ABSTRACT
Although new standards are changing this, most of what students read when they are younger are fi ction texts. For some students, therefore, fi ction is what they are more comfortable with due to greater exposure. For others, the chance to be transported to a different world is what is appealing. Whether or not students prefer fi ction to nonfi ction, it is essential for building higher order thinking skills, and empathy. “Young children learn to experience new feelings through exposure to reading, which, in turn, prepares them to understand more complex emotions,” writes reading researcher Dr. Maryanne Wolf (Wolf & Stoodley, 2007), although this process is certainly not completed in early childhood. Other research reveals that as long as readers are “transported” by their fi ction, it infl uences their empathy (compared to a control condition where people read nonfi ction) (Bal & Vetkamp, 2013). In an interesting laboratory study, participants were asked to read a short story that was designed to induce empathy. Thereafter, when these participants bumped into someone who had dropped their pens, they were twice as likely to help with cleaning up if they were engaged in the text. In short, fi ction reading matters because it makes us better people.
