Although Disney World calls itself, and is called by many others, “The Magic Kingdom,” there is another magic kingdom that is much more accessible to all. You don’t have to pay a hefty price to enter. You don’t have to travel to Orlando, either. In fact, you don’t have to leave the comfort of your own home.
I’m talking about the wonderful world of books.
The price of a book is ever so much more reasonable than the price of entry to Disney World — and once you’ve bought a book, it’s yours for keeps. You can revisit it as often as you want, reading it over and over, at no extra charge.
You can even borrow it from the library and read it totally free! Of course, then it isn’t yours to keep and reread—but you can always re-borrow it from the library, if some other eager reader doesn’t have it out already.
It’s not only fiction that can transport you away from your everyday life. Nonfiction, too, can lift you out of your reality and plunk you down in the middle of a whole new landscape. Granted, it’s novels rather than factual books than can take you to magical places of wizards and elves, dragons and monsters. Or into the lives of people who live so-called ordinary lives in contemporary settings but whose problems, situations, and outcomes make for fascinating reading. But nonfiction can be a magic carpet to a faraway place as well.
Consider nonfiction books that detail life in another place or another time as richly as any historical novel—and with a good deal more description, since the author doesn’t need to devote most of her/his book’s pages to plot and storyline. Consider books that talk about outer space, not as viewed by a fictitious Captain Kirk or Luke Skywalker but as seen through the eyes of real-life astronomers and other scientists, looking at fascinating worlds out there.
Of course, not every book takes you to faraway lands, real or imagined. Some are more mundane but equally fascinatiing. Take instructive or informative books that help you learn how to do something, or how to do it better than your present methodology. From the care and feeding of kittens to how to tie irresistiible fishing lures to cookbooks full of temptingly yummy-sounding recipes, some nonfiction is totally down to earth and yet still fascinating. Want to improve your health or physical condition? Want to learn gardening tricks that will help repel bugs or munching animal marauders? Curious to learn the new math they’re teaching your child in school? Want to know more about the beliefs of our nation’s Founding Fathers? Or—speaking of fathers (and mothers)—want help with some aspect of parenting?
Read a book.
My own reading preference runs to nonfiction, although that’s not to say that I never read novels at all. And although, as a writer, I write far more nonfiction than fiction, both my books for kids and my books for adults encompass both nonfiction and fiction.
I have bookcases full of print books, a Kindle full of e-books, and two libraries within a short drive’s distance from my house. It’s a much longer trip to Orlando, but who needs to go there? I have my own magic kingdom right here within easy reach—in the wonderful world of books.