17 Reasons for Children Books

Academy of Children’s Books, Sweden,
retrieved from www.barnboksakademin.com)


1. Books help us develop our language and our vocabulary. They teach us to express ourselves and understand what other people say and write. Seventeen reasons? I can think of piles more! With piles of books, for instance, you can press four-leaf clovers...

2. Books develop our thinking. They give us conceptions to think with and new ideas; they widen our consciousness and our world. That pig's the voice of our conscience! The Three Little Pigs.

3. Books stimulate our imagination and train us in finding inner images.

4. Books give us knowledge about other countries and other ways of life, about nature, technology, history and everything under the sun that we might want to know more about.

5. Books develop our emotions and our capacity to empathize. They train our capacity to put ourselves in the position of others.

6. Books can give us strength and inspiration. They can entertain us and excite us. They can make us laugh and cry. They can comfort us and show us new ways.

7. Books can raise new issues, which interest us and give us things to think over.

8. Books teach us ethics. They get us to reflect on what's right and wrong, good or bad.

9. Books can explain reality and help us understand how matters are connected.

10. Books can show us that there's not always only the one answer to a question, that most things can be seen from different points of view. They can show us ways other than violence of solving problems.

11. Books help us understand ourselves. They strengthen our self-confidence; we realize that others think as we do, that it's all right to react to things and to feel as we do. She's just like me.

12. Books help us understand others. Reading books written by authors from other times and other cultures, and discovering that their thoughts and feelings can be just like ours, increases tolerance for other cultures and helps combat prejudice.

13. Books can be company when we're lonely. They are easy to take with you and can be read anywhere. They can be borrowed from a library and don't need plugging into the mains.

14. Books give us part of our cultural inheritance. They give us common reading experiences and a common frame of reference. You're just like Pippi Longstocking!

15. A good children's book can be read out loud so that both young and old enjoy it. It can be a link between generations.

16. The children's book is our first contact with literature, a never-ending world, lasting all our lives. It is therefore vital that that first contact is cherished and allowed to demonstrate what good books have to offer.

17. Children's books help give their country a rich culture. They provide work for many people: authors, illustrators, publishers, graphic designers, printers, critics, booksellers, librarians... Children's books can also constitute important exports, which make money and create a good reputation abroad.

Through literature I become a thousand [people] and yet remain myself.
C.S. Lewis