NJ Transit likes to change the train schedule on random holidays– MLK Day used a standard schedule, Presidents’ Day used the holiday schedule.

Thus I found myself loitering at Newark Penn Station this past Monday, finding ways to kill fifty minutes before the arrival of my train home. While I sat on a bench and let my mind wander, I noticed what had once seemed to me a near-impossible site: a young family, parents maybe in their late thirties, with a small boy of about eight years old sitting quietly. Propped in his lap was a thick book with a colorful cover about twice the size of his head.

Literacy makes a comeback in the new generation!

A second thought, though: I also began my reading escapades with fantasy & scifi. Then in my college years, I suffered the traditional English major’s guilt that I hadn’t spent my prime reading years perusing, say, A Time to Kill instead of high fantasy. There’s a period of time in your life as a young adult when everything you read actively impacts your personality; books will never be as enthralling or surprising or instructive after that door in time closes. And I wonder now how different my mind could be if I had spent those years reading works that talked about the real world and our ways of dealing with it, instead of stories that are fun but the literary equivalent of cotton candy.

Granted, my father used to read Moby Dick to me as a bedtime story– but I wasn’t quite old enough to appreciate novels, much less the classics.

Question of the week: Should we use the children / YA fantasy literature trend as a doorway to encourage deeper reading?