ABSTRACT
From the first cautionary advice by Dr. Spock, read by an anxious mother holding in her hand an anguished infant, to the giddy goose rhymes, “Pat-the-Bunnies,” or moon melodies read at bedtime, to the cereal boxes of champions on the breakfast table, to the scout manuals memorized, the fugitive diaries, the Peanuts cartoons, and to those first chapter books, a child is raised by arms of print. Those who survive in one-, two-, and three-syllable words travel beyond the rearing borders of home and school through the agency of literature, the fictional journey of the mind. We fall in love with language.
