realize it at the time. I'm not saying that every piece of literature has some huge, resounding effect, but I do believe that each book does a little something. At a young age, our imaginations were sparked by books such as Goodnight Moon, Where The Wild Things Are, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Then, as we got into second grade, we began reading books that combined imagination with lessons. Books such as The BFG by Roald Dahl, took the idea of "don't judge a book by its cover" and put it into an actual scenario that our young minds could sympathize with. As we grew older, we began to read books bursting with thought-provoking twists and turns and dystopian societies that made us examine the direction that own world was headed.

Thank you for providing an escape from the world. Almost like magic, we can open a page and escape to the mystical world of Hogwarts, to the Gatsby mansion in the roaring twenties, to the uninhabited island in Lord of the Flies (another favorite) or to a chocolate factory bursting with strange little men. When people in the real world become a bit too complicated to deal with, we can trade them in for our ambitious friend with the braided hair and killer archery skills, or a man dealing with the aftermath of an experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Thank you for always being reliable. A book never loses charge or service. All you need is a little bit of light so you can see the words. A book doesn't give you a headache from staring at a shiny screen, and it doesn't crack or break if you drop it.

A book is a simple, ordinary object, with the most extraordinary power. With every page turned we learned about empathy, hope, selflessness, destruction, apathy, and passion. We learned to question things and to think beyond the world that our eyes are given. So to every book I've ever read, and to every book I'll ever read, I give you my greatest of thanks.

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them." -Ray Bradbury