Best 8 quotes of Meghan Cox Gurdon on MyQuotes

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but the eye itself can be coaxed, informed, and persuaded.

By setting aside time every day, we can leave the pixelated wilds and rest at least for a little while in a place of unplugged, authentic human connection.

No child is an island. They come from families. They are the newest braids in that cord of humanity, and it is right and beautiful that they should know something of what their parents and grandparents value, while at the same time having access to the classic works of human imagination that we all own in common. Contemporary culture will take care of itself. It's lively and loud and most children's lives are full of it. When parents read long-beloved classics with them and share stories that convey what we want them to know about the world, we can help them discover powerful narratives and pictures they will never find on PBS Kids or Instagram.

Reading every day with children can't guarantee perfect outcomes for any family—not in grades, not in happiness, not in relationships. But it is as close to a miracle product as we can buy, and it doesn't cost a nickel. As a flawed, fallible person with an imperfect temper, I know that reading every night is not just the nicest thing I've done with my children but represents, without question, the best I have been able to give them as their mother.

The act of reading together secures people to one another, creating order and connection, as if we were quilt squares tacked together with threads made of stories. That's not just another metaphor, as a team of neuroscientists at Princeton has discovered. Even as reader and listener are enjoying their bouquet of neurochemicals ... their brain activity is synchronizing, creating literal order and connection in a process known as neural coupling.

The baby girl who lifted the flaps of Rod Campbell's Dear Zoo becomes the toddler charmed by Ludwig Behmelman's Madeline who turns into the sixth grader listening open-mouthed to Mark Halperin's A Kingdom Far and Clear who grows up to be the young woman swept away by Leo Tolstoy and the beautiful, ill-fated heroine of Anna Karenina. Each book makes straight the path for the next, opening out into sunlit literary meadows where, over time, young people will encounter beautiful writing and characters and scenes that may have been known, loved, and remembered by generations long since past. For the child, or teenager, or anyone else for that matter, getting these tickets to arcadia is a matter of simplicity. All they have to do is listen.

What we look at determines what we see, and what we see, really see, becomes part of an inner museum of pictures and references, a mental collection that for most of us is not so much curated as acquired in a haphazard way. There is an opportunity with children to show them art and illustration that will furnish their minds with beauty and mystery, symmetry and wonder. The simplest mechanism for this is the selection of picture books that we share with them.

Wherever young people are growing up, they deserve to know what went into the making of their world. They have a right to be free to enjoy the richness that history and culture have bequeathed them.