What are books for? In the words of Shen Roddie’s delightful Toes Are to Tickle, “Books are to choose from.” A 5-year-old told me that books are for reading. Another child told me that books can take you anywhere, even places you’ve never been. As a small child myself, I knew that books were to sit on. Perched somewhat uncomfortably on a phonebook or encyclopedia, I would find myself absorbed in someone else’s food, someone else’s talk, as we visited the homes of friends.
But really, what are books for? Books give us evidence about the way the world works: fiction and nonfiction offer crucial information about the nature of human relationships, the way things work, the ebb and flow of time and age, and what to do with too many plums. Books answer questions we didn’t know we had.
Books affirm our experience of the world. They leave us not so lonely. When children read about others who, like themselves, have known love and jealousy, who have struggled with fears of the dark or of speaking in class, who have lost a blanket or found a friend, who have splashed through puddles or sat in the sand, they have found a way to contemplate the events of their lives, knowing that they do so in good company.
Books allow us to escape from the small-mindedness of daily life. Weary of the tedium of routine, we can lose ourselves in landscapes utterly unlike those that lay around us.
Books give us entry into the lives of others. They offer us the opportunity to step out of our own way of being in the world, if only for a little while. They allow us to empathize. In so doing, they hold out the promise of change, as they encourage the capacity to imagine the world as it is not.
Books sustain intimacy, as we sit close together, heads bent over the same page. Reading with a companion, feeling together the emotions evoked by our book, we share experiences we have never had outside the pages we read, and make friends with those whom we will never know in the flesh.
As a small child myself, I knew that books were to sit on. I wasn’t wrong. Books give us a place at the table.