As the school year comes to a close and children’s summer reading challenges begin (keep an eye out for TPB’s list), we have a new kind of challenge for you: seek out magic in your everyday life.
Most people I know fell in love with the magic of reading as a child - engrossed in worlds with endless possibilities. We imagined ourselves flying off to Neverland, sitting for the sorting hat at Hogwarts, training with extraordinary teens at Camp Half-Blood, going on an unexpected journey with a band of dwarves - reading meant endless possibility and discovery. It’s a lot harder to find that same feeling in the pages we read as adults. When we open a book today, we bring all our grown-up anxieties, fears, and unrealized dreams with us, and we’re not always ready to confront them in the fiction we read. When I read, I want to rediscover love and hope and magic - the magic that came so easy as a child.