Reading is a quintessential human activity. One way or another, we spend our lives learning to read. As newborns, we discover human experience by learning to read the sounds, intonations, and rhythms of speech, especially our mother’s and father’s; we decipher their gestures and decode their expressions. We read the tastes, smells, and textures of the world. As toddlers, we begin to read the ever-changing terrain of the earth on which we walk. We carry this further throughout childhood, as our skipping, running, hiking, bicycle riding, snow skiing and more quicken our understanding of the surface of the earth. We read the water by swimming, the air by sailing.

We learn to read "The Book of Life" in the shapes, colors, scents, and life cycles of the plant world, as well as in the gestures, movement, habits, and sounds of animals. As we learn to read the weather, we discover the rhythms of the seasons.

We can carry the skills we acquire in the natural world into the realm of culture: we can learn to read art. Drawing, painting, film, sculpture, music, dance, architecture all write in strokes large and small.

In our modern world, beginning around age six, we also begin to learn to read the abstract markings of our alphabet. We learn the relationship of form to sound. Whether the moment arrives effortlessly, as a gift, or comes only after years of struggle, almost everyone remembers the exhilarating joy when these symbols magically transformed into language—language written, written language understood.

"There it is! Aha! Now I can read!" The mystery of the written word, unveiled. Now we are readers in full—readers of experience; readers of speech, of nature, of art; and, through the act of imagination, we are readers of the written word. We can read the thoughts, the stores of knowledge, and the hearts of others in and beyond our time and place—the inheritance of humanity.

Books for the Journey celebrates every kind of reading there is, expressed through writing. Each book is a trustworthy guide helping us read into life.

John H. Wulsin, Jr.
High School English/Drama Teacher
Chestnut Ridge, NY
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$19.95