The oldest known library, dating back to the second millennium BC, in Thebes, Egypt, reportedly bore a sign above its portals in Greek: Psyches Iatreion, translated as “healing place of the soul”. The idea that reading may confer healing benefits is not new, but continues to intrigue readers and researchers. Of course, this doesn’t apply to reading […] … learn more→

“Like most people I read a book or two on holiday,” says Stuart, a character in Julian Barnes’ 1991 novel Talking it Over. He does not have time for recreational reading; it must wait until he is at leisure. His best friend, the erudite but erratically employed Oliver, derides this attitude. To Oliver, a summer reader […] … learn more→

When practiced on a regular basis, reading has a number of cognitive and emotional benefits . Therefore, identifying the factors that promote this activity is of significant interest, in particular to allow the youngest to benefit as early as possible, and in a lasting way, from these benefits. Among these factors, there is one that can have a […] … learn more→

A few years ago the dating website eHarmony found that profiles that included reading in their list of hobbies were more attractive to the opposite sex. Specifically, the data revealed that men who mention reading as one of their personal interests receive 19% more messages, although, in the case of women, those who claimed to read received only […] … learn more→

We all know that reading is good for children and for adults, and that we should all be reading more often. One of the most obvious benefits of reading is that it helps improve language skills. A major review of research on leisure reading confirmed that reading does indeed foster better verbal abilities, from preschoolers all the […] … learn more→

Learning to read begins long before the day when the child tries, for the first time, to decode the words in a book. In the first weeks of life, and even before they are born, babies are already skillfully processing crucial information about the sounds that reach them. They adjust their reactions to the tones and structures of […] … learn more→

Reading is key to developing your understandings of what makes good academic writing. Anthropologist Ruth Behar (2020) suggests that academic writers shouldn’t stop at the classic texts in their discipline, but also read other genres. She says We need to read poetry to understand silences and pauses. To challenge the oppression of punctuation. To learn how to make […] … learn more→

When you begin the PhD you will be told to read, and read a lot. But you’ll find not any old approach to reading will do. It’s a particular kind of reading that’s expected. So it’s important to get a grip on the complex task that you are being asked to do. In the first […] … learn more→

Tomi Ungerer’s Giant of Zéralda has become what we call a classic for young people. Criticized by adults, when it was published in 1971 in L’École des loisirs because it challenged the codes and laws of illustrated storytelling for children, this album was immediately adopted by young audiences whose pleasure can never be denied. since. Excellent sesame to enter the […] … learn more→

Neuroscience has established a clear link between music and language acquisition. To put it simply, learning music in the early years of school can help children lay the foundations of reading. In the brain, neural networks involved in processing musical information and developing language overlap. From an evolutionary point of view, the processing of music developed in […] … learn more→