Reading Opens a New World

Reading is a habit that is acquired. Those who love reading will know what I mean when I say that it opens a whole new world.

In fiction, your imagination takes flight as you visualize the pictures drawn by the author through his words.

In travelogues, you share the writer’s experiences and you can empathise with him. You see the places he has visited through his eyes as he describes them.

In horror stories of crime and the supernatural, you cringe in horror or terror as the writer’s skilful narrative evokes those reactions.

In tales of heady romance, you ache and sigh with the heroine or get exasperated and impatient.

You can cry and you can laugh, depending on the writer’s skills with words.

Indeed it is a world that enchants and keeps you mesmerized, clinging to the book into the wee hours of the morning, especially if you read at bedtime.


My grandchildren make a beeline for the bookshop whenever we go to a shopping mall. They will select the books they want to read and they will settle down on the carpeted floor, content to while the hours away in that same spot. Nothing will budge them and it speaks volumes for the well-known bookstores that the children’s section is always occupied by children engrossed in their books. They do not plastic-wrap their books as some stores do, rendering them unavailable to the children.



Some parents are even known to begin reading to their babies while they are still in the womb. If you don’t teach them to read when they are young, if you do not expose your young children to the fascinating world of books, then you are short-changing them for reading is not a habit that can be readily acquired when your child is in his teens as there are so many other distractions to occupy him.

If you haven’t started, it’s still not too late to draw some rainbows into your children’s lives by introducing them to the magic world of books.