![]() It is not just a simple, cozy, nostalgic pastime that can be taken up or dropped without consequence. In this distracted age, we need to change our understanding of what reading aloud is, and what it can do. In a culture undergoing what’s been called “the big disconnect,” many of us are grappling with the effects of screens and devices, machines that enhance our lives and at the same time make it harder to concentrate and to retain what we’ve seen and read, and alarmingly easy to be only half present even with the people we love most. The technology that allows us to observe the inner workings of the human brain is of a piece with the same technology that baffles and addles and seems to be reshaping the brain. It’s no coincidence that these discoveries are coming during a paradigm shift in the way we live. She’s right about that, and explorations in brain and behavioral science are beginning to yield thrilling insights into why. “We exist together in a little patch of warmth and light.” ![]() “We let down our guard when someone we love is reading us a story,” the novelist Kate DiCamillo once told me. A miraculous alchemy takes place when one person reads to another, one that converts the ordinary stuff of life-a book, a voice, a place to sit, and a bit of time-into astonishing fuel for the heart, the mind, and the imagination. The time we spend reading aloud is like no other time. ![]()
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