While skirting the headlines of the local paper last week, I was delighted at a little gem tucked away at the bottom the front page. The article chronicled a London theater group’s attempts to determine if being exposed to Shakespeare would increase milk production in a herd of dairy cows. The Changeling Theatre Company performed scenes from The Merry Wives of Windsor for Friesian cows at a Kent dairy farm.
We selected scenes from the play we felt to be lyrical and relaxing, said Rob Forknall, artistic director for the group.
Milk production was found to increase by four percent.
It is believed that exposure to the Bard’s work relaxed the cows, therefore boosting milk production.
I’ve never read Shakespeare to bovines, but I can vouch for the relaxation effect of a good piece of literature. Stories soothe the wild beast. And, um, the more placid, cud-chewing, lactating one (apparently).
When I was a girl, there were no books in my home. When money is tight and the library too far away, Dr. Seuss takes a backseat. There was no toddler lap time with eyes focused on colorful pages. No picture books with single words to jump start my reading skills. No sing-songy poems to capture my attention.
No books.
But there were plenty of stories.
At night when my mother tucked us in, she would always give us a bedtime story. Mostly, she offered well-known fairy tales–Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs—but sometimes she would spin her own. These were always the favorites. She was an animated storyteller–changing her voice with each character, giving sound effects where indicated. My brothers and sister and I would cocoon together in the dark, eyes wide with the wonder of pages of pictures turning in our heads.
That is where my love for story began.
I learned to read with Dick and Jane in the first grade. But the decaying school I attended those first years of grammar school had no library. Still no books. Then, the summer before my third grade year, that old school building was condemned and the kids from our hollow were transferred.
The first time I entered the library at Adamston Elementary, I was astounded. The walls were made of books and books and books and I had never seen anything like it. That library is where I found Nancy Drew, traveled to Narnia and The Island of the Blue Dolphins. It’s where I first experienced A Wrinkle in Time and spied my first Little. That library was a place for a shy girl from an impoverished family to find new friends.
Reading opened up the world for me. I learned about other cultures and other ways of life while nestled in a small country lane in West Virginia. It connected me to the world in ways that simply were not available to me at the time. Reading showed me possibility.
I have carried my love of a good story with me through the years. There are few things I enjoy more than spending a free afternoon with a well-written novel.
But a good story is more than a warm fuzzy feeling.
It is widely regarded that reading fiction helps develop imagination in young children (and probably adults…know anyone who can use some improving in this area?). Some maintain that reading novels is a more engaging way to improve vocabulary and thus improve scores on standardized tests. There is much documentation of the benefits of reading fiction for stress relief and improved mental health. Research by psychologist Raymond Mar found that fiction readers have better social skills and more empathy than those who purport to only read nonfiction. One study even suggests that reading fiction can change our personalities.
A well-crafted story reminds us that we are part of something larger than ourselves. It’s the reason humans have been telling stories since the beginning of time. Stories help us make sense of the world and understand who we are. As researcher Keith Oatley says, …fiction is about possible selves in possible worlds. Anyone who has ever been swept into an imaginary world and emerged to find himself changed in some way understands this very well.
I think reading fiction enriches the way we experience life. We are, after all, each writing our own story in the way we live our lives.
As for me, I plan on bringing some Shakespeare along the next time my phobic son has an orthodontist appointment.
I just won’t make it MacBeth.
Photo by Elizabeth Weller, used with permission. Post by Laura Boggess.
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I can’t imagine life without fiction. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t being read books – by the time I was 4 I could read them on my own. I don’t remember that we had many, but the few we had were very loved. Books were a way to travel to another world and see what other people could do. I’m convinced that I am a dreamer and a visionary because of my love for fiction and my ability to see past reality to what could be.
Now as an adult, I often read more nonfiction than I do fiction – but there are times when all I want to do is curl in a chair with a quilt and read, from cover to cover, some of the best fiction works out there. I picked up a couple of novels at the library yesterday and wish for the time when I was young, when I could ignore everything going on around me and transform myself into the stories on the pages.
Oh books – what a wonderful, beautiful, experience they are.
Crystal,
Your words witness my own experience in many ways. Fiction has given me wings. I am convinced I would not have made it to where I am today without my love affair with story.
I echo your words: what a wonderful, beautiful, experience are books.
Wonderful post, Laura. Shakespeare for bovines! Who knew?
Reading stories to my son was one of our favorite activities. Eric Carle, whom we once met, was one of our favorite storytellers.
Annette Simmons wrote a very good book on story-telling, “The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion Through the Art of Storytelling”.
I love Eric Carle…the Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar was one of our favorites. And Brown Bear, Brown Bear. How I miss those days of reading with my boys. I think that was one of the calls I felt to write this article. So much of the time I feel guilty to sit down with a good book. The benefits are compelling.
I will have to check out Annette Simmons, Maureen. Thank you.
