You see him putting this approach into play in his chapter on classic children’s books that emerged in the 1950s and early 1960s. It’s about “a social life of reading,” he says. “It shows children finding worlds with the book and books in the world.” “It offers more than just a chronicle of forms of fiction or the art of illustration,” Lerer writes in the opening pages. Lerer has an abiding interest in how books transform lives. After nearly two decades in Stanford University’s English department, Lerer, now 53, came to the La Jolla campus as a Distinguished Professor of Literature and Dean of Arts and Humanities in January. “I thought about it from a personal view, watching how my son grew into a reader,” he says, sitting on the couch in his office on the top floor of UCSD’s Literature Building. His book is also a kind of “intellectual autobiography,” touching on Lerer’s own youthful passion for reading and his experience as a parent.
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