Why Adults Should Read Winnie the Pooh
Reading children's books as an adult
Everyday healthy children come to my office with their parents for routine appointments. I inquire many questions during these visits: practice they eat fruits and vegetables? How many hours are they sleeping? Exercise they practice or accept a hobby? Practice they castor their teeth regularly? Earlier entering my function, I oftentimes encounter them playing with their phones, and many keep using them while I inquire these questions. Their optics reflect the screen calorie-free, a stake blue color which resembles a afar dying star. Then I eventually ask: do they enjoy reading books? Many parents answer that they enjoyed them when they were very immature, peculiarly film books filled with colorful images but, equally time passed by, they stopped reading them and instead started playing mobile videogames. When I inquire if they similar children books, their parents often respond: "They are too former for that. They don't read them anymore."
There was besides a time in my life when I stopped reading children'southward books. Ane day, back when I was nine or 10 years erstwhile, I was reading my then favorite book (a children's book with some one-time fairy tales and watercolor illustrations) when my male parent interrupted me and grabbed my book. He looked at it, airtight it and said I was too grown up to keep reading those childish books. He took me to his office, whose walls were lined with bookshelves. He pointed at them and said: "You'll now learn from these books. They will teach you valuable lessons and assistance you lot abound up. Information technology is fourth dimension to terminate reading those childish books; you lot take to grow up and acquire something from the classics." After that, I chose a book written by a Portuguese author called "Os Maias". That moment marked the finish of my "children'due south books era". Except for i or two series (such as "Harry Potter" and "His Night Materials"), I stopped reading children'south books and instead started to read "adult" ones.
I kept this addiction until a few years ago, when I visited for the get-go time a small bookstore. The rooms were tight, and their book selection was not huge. The children's section, however, was lovely. The place was empty, but there were many books piled up everywhere, most of them one-time ones. I picked 1 that caught my attention: A. A. Milne'southward "Winnie-the-Pooh". Up until then, I had only known Disney's version of Winnie the Pooh, which didn't appeal particularly to me. Shepard'due south drawings, withal, were and then beautiful that I started reading the volume right there, while standing upward nigh perfectly yet. And that was the moment that changed my whole view of children'south books.
Nosotros know children'south books are important, as they represent a child's first steps into literature. Reading and interpreting stories is a basic and crucial aspect of literacy and education, as they stimulate children's attention and imagination. But is it important for adults to read children'due south books? In a earth total of interesting and compelling books, why waste time reading children's books? What tin we possibly learn from them, when there are so many not-fiction books addressing almost every important topic?
1 of children's literature near underrated benefits is forcing the reader to reflect upon themes that would otherwise get-go require a circuitous literature assay. Despite their apparent simplicity to an adult, children'due south books are really an invitation for readers to imagine themselves every bit the characters living an take a chance. Certain themes similar friendship, love or kindness are more easily assimilated every bit a story, rather than as abstruse concepts plastered over a dozen technical books.
Accept friendship equally an example: as adults, we oft struggle to keep our friendships. Our calendar is but too decorated, full of appointments, meetings, family duties and so on. Sometimes, nosotros but don't have fourth dimension to make a phone call to that friend nosotros haven't talked with in ages. We wonder how they are, what they have been doing – simply then our boss sends us an urgent email and we postpone that phone call. Some children'south books kindly remind us it's OK to let get someone we dearest, if that's what's best for them (even if that makes us sad or nostalgic). But they too remind u.s. how of import it is to keep our friendships live, to nurture them and being there to listen to our loved ones when they demand us, equally "Winnie-the-Pooh" wisely does:
"Y'all can't stay in your corner of the Wood waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes."
"Winnie-the-Pooh" is a wonderful book about friendship and kindness. It also helps us to understand that just being with someone is every bit important as doing something with them. We live in a world where there's a constant pressure to just do something: people share on their social media accounts photos from their parties, hangouts with friends, trips and concerts. In those pictures, people are oftentimes gathered to do something. "Winnie-the-Pooh" helped me to retrieve it is a precious thingmerely being with someone we intendance well-nigh and love.
