Dream With Eyes Wide Open
I saw a quote today. I don't know who said it, but I couldn't agree with it more. "Reading is dreaming with open eyes." How perfectly fitting is that? If you are an avid reader like myself, then you know exactly what I mean. For those of you who are not avid readers, I will try to explain (no promises though).
Take fiction books for instance. They take you to a place, a time, or a life that you can only dream about. The works of Lewis Carrol, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling, and many more take us to worlds that you will never find anywhere else on Earth, places that could only have been dreamed up. When we read we leave our own world, our own home and travel to these dream worlds. We see life through eyes and mindsets that are not our own, limited not by our own experiences. With our eyes open, we are joining the author's dream, and it doesn't end there.
We study text books, because we dream of a brighter future. We read self-help books, because we dream of a better us. We read informational books, because we dream of more knowledge. On the other side, I don't write non-fiction, but I imagine non-fiction authors dream of sharing their knowledge.
Reading is the best dream we will ever have!
Speaking of dreams reminds me of the first children's book we published, "Sugar, Sugar On a Stick." The idea for the book literally came from a dream my niece had. Olivia started telling me one day about a dream she had where her whole family had been turned into lollipops, and she had to save us. The preschool teacher in me thought, "What?" and asked for more details. Thus, "Sugar, Sugar On a Stick" was born. I did take a few liberties and changed stuff up here and there to have a workable plot line, but overall the book was based on her dream.
When my family read it, they all loved the quote "Sugar, sugar on a stick give me something good to lick." They all asked how I came up with that, but all I could really do was stare at them and shrug.
Sugar, sugar on a stick
give me something good to eat.
I'm not someone who just loves poetry, and rhyming doesn't usually come naturally for me, at least not anything more than pairing rhyming words together at school. I know that my thought process was that all lollipops are is sugar on a stick, and the rest just flowed from there.
Never stop dreaming with open eyes!
