Do you remember what it felt like to read when you were young?

When a book could be a portal to another world as real or realer than this one?

Most of us have strong memories of the books we fell in love with first.

Maybe because we were still new to reading, or maybe because children's

books really do have some unique, special magic. I'm Anne Strangeamps, and in this episode

of To the Best of Our Knowledge, let's find out. Wisconsin Public Radio

It's to the best of our knowledge.

I'm And Strange Champs.

Some of us have been having trouble reading lately.

That's like the pleasure, the magic, is gone.

Writer Catherine Rundell has a solution.

COVID-19.

Variants. Spread across the US.

We're in the middle of a global pandemic,

and I think you should be reading children's books right now.

Children's books are books that traffic in hope and impossibility.

They're books which give you a sense of the world as being colossal.

Children's books say to you, hope matters. Love matters. Children's books will not ever pontificate or self-congratulate because children will not wait while they do so.

Children's books have to be a distillation. They are a distillation

of our most vulnerable heart, of our hopes and of our dreams. They're a kind of literary vodka.

And right now, in the middle of the pandemic, I think we have never needed literary vodka more.

Remember what it felt like, when a book could sweep you away in the very first sentence? Catherine Rundell writes books like that, adventure stories for children.

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