What are those pictures that form in your mind as you read? Where do they come from? Why is it that the mind makes pictures as we read?
Whatever the reason I truly believe that reading increases our imagination and ability to visualise. As opposed to watching a screen where someone else makes all the decisions on how the words in the script will look, when you read a book you are creating that world.
This ability to visualization is a wonderful skill that not only helps strengthen the imagination but also helps us see the intangible.
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
Albert Einstein
Making pictures in our minds is the first step of creating almost anything. What’s the saying, if you can see it you can do it. You could argue that everything in human existence was first visualised before it was made. You want to build a house? First you need to visualize what it looks like, then you need to turn that visualisation into drawing so you can share your vision.
Likewise leaders and athletes use visualisation techniques to give themselves an edge and a better chance of succeeding.
The ability to visualise clearly is a wonderful skill and reading is a great way to grow that skill. Every time you read you’re creating a new world in your head, you’re visualising characters, clothing, surrounding, everything on the page. As you read you are playing your own private movie in your mind. You are creating the world that’s in the book. Seeing the people and events on the page come to life stretches and improves your imagination and mental agility.
I remember when I was thirteen I read all of, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, over one hot summer holiday. I was so proud that I had read a thousand page book but more than that I adored the story and characters that I had read about and now inhabited my imagination. I was so in love with the world I had created that when Peter Jackson's, The Lord of the Rings, films came along I found myself in a real dilemma. Do I go see the films and have the characters I had invented as I read the book erased? Or do I preserve my characters but miss this new retelling?
In the end I saw the movies, to his credit I think Peter Jackson did a great job of creating a world that was similar to my vision, however I still prefer my version, the version I visualised when I was a thirteen year old boy.
Help your kids enjoy reading and not only will they discover whole new worlds but their imaginations and ability to visualise the intangible will grow and grow.