A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader

Love how every page brings a different story & illustration! Quite a treat! Good also to read one page a night as a different bed time story...

This is an amazing book, designed to entice kids of all ages to develop a love of reading. Letters from a variety of writers, poets & artists write letters to readers on how they learned to love reading. Facing each page is an artwork that illustrates the joy and mystery of reading. A lovely book. I saw it at the library and HAD TO OWN IT! Great gift to kids of all ages.

Growing up in Rawlins, Wyoming until 5th grade and then moving to Casper, I was lucky enough to discover the libraries in both towns. Big stone buildings, huge stairs leading up to the doors, high ceilings, endless shelves of books. I was enthralled and so it all began. My love of books, being transported to worlds beyond small town Wyoming. The smell of books, the texture of paper, the titles, storylines...it was all a wonder, magic. This incredible book, A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader--eight years in the making just made my heart sing. When I read about it I immediately went to the small but wonderful library in our small town of Hailey, Idaho and tried to check it out. The librarian was captured when I described the book. We looked it up on Amazon and when she saw the list of people writing letters to youngsters about books, why they read them, loved them and how they shaped their lives--she scanned the libraries of Idaho to try to get it for me. When there were NO libraries that had the book she immediately decided to order it. So the FIRST library in Idaho to get this book allowed me to be the first person to check it out. This renewed my gratitude, love, appreciation and joy for libraries as an adult with the wonder of a child. This book is a delight... the words and graphic designs capturing every element of what reading can bring to your life by firing up your imagination and launching you into other worlds. Every library, school and parent should have a copy. I am making sure that happens in my community!!!

The first time I ordered this book--on the first of January, two weeks after its release, it was already on back order. I waited patiently for it for 7 weeks; at the end of February, I was told that my order couldn't be fulfilled and it was canceled. On the 9th of March, I was able to re-order it for $20 more than the original price. The price hike was disappointing--but the book, which arrived in under a week, is simply wonderful. It's substantial and gorgeous--about an inch thick, with more than 250 letters and illustrations. Some are moving, some are funny--all remind the young reader that they're not alone. Here's a community of people who influence the world, and who passionately champion the world of books. A treasure.

This is one of those books that I wanted to pace myself reading because the experience is so great! The writings and illustrations are wonderful and the quality of the book itself is unique and special. I bought a few copies as gifts. I found it because I love the editor's Brainpickings site. If you are undecided about buying this, just go for it. Some books I like to buy as paperbacks. This hardcover is well worth the price. It is wonderful.

The title of this book is a VERY poor fit with the content. The book is nominally about BOOKS but it is really about READING and all the places where it can take you, and the people you can meet in them. Caltha is a sensitive and lively 7 year old book-aholic. She is avidly reading "chapter books" to herself in second grade. Camellia is 5 and artistically-minded. Both of them were happy to pore over the pictures in this book WITH ME, but I'm not sure they would have done it on their own. However, I've seen both of them quietly studying the pictures in other books for prolonged periods.

With this book maria popova offers the world an enduring gift. I would wish it into the hands of every adult and child and all those in between. Here are a few of my favorite take-aways (from just the first half!): *The most enduring relationships are the ones we have with ourselves and God (books deepen our growth in this direction too)--they help us learn what is true for us *Where the reader and writer meet they create something which has never existed before...also there is a meeting of a tree (from which the paper derived) and human gifts *You only have one life but reading gives you many, ditto re personality – you get to be inside another heart and mind. *Experiencing the elegance of language is one of the greatest pleasures of consciousness *Reading let's you be quiet in a chaotic world and commune with people who happen to be dead now *Reading takes apart our world and expectations and rearranges them...souls meet and find the way together *Barriers of personality fall, joys and sorrows accumulate, the individual pours himself into the collectivity and unreservedly experiences whatever is allotted to humanity--an expansion takes place *Reading is a great extension of time, a way for one person to live a thousand lives in a single life span, to watch the great impersonal universe at work, to watch the great personal psyche spar with it, until the very dizziness of it all becomes a source of compassion for ourselves

I leave this out at all times so when I feel the need to check my phone, I can read a letter or two. It is important for my kids to see me read a physical book and this is one with content that I share read on my own AND with my girls:) We can also talk about the art work.

