"Dear Reader,

Teachers and other adults too will tell you a lot of things you may argue with eventually-you may well have your own different ideas, and perhaps better ones.  But about the importance of learning to write and read, easily and fluently, you will never argue.  Such wonderful people will speak to you-to YOU-from the pages.  Such adventures you will have through their telling, that you would never otherwise have!  And all because the words on the page are not a puzzle but a door to many worlds.  To write is delight, to read is to plant the seed of endless excitement.  I promise you.

Yours,

Mary Oliver" 

Popova, Maria, and Claudia Z. Bedrick. A velocity of being : letters to a young reader. New York: Enchanted Lion Books, 2018. Print.