Why Literature?

Because literature has the power . . .

* To make us more human, to help us see the world from inside the skin of persons very different from ourselves; to live more lives than the one we have; to try on various roles.

* To develop compassion and insight into the behavior of ourselves and others (through characters so real that the reader lives and suffers and rejoices with them).

* To show us the past in a way that helps us understand the present.

* To move us in ways that facts, statistics, and history texts can rarely do.

* To develop the imagination; to help us entertain ideas we never could have had; to interpret and translate our experiences, to shape our world, and to enlarge our imaginations.

* To take us out of ourselves and return us to ourselves as a changed self; to enlarge our thinking while educating our hearts.

~Huck, Charlotte S. (1987).  To know the place for the first time.  The Best of the Bulletin, 1, CLA/NCTE. 69-71.