Dreams & Magic

I read a picture book to a six-year-old student not so long ago. He pulled these two books carefully out of his bag and sat down beside me. It was clear that the books were precious to him - usually a rough and tumble kid, he'd made sure that the pages weren't bent and the edges unscuffed.

Thinking about that, I wondered what dreams he saw in those books to encourage such care, what magic. Because nobody sees the same things in a book. Ten of us could sit down and read the same story and we'd all find something different to take away from it. But the important thing is, we'd all see a dream.

Maybe that's why books endure despite the increasing technologicalization of our world. Because they give us words to interpret as we fit, they feed the imagination unlike any other media.