Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about why reading still feels so magical to me. Not just literature itself, but the act of reading. The feeling of getting completely pulled into a story or an idea and forgetting the world for a little while.

When I trace it back, it always comes down to my parents and a few really special teachers.

My mom had me on Hooked on Phonics as a kid and my parents always made sure I came home from the Scholastic Book Fair with a giant bag of books we could read together. Some of my favorite childhood memories are honestly just sitting around reading. It never felt forced in our house. Books were treated like something exciting. Something fun. Something worth making time for.

Then there were the teachers.

Today I randomly thought of Mrs. Vitale back in Italy because she always had these cool cat eye marbles in class, which somehow reminded me of my recent cat eye mani pedi, random…I know. Every time the class did something kind or worked really well together, she’d add a marble to the jar sitting near her desk. Once we hit 100 marbles, we’d get rewarded with trips off base to beautiful little Italian villages or some fun activity.

At the time, it just felt exciting. Looking back now, I realize she was doing something much bigger. She made learning feel alive. She made curiosity feel rewarding. She made school feel warm.

Then when I moved to the States, Mrs. Barrick made me fall in love not just with reading, but with writing too. Her AP classes made me realize books weren’t just places you escaped into. They were places you could create from too. And I think that matters more than we realize right now.

The Reading Crisis Is Bigger Than Test Scores

We constantly hear about the reading crisis in schools. Attention spans are shrinking. Reading scores are dropping. Teachers are overwhelmed. Kids are growing up in a world where everything is competing for their attention every second of the day.

And if we are being honest, reading is hard to compete with in an algorithm driven world.

Reading asks you to slow down. To focus. To sit with ideas longer than a few seconds. It asks you to imagine things for yourself instead of having everything instantly shown to you. That’s probably why it feels so essential now more than ever.

Because reading does something to people.

It builds empathy because you spend time inside someone else’s perspective. It strengthens critical thinking because books force you to wrestle with ideas instead of reacting instantly to clips and headlines. It teaches patience, imagination, curiosity, and reflection. Things that feel increasingly rare lately.

Why Reading Still Feels Magical

The craziest thing about reading is how deeply it stays with you. You forget random details from everyday life, but certain sentences from books stay in your brain for years. Certain stories become attached to different versions of who you were when you read them.

For me, reading still makes my heart skip a beat. Whether it’s Dostoevsky, Fitzgerald, or some random new book I picked up on a whim, it still feels magical every single time.

Looking back, I really think that love started because my parents and teachers made reading feel joyful before the world convinced us everything had to be optimized, productive, or monetized.

Really grateful for educators and parents who inspire that kind of love for learning without even realizing it.