The Power of Reading

By Aarna Srivastav | Student of Network Capital School
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“Good books make good readers, good readers make good communicators, and good communicators make great leaders and this is what the world needs”

Hello my name is Aarna and I am going to talk about my superpower which is reading books. There is nothing like the smell of old books or the crack of a new one’s spine.

When I was having a recent conversation with my friends, I was shocked to learn that they spend three to four hours playing video games and watching cartoons whereas I spend all my time reading books. Since I was five my parents didn’t buy me dolls or stuff toys. They got me books, and books and more books. I am very grateful to them because they not just gave me books but they gave me adventures for a lifetime.

However, I must say that I was not always the voracious reader that I am today.

It all started when I was five and was gifted a book. A book with hardly any pictures in it, which I also unknowingly packed for a trip to Himachal. Once there I had nothing to do, I was stuck with this horrid book. I decided to face my fears and pick up the pictureless book. To my amazement, the book was very interesting. The pictureless pages transformed into a blockbuster movie in my mind and soon I was visiting the “Barbaric Ball with Amelia Fang” and this is how my love for books grew.

I realized that with a book you can go anywhere and be anything, from solving murder mysteries with Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Watson to flying on a broom with Harry Potter or falling in love with Aslan’s magical kingdom – I have done it all and that too from the comfort of my home.

Reading has empowered my vocabulary and also keeps my brain cells active. Just like going for a jog – reading regularly improves memory function by giving your brain a good workout.

It also makes it easier for you to relate to others and their emotions. Thereby making you more empathetic.

Reading puts your brain to work, it’s been proven that those who engage their brains through activities such as reading, chess or puzzles could be 2.5 times less prone to Alzheimer’s disease.   

Reading before bed signals your body signals your body that its time to wind down and go to sleep – it specially applies to children because it has been proven that 54% of kids sleep near a screen and clock 20 fewer minutes of shut eye on average.

Corona has disrupted everything for everyone, but do you know the upside of it ? We now get more time to explore new hobbies. I request all my classmates to pick up a book and discover their super power. I would like to leave you with what Dr. Suess once wrote – “the more that you read the more things you will know, the more that you learn the more places you will go”

Aarna was a part of the Network Capital Summer School.

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