Why read?

There are thousands and thousands of stories in our life-family stories, work stories, community stories, and world stories. Let’s take a simple story like jack and the beanstalk. Jack’s mom tells him to go sell the cow because they need money, they need to get firewood, and he gets talked into trading the cow for 3 magic beans.

So she spanks him with a wooden spoon and puts him to bed without supper and she’s brokenhearted because she lost the cow and this idiot boy came back with beans. She throws them out the window and the next morning there’s huge beanstalk. Jack, who’s not going to be real welcome at the breakfast table anyways, gets curious so he climbs the beanstalk. He climbs it and climbs it and gets up above the clouds and he’s in this magical realm where everything is much larger than it is down where he lives. The chairs are bigger and everything’s bigger and of course, this is a place that’s lived in by giant.

The harp, who is the giant’s captive, tells him where the giant keeps his gold and helps jack excape.so as they go back down the beanstalk, they’re being chased by the giant, who’s roaring that he’s going to kill them, and then jack chops down the beanstalk and the giant falls and is destroyed.

When hearing this, did you at any time think you were the giant? Probably not, you took on the identity of jack. You went and got conned out of your mom’s cow for beans. You came back home and you went to bed without supper and next morning you climbed the beanstalk.

Here’s why that happened. The human brain usually identifies with the hero. Each of us is the star of our own lives, right? Generally, we’re in the center of a world of our making.

One of the nicest ways to exchange information is tell a story. Stories can entertain, inform, educate and unite people. Sometimes a story about someone else’s challenge and success is even more effective than a story about your own experience.

Everything is figureoutable!! How do you explain this to a 5 year old? well, how about a story?

One hot day, a thirsty crow flew all over the fields looking for water. For a long time, she could not find any. She felt very weak, almost giving up hope.

Suddenly, she saw a water jug below her. She flew straight down to see if there was any water inside. Yes, she could see some water inside the jug! The crow tried to push her head into the jug. Sadly, she found that the neck of the jug was too narrow. Then she tried to push the jug down for the water to flow out. She found that the jug was too heavy. The crow thought hard for a while. Then looking around her, she saw some pebbles. She suddenly had a good idea. She started picking up the pebbles one by one, dropping each into the jug. As more and more pebbles filled the jug, the water level kept rising. Soon it was high enough for the crow to drink. Her plan had worked!

Moral-If you try hard enough; you will soon find an answer to your problem.

What better way to explain this than a story. Story is a way of immortalizing a message. I heard this from my grandma as a kid and I still remember it.