A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader

The content of the book itself is brilliant with beautiful, warm illustrations and inspiring letters addressed to young readers. The quality of pages is glorious, the illustrations vibrant, the book seems to me a work of art in itself. You can tell the labor that went into the book, from its content to cover (even the beauuutiful endpaper; which gets its own note!). It was carefully packaged as well! A treasure to behold, if I had any doubts before, about splurging on this book, I dont anymore! This book deserves it, also the proceeds from the sale of it benefit the NY public library system (so another plus!). I’d urge everyone who can, to go ahead and buy it!

A collection of letters, with whimsical illustrations, conveying what reading and books have meant to different people. People ranging from rap singers, authors, naturalists and scientists. Its my go-to book for some heartwarming inspiration.

A wide variety of letters by authors, drawing on their personal experiences on what drove them towards reading. Excellent art work. Beautiful resource for kids to find and/or validate their passion for reading.

This is an expensive book, and a great book for young people to read. I had wanted to gift it, but the condition in which it has come prevents me from gifting it. I observe that all the corners of this expensive hardcover book have suffered damage because of being handled by people who probably normally handle only stuff that can be thrown carelessly about.

Recommend for adults and children alike.

“You can’t remember being born, or the moment you first laughed, yet these episodes live inside you as vital contributors to the anthology of your inner self. Every good and bad experience leaves a rubbing inside you; an imprint of feeling whose impact doesn’t require memory or articulation to matter. Your deepest self is a mural of feeling-patterns running down your veins, across your heart, and they shrink or expand correspondent to your attention, nourishment and empathy. Books send signals from their feeling-patterns to yours, teaching you to identify what you’ve not been able to name. Follow their flares. Just like you, a book has an interior life, and just like you it only ever wants to be known; each of your efforts to connect freshens your best traces. Through a book, an author offers her own painted pulses, trusting you’ll care, and hoping you’ll recognize its match inside you. To accept something meaningful from a stranger you’d never ask for in person is a privilege as rare to receive as to extend. Every reader should behave like a book, pushing others toward growth, aiming to deepen the most enduring relationship: the one we have with ourselves.”

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.

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...