Why Children’s Books Are So Important
Growing up, I’ve always loved stories; there is a certain magic in discovering a new world and living through the lenses of a character. Stories invite you to expand your mind and peek through the eyes of another — the hero/heroine, the author. Stories provide you a staircase to a world without limits, where animals can talk and people have superpowers; yet at the core, stories are always a reflection of our real world, grounded in the same values and invaluable lessons of life.
In the stories we read as a child, there is simplicity of expression in a metaphorical manner. Our minds are full of endless potential then, blank slates of innocence awaiting splashes of color. Through experiences, through stories, we develop our perspectives of the world. Children’s books are profoundly important in shaping our thought and our core at such an important developmental stage.
Children’s stories are captivating in that important themes and values are condensed into bite-size pieces for the tiny mind to digest in creative, captivating ways. Aesop’s fables warn against submitting to flattery through a fox enticing a crow to drop its cheese, promotes the virtue of patience through a tortoise racing a hare, and demonstrates the detrimental consequences of being a liar through a boy crying wolf. The chinese stories behind famous chinese idioms, commonly learned as a child, remind one to re-examine their perspective through a frog stuck in a well. One of the most famous chinese stories follow the journey of a Monkey King, committed to protecting a monk on his journey West; this story promotes upholding virtue and abstaining from greed as the crew encounters several monsters hungry for the monk’s meat, said to provide eternal life, on their journey.
Stories have the enormous power of molding how a child perceives and interact with the world; they teach children to discover, explore, and cherish the world around them. Children’s books have not only the ability to convey an alluring, exciting tale to its readers, but also the responsibility to shape their thoughts positively and help these young readers find inspiration. After all, as the famous author J.K. Rowling once remarked, “the stories we love best do live in us forever.”