Esta muy bonito pero el papel no me gusto, la calidad de las impresiones me las imaginaba mejor.

This book is a collection of articles, essays, poetry and pictures so enjoyable one item at a time. It gives insight into the importance of reading for brain development as well as for new ideas, places, experiences and insights into the human condition. Have purchased a copy for each of my stepdaughters and their families.

A Velocity of Being: Letters to Young Readers, a beautiful and huge, 280-page hardcover brick of a book compiled over eight years or more through their asking dozens of leading people in the public sphere—many of them not surprisingly writers—about the way reading had been central in the shaping of their lives (no one said it hadn’t been important, of course; I assume any such letters were respectfully not included. I was imagining some of the letters from some of my high school students many years ago as a counter-argument). . Some letters I liked came from Jane Goodall, Neil Gaiman, (educational psychologist) Jerome Bruner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Yo-Yo Ma, Judy Blume. I liked most of them, don’t get me wrong, but after a time I wondered about the audience for such a book. Pro-reading types, of course: Librarians, English/language arts teachers, Goodreads readers!! as well as the target audience stated in the title, young readers, but if they already like to read they would mostly rather read a book than talk about why books are so great. And the kids (or adults) who hate reading, well, this book ain’t gonna talk ‘em into it. But many of the statements are lovely, what any of us might have said, though why have a book what we said, we want to know what successful said about how reading help shape them and become world-renowned. It’s a kind of well-written confirmation of most readers’ generally held views, some of them a bit short and obvious. But this is one gorgeous artifact, a coffee-table book every school and library oughtta have on display. I’ll tell you why I would personally want it, though. Popova also knows thousands of terrific illustrators, and she gets some of the best I know, a one page illustration per letter: Isabelle Arsenault, Chris Ware, Oliver Jeffers, Maira Kalman, Shaun Tan, Art Spiegelman. Almost every page is gorgeous, just stunning, like visual poems about reading. That’s the primary reason why this book gets five stars from me. I loved Chris Ware’s two page illustrated story, one of my faves. I liked this story: Author Elizabeth Gilbert skipped school to stay home and read Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. She got caught lying and was grounded. Yet she never forgot that day or that book. (How many days would I have preferred to stay home from school and just read a book all the way through!? Many of them!) Holocaust survivor Helen Fagin once lived in a Polish ghetto where reading was punishable by hard labor, even death (like slaves in this country!), but she risked her life running a secret school for kids, though it couldn’t be about facts, she soon realized: “What they needed wasn’t dry information but hope, the kind that comes from being transported into a dream-world of possibility. There are times when dreams sustain us more than facts.” Though I generally liked school, that’s why I would have wanted to stay home from time to time, as learning in school was often configured as an accumulation of facts and skills rather than passionate engagement with the world through the imagination. You and I already know this, but it is nice to see it confirmed here again and again in this book.

Every now and again a book comes along that is special. If only all books could delight like this. Great for your library and brilliant as a gift.

São mais de 100 cartas endereçadas às crianças, de pessoas de áreas diferentes mas com uma coisa em comum: o amor pelos livros. Cada carta vem acompanhada de um ilustrador, todos maravilhosos, vários dos melhores ilustradores da atualidade, por sinal. Existem três exceções aqui, nas quais texto e ilustração pertenciam a uma só pessoa. É o caso de Tomi Ungerer ou os quadrinhos de Roz Chast e Ariel Schrag. Estes três artistas foram os únicos a fazerem ambas as coisas: texto/imagem. Mas isto é só uma curiosidade. Todas as cartas e ilustrações são bonitas de se ler/ver. Envio fotos com o índice para vocês conhecerem todos os artistas que estão neste livro maravilhoso, de 280 páginas, formato próximo de A4 e capa dura.