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Reading Without An Imagination Analysis

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Imagination. This word is all too familiar, but what’s not so familiar is the true meaning of imagination and what it means to literacy. Yes, imagination is the thought process that leads to creativity, but is it possible to be creative without the basic principles of literacy? Mikala Lowe’s narrative, Charlie, and Katja Kleine’s Reading Without An Imagination argue that the answer to this question is no. Both authors have discovered the value of literacy in their own creativity. In order to appreciate the role of imagination in literacy, one must first learn to appreciate literacy itself. Imagination is defined as “the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses” (Lowe 3). Without …show more content…
She begins by stating that she had “never had a very strong imagination” (Kleine 1). This may seem to undermine her argument, but she goes on to explain how her imagination now is still a drastic improvement from the creative wasteland she had in grade school as a result of her lack of love for reading. Kleine grew up having books read to her, and she thought listening to books was alright, but she much preferred to spend her time on other things because she struggled with whole word recognition. Though her mother tried to help her out, she was discouraged by her inferior skills to younger children, even her own little sister. She resorted to television for inspiration and never liked the books about dragons and princesses. She preferred to watch news shows, and couldn’t read things along the lines of these subjects because those subjects were never written in a way that catered to her reading level. Although she “could technically read in Kindergarten, it took [her] six more years to fully understand what reading meant and why so many people enjoy it” (2). It was the analyzing of literature that was her true passion. She found love in the parallelism between herself and the characters in the stories she read. It just took her a very long time to figure that

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