You eat canned tuna fish and you absorb protein. Then, if you're lucky, someone give you Dover Sole and you experience nourishment. It's the same with books.
Lois LowryThe man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things. [from her Newberry Award acceptance speech]
Lois Lowry