I am always acutely aware that we grow writers from the ground up. I wouldn’t be a writer today if my mother had not hauled me at age eight up the ladder from the Celtic to the dock and marched me down the boardwalk to the Seldovia Public Library, where she introduced me to my hometown librarian, Susan Bloch English.

Readers, too, and not just because they’ll be buying our books.

Children who are read to regularly from early ages develop lifelong skills that can’t be acquired from a VCR or the Disney Channel.  They become better listeners and find it easier to pay attention in school.  Their vocabularies grow rapidly, and grammar seems less mysterious to them.  They don’t immediately lose interest in any idea that is harder to grasp than a television commercial. They  develop the patience to follow a complex problem to its solution.  They become better writers all by themselves, through their ample powers of imitation.

…Good readers do better in school, score higher on standardized tests…attend better colleges, hold more interesting jobs, write more persuasive legal briefs, make better conversation, and become less and less likely to gripe about being bored…

Most of all, children who grow up immersed in books develop the ability to answer their own questions….Gradually, they acquire a skill shared by the greatest scholars in the world:  the ability to educate themselves…

David Owen, The First National Bank of Dad

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The second Eye of Isis novel, publishing on January 15, 2022.

Chatter Writing #thiswritinglife David Owen The First National Bank of Dad