After reading a part of chapter three in You Gotta be The Book, by Jeffrey Wilhelm, I came across a section about relating to characters and the story itself. It made actually rethink of some cases where books had actually made me cry and I read stories thinking as if I was the lead character. In the world now, most students don't get to experience this as often as they should. With technology being a major role in every day lives, in and out of school, I feel as if the students are deprived of this experience. The recent upcoming of technology everywhere has put serious withdrawals on the creative mind and the love of literature has decreased drastically. Because why read a book when there is Facebook, right?Wilhelm shares accounts where his students have wrote about how they related to a story and it had brought back so many great feelings that literature has brought me throughout the years. On page 80, we read of a girl named Cora and how reading The Wreck of the Hesperus had effected her. She says while reading she wished she would be able to just follow the characters around, but instead, she imagines herself as those characters. I think this makes a very literal interpretation of "You Gotta Be the Book". Once you begin reading, you get so caught up in the text that it almost consumes you and you become whoever you are reading about and live the very same situation through them.
Not many people think this way, and maybe some have never personally experienced it, but I believe if you were to read a book this would be the way to do it. Text allows the mind to travel in so many different directions, and this is a quality that technology deprives us of. Yes, there are some thought provoking technological instruments, and some made for that very purpose, but I think many of you can agree that it isn't the same. Your eyes follow the words and the minds grasps the story so perfectly in unison that you can't seem to veer away.
Here is a fun link of how reading can benefit our lives! Enjoy!
http://www.buzzfeed.com/erinlarosa/12-scientific-ways-reading-can-actually-improve-your-life#.euWyKLPOD
I think, like some of the students in Wilhelm's study, that I just assumed that all people had the same experiences with books that I had. Like you, Trista, I find that books and characters and places absolutely consume me. It's so frustrating to think that some of my students are not getting that experience. It's like never tasting ice cream!
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