"What I like doing best is Aught."
"How exercise y'all practise Null," asked Pooh after he had wondered for a long fourth dimension.
"Well, information technology's when people call out at you only every bit you're going off to do it, 'What are yous going to exercise, Christopher Robin?' and y'all say, 'Oh, Nothing,' and then you become and do it.
It means simply going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."
"Oh!" said Pooh."
― Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne
On the other paw, "The Panthera leo and the Bird" is a pocket-size, only cute volume which reminded me of the ability of friendship and the importance of letting go. It tells us a story nigh a lion who finds a wounded bird. He takes intendance of him, and somewhen a cute friendship arises between them. When the jump comes, the bird is ready to join his friends. The king of beasts is sad because of his friend'due south departure but he is besides happy. Letting his friend become was the largest sign of true friendship and dear he could ever give him. This reminded me how of import it is to be empathetic to others, to understand their needs and to practice some personal sacrifices if that ways something to them. Sometimes information technology is hard to be solitary, particularly when we beloved someone, but this book helped me recollect that our loneliness tin can be minimized if nosotros remember that our loved ones volition be ameliorate that way.
Some other wonderful souvenir of children's books is the style they seemingly change as one grows ups. Rereading a book, all the same, is a dying habit that results from our compulsive need to read many books in place of pursuing those that really make an bear upon on our lives. Reading challenges, contempo and seemingly exciting new authors and lists of the "500 greatest movies of our time that you have to watch before you lot die" take been preventing us from rereading books, particularly those from our babyhood. As we age and (hopefully) develop some emotional maturity, we slowly realize the greatness that lies in the simple words from those books: a simple-looking message suddenly acquires another dimension, one that might fifty-fifty overshadow nearly of what's written in a best-sellers bookshelf.
"The Little Prince" constitutes a remarkable instance. Although I immediately loved this wonderful story when I get-go read it, it was merely after reading information technology several times that I began to empathise its magnificence as a children'south book. Reading "The Current of air, the Sand and the Stars" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was evidently helpful, as information technology made me empathise what the writer and pilot went through and how he managed to interpret his feelings and memories into this lovely and plain simple story. But "The Fiddling Prince" is much more than a bunch of cute merchandising; information technology has many of import metaphors that an developed needs to analyze in order to fully understand them. It helps u.s.a. understand that in that location are many of import things in our lives, more important than the daily tasks that often tear united states of america apart and test our nerves. The most important thing is to be kind, to care for people we love and be able to keep the sense of wonder that was present in our younger selves.
I as well learned a lot when I read "The Surreptitious Garden" for the first fourth dimension, a couple of months ago. I remember I was sitting in a café, drinking a cup of coffee while waiting for my train to go far. The night was cold and it was raining outside. I was enjoying the story when I read this passage:
"1 of the strange things about living in the world is that information technology is only at present and and so i is quite sure one is going to alive forever and always and ever. One knows information technology sometimes when i gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one'due south caput far back and looks upwards and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one'south heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun--which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And ane knows it sometimes when i stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep aureate stillness slanting through and nether the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much i tries. So sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes ane sure; and sometimes a sound of furthermost music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes."
― The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
I could never have understood this beautiful and stiff passage if I had read it when I was younger; or perhaps I could, but it resonated so much more than now. For a few moments, I was there, watching the birds sing, the dark-green grass and beautiful flowers around me. The sound of people inbound the café and the pelting pouring exterior while cars and buses ran down the street disappeared. I suddenly remembered my younger cocky walking in my favorite childhood park, thinking of me equally an eternal existence. I always knew I would not live for eternity, but I wanted to be eternal.
And that is the true dazzler of children'due south books. They might seem too simplistic. But sometimes we need simplicity in our lives to remind u.s. of the importance of some themes we often forget in this busy and all too oftentimes technological world.
Because yous are never besides onetime for reading children'southward books.
Source: https://www.pickashelf.com/blog/2019/4/19/reading-childrens-books-as-an-adult
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