Literature - Is it important?

 IMAGINE A WORLD, a place, a time, without fictional literature.  Children would not receive the opportunity to explore new worlds, sail uncharted waters, and fight with beasts of old without the quality literature that it available for our consumption today.  People’s imaginations would begin to falter and then fail if fictional literature just disappeared and remained unappreciated.  In Gladys Hunt’s (author of Honey for a Child’s Heart) perspective, “Well-chosen words need only be few in number, but they help store away the pleasure of the adventure.”  Periodically, reading quality literature is important not only because it stimulates the imagination, provides historical information, and it can improve or enhance writing skills.

(This picture was taken by the Vivacious Shutterbug and is sole property therein)

Children’s imaginations come alive when they read fiction.  Readers of fiction can visit any place in the world, or even beyond the boundaries of the world in the comfort and safety of their own home.  For instance, C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series provides an imagination pathway that entertains its readers with a new, dangerous, and enchanted world.  Young readers draw their own pictures, depicting the words they read and developing their own ideas of how characters and places look and feel.  Similarly, my ten-year-old brother recently read Blackthorn Winter by Douglas Wilson, and all he enjoyed talking about was “pirates and buccaneers.”  It provides a way of escape from the work and business of this world and exercises his imagination in a healthy and safe way.  Fortunately, readers like my brother can imagine what it might feel like to have dangerous pirates in their homes without actually facing them down, and this grows their analytical skills, as they problem solve the best solutions, using their imaginations.  Ultimately, reading fiction provides adventures that spark a child’s imagination in ways non-fiction never could, so of course, fiction is a profitable pastime.

While intriguing, entertaining, and imagination building, fiction can also serve as an educational tool.  Many valuable fiction books are based on true historical facts and events.  Often textbooks deliver dry facts where historical fiction conveys facts through engaging stories based on the cultures or backgrounds of a certain time period.  Such books provide flavorful educational truths.  Similarly, the book Moccasin Trail by Eloise Jarvis McGraw enables its readers to follow a family across new territories in the time of the westward expansion and gain interesting facts about the everyday life of a pioneer.  Engaging literature assists the reader to remember the facts of a particular time period rather than simply reading the same details from a workbook or textbook.  For example, Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt overflows with important facts about the time of the Civil War in the U.S.A. while its readers enjoy following a nine-year old boy as he grows up in the four years of the Civil war.  His family remains strong through strife and persecution for their support of the Northern states.  Since we can gain new and flavorful facts when reading fiction, reading this type of literature is a profitable pastime because it provides its readers with valuable facts in a flavorful and meaningful way.    

Enhancing writing and grammatical skills is important in the study of English and can be accomplished through the reading of excellent literature.  What readers expose their minds to will influence how they write, talk, think and behave.  Since our means of communication come in the form of written and verbal words, phrases, and sentences, the author of any short story or book should work hard to make it/them clear and glorifying to God our Father.  In modern society, one rarely finds quality literature read and appreciated.  Near faultless fiction exists in the world; consider reading the highly regarded classic book Black Beauty.  It tells the story of a horse as he’s traded off to different owners and meets a variety of horses and people, some of which grown up with him.  Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty abounds with description and flavor and can assist its readers to write and talk with correct grammatical structure.  Likewise, in describing the book The Titan’s Curse, one can label it as a “candy book.”  Candy books can be acceptable to read at certain times, but we should always strive to read the best quality fiction obtainable.  Unfortunately, if one reads too many poorly written books (similar to “candy books”) that lack quality words or correct grammatical structure, they will not speak and write as correctly as they might if they had chosen to read valuable classics.    Even though the two books remain very different from each other because they were written at different times, they give us a glimpse of modern literature and classical literature writing styles.  Although regarded as ‘wonderful’ to read beneficial books that fill one’s mind, heart, and soul with things that help in everyday life scenarios, one should strive for the best fiction available.  Books like Black Beauty can assist one in the reading of quality fiction, which will then help others speak with correct grammatical usage and can improve or enhance our writing skills.

Thus, reading quality literature is important because it stimulates the imagination, can be historically informative, and can improve or enhance writing skills. Since reading fictional literature is important and can be significantly influential in the lives of others, one ought to grasp the opportunity to read and understand any type of fiction that remains faithful to the scriptures, provides its readers with information on a certain time period, and can provide flavor and depth to our writing.  Such fiction can be examined and observed as important to our lives and the lives of others since it can draw us into worlds unknown, teach us about days past, and provide greater tools for our writing and speech.