1. Books can make us laugh and cry. They can comfort us and show us new possibilities.

2. Books help us develop our language and our vocabulary.

3. Books fire our imagination and train us in finding inner images.

4. Books can ask fresh questions that arouse our interest and cause us to reflect further.

5. Books give us concepts to think with. They broaden our consciousness and our world.

6. Books give us knowledge about nature, technology and history, and about other countries and other ways of life.

7. Books enable us to become someone else. They develop our ability to empathise and to feel compassion.

8. Books make us reflect on what's right or wrong, good or bad.

9. Books can explain reality and help us understand how things are connected.

10. Books can show us that most things can be seen from different points of view.

11. Books boost our self-confidence when we realise that others think and feel as we do.

12. Books help us understand that we are both similar and dissimimal.

13. Books offer company when we're lonely.

14. Books are part of our cultural heritage. They give us shared reading experiences and common frames of reference.

15. Books that are read aloud bring children and adults together.

16. Children's books give us access to different artistic forms such as illustration, photography, poetry and drama.

17. Children's book represent our first contact with literature - an unending world that lasts all our lives.