Scholastic’s 100th anniversary

• Notes from Kathryn

I am proud to have been asked to write about why I read.

100th Anniversary of Scholastic tribute

There is a country in my head that would not be there if I didn’t read. I read because I am. I am because I read. The Kathryn Lasky that exists now is because of reading. But I was co-parented by two wonderful people—Hortense and Marven Lasky and by books—thousands upon thousands of books. The words I have read run like a stream through my mind. Where would I be without Scout Finch, Mary Lennox, Holden Caulfield, Scarlett O’Hara, Dorothy and oh dear, The Tin Woodman? For as the Tin Woodman in the Wizard of Oz said to the Scarecrow who desperately wanted brains, that he would rather take a heart “for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.” 

I am happy –but yes—sometimes sad because I read. But without stories I would be incomplete. My world would be colorless. My capacity for empathy stillborn. Books helped make me. And now I make books. I have come full circle in this universe of words.

Kathryn Lasky