Travelling through Words

 “I had found a new friend. The surprising thing is where I’d found him—not up a tree or sulking in the shade, or splashing around in one of the hill streams, but in a book. No one had told us kids to look there for a friend. Or that you could slip inside the skin of another. Or to travel to another place with marshes, and where, to our ears, the bad people spoke like pirates.”

                —Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip

Yes I know I’ve literally just said a quote from this book, but I couldn’t decide which one I liked more AND I was serious when I said it was an amazing book. As I was scrolling Lloyd Jones Quotes. It’s true. You find a friend when you read novels perhaps an enemy sometimes too. Especially in this case the young girl, Matilda.

It isn't "childish" to have these fictional characters. You also aren't crazy. The stories—as I believe I've said—provides an escape to another land. You'll live another life...almost.

Children should read while their young. It gives them a friend to always be there even when they're alone. Which I guess mean they'll never truly be alone.

I believe, like in the quote, I've traveled everywhere in these stories. I've picked up magical friends, friends on an island, and enemies trying to kill. I've been rich and poor. A runaway and a princess. I've fallen in love multiple times, and watched friends die. All these 'trips' can make you laugh and smile, or angry and sad. My friends talk how I want them to. Some have squeaky high voices, and some have soothing deep voices.

Any book lovers will agree with me. They've been a thousands of journeys meeting many new people without even having to leave the house. For a kids imagination that's good enough (...or maybe an adults too. It makes for a satisfying night after work).

Nothing Beats a Book

 “You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.”

—Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip

I fell in love with this book while doing an English Assignment in Secondary School. Readers are taken away to an island where we are caught in a war between the rebels and redskins. Clearly the quote isn't about war. This is because we are brought to a little town where there is a school Mr. Watts teaches at (the only white man there). And this is where reading comes in. He introduces to the young kids, Great Expectations. These children never knew about fictional stories on paper. I am not doing any justice at all trying to explain the story. It is fantastic! A young girl falling in love with a fictional character.

Any book readers have had this problem. That’s why I loved this story so much (especially at the time changing it up from all my Nicholas Sparks stories).  The story explained at some points how one falls in love with a story. How it’s an escape just for a few hours to another land where we don’t have to move an inch.

This quote explains it all. Not for every book…but a person in love with the story just falls into it flying through the words. We can’t put it down to sleep, nor do our actual tasks we had meant to. Bombs could be going off or screaming kids, but all of that is tuned out by the tunes of the story. The ocean waves by an island, the still night as an animal crosses the dry ground...you get my point.

You’re just kidding yourself if you only read a book by the “assigned chapters” for school. Who has ever heard of such a thing if you are actually reading the story? Page after page flies by. It’s like watching a movie where someone shoots the main character, BUT the shooter isn't shown and then POOF you’re done the movie tonight you can watch another chapter tomorrow. You watched the entire movie didn't you? Exactly, this is the same with books.

The only time when I notice something is happening around me is when it gets too dark to read and I have to turn on a lap.