What's so great about reading?

One of my favorite books is called To Dance with the White Dog, by Terry Kay, which was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation.

Our Association of Independent School Librarians (AISL) was fortunate enough to have Mr. Kay as our keynote speaker at our 2006 conference in Atlanta.  We all loved this particular part of his presentation & I wrote to him, asking for permission to print it in our blog.  He said he would be delighted to have us use his copyrighted speech, and sent an updated copy.  Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Mrs. Hodge

  While Reading

While reading, I have been –

        -- A cowboy (and an Indian) with Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour

        -- A Confederate soldier with Joseph Pennell and Philip Lee Williams

        -- A pirate with Robert Louis Stevenson

        -- An orphan with Charles Dickens

        -- A dust-bowl traveler with John Steinbeck

 

While reading, I have been –

        -- A whaler with Herman Melville

        -- A gold-dreamer with Erskine Caldwell

        -- A small-town barber with Wendell Berry

        -- A runaway with Mark Twain

        -- An old-time gospel god with James Weldon Johnson

 

While reading, I have been –

       -- A b-flat coronet player with William Price Fox

 -- A battler of windmills with Miguel de Cervantes

 -- An attendant in the House of Gentle Men with Kathy Hepinstall

 -- A basketball player with Pat Conroy, a fire-fighter with Larry Brown, a defense attorney with John Grisham.

 

While reading,

          -- I have touched the ocean's darkest depths and walked on planets in solar systems       beyond our seeing.

          --I have climbed mountains lost in clouds, and walked the different road with Robert Frost and gazed at the little cat feet of fog with Carl Sandburg and danced to the language-music of Byron Herbert Reece and Sidney Lanier and Emily Dickinson.

 

I have flown with Lindbergh and John Glenn, stood at Gettysburg with Lincoln and in Montgomery with Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

While reading, I was at Dachau on the Day of Liberation and at Hiroshima on the Day of Death.

While reading, I have sat at the feet of Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha, and all the other men of God, and also those who would kill God -- the insane, the madmen, the bigoted, the fanatics.

 

While reading, I have been boy and man, girl and woman. I have been young and old. I have died and have been re-born.

 

While reading, I have become people I cannot be, doing things I cannot do. And I do not know of another experience that could have given me such a life. 

 

                                                            Terry Kay

To Dance with the White Dog

The Book of Marie

                                                            Copyright, 2006

                                                (Revised: 9-10-12)

                                                www.terrykay.com