Lol, Laura. This was delightful. Now I better start reading fiction, because I guess I haven’t been cultivating my empathy!
Maureen, I just started that one.
I found that research on social skills and empathy so fascinating! Now I have scientific reasons for skipping the vacuuming to loll away the afternoon on the couch. Sigh. Sounds like a dream.
Laura,
My summer has a twist this year with two boys living with us ages 8 and 10. This adds to my already full brood of 1, 4 and 6. The three things that we have been focusing on for them is music (classical, jazz, live concerts), nature and books. There has been some art and writing thrown in but not too much and of course God has been weaved in to it all.
I had a rough childhood and books were my best friend. I would often make up elaborate stories of my own as I walked to school or did my jobs at home. Unlike you however, I always had a library to feed the appetite for books. How special though that you had a loving parent to tell you stories. My husband and I do not recall our parents reading to us or telling us stories (sniff sniff).
Every summer we have Shakespere on the Lake. I can’t speak for the other attenders but sitting there under the hot sun with young children trying to follow “The Taming of the Shrew” was not very relaxing or soul lifting (sorry William, we’ll revisit your stuff at a later date).
Laura, I’m catching the essense of storytelling from your article and trying to tatoo that onto my brain. Books and stories free and comfort us and take us to other places. I am hoping I can pass that magic along to my visiting children who will need a mental escape when they return back home. Your writing has motivated me to be more diligent with books, stories etc.
Nichole,
Your story touches me so. I understand a bit of what you say here. While my childhood started with sweet moments of storytelling, there were later times when books were a blessed sanctuary.
It sounds like you have had your hands full this summer. And giving some splendid gifts. I’m so glad to give you something to think about for your houseguests. Yes, story can liberate from so much. Please let me know how it goes.
I’m so glad you shared this little piece of your story here, Nichole.
I’m just back from a weekend in a household with a 4-year-old and a full hour, I think, each night of bedtime stories. Some I read. Some were read by others. It was like an Artist’s Day, getting lost in the stories………….I’d forgotten……….I slept like a baby. Best sleep aid invented, stories.
Something about going to sleep with stories dancing behind eyes. Sounds like a very special visit, Marilyn.
Nancy Drew, The Littles, Laura, you draw me back in time. I also read Pippi Longstockings, which my 9-year-old now loves. When life becomes too much I find I relax by reading fiction. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Pippi! Yes
. She inspired me to be a little less the rule-follower. But not too much less 
. Did you know this year is Nancy Drew’s 80th birthday? She was my all time favorite. I don’t know how many times I got sick on the bus on the way home from school because I couldn’t stop reading. Bless Denver Stout’s heart (that was our busdriver). He never got mad. No matter how often I puked.
Laura, this is commitment. Reading through vomit.
This is to know what you are doing, you must do.
I’m wondering if reading is some sort of addiction when you read so much it makes you physically ill. Laura, are you addicted to stories? Is such a thing even possible?
Heehee. The vomiting never stopped me! I remember some days lifting my poor swooning head after the deed and thinking, “that wasn’t that bad. I wonder what Nancy Drew is up too?”
So…yes, maybe I am addicted, Marcus.
my son already loves a good story… he puts everything in his mouth, except for books–those, he turns tenderly, page by page, studying the pictures–and he’s only 8 months old. if i do nothing else in life except instill in him love for The Word, i will be happy. lovely post as always, Laura. xo
It sounds like you already have, Emily…instilled that love. That’s pretty special.
My husband has always called me a secret librarian. The weekly visit to the library and sometimes the bookstore to pick up the latest fiction for me is kin to the soft fur on a puppy’s head. It’s just delightful! Over the years I have noticed that the more I read fiction, the less I watch television. I can’t equate the two to my improved happiness, but there could be an unresearched correlation.
…the soft fur on a puppy’s head…
**sigh**
that just made me happy
This post could just as easily be “In Praise of Libraries.” Thank God He gave you a love of stories from your mom, and a library to fill you up with them!
Amen to that, sister.
I would love to sit and read fiction to a bunch of dairy cows. So it increased 4%, but I wonder if they did any taste-test comparisons, too.
The article said that when the cows are given growth hormone it increases 10 percent. Listening to classical music produced about the same as Shakespeare.
I bet the milk is sweeter with the nonhormone intervention
An NPR listener hear in Nebraska once wrote to tell us that she plays NET Radio’s classical music in the barn at dawn each morning while she milks the cows — she said the music soothed the animals…and her. I always loved that story.
I loved, loved “Island of the Blue Dolphins” as a kid. Just got a copy from the library for my 8-year-old — and he doesn’t like it! I am horrified, but trying not to take it personally!
I think that is awesome. Wouldn’t that make a great Norman Rockwell? Milking the cows with a phonograph and some classical album covers exposed…
See? My imagination is already improving.
If only I had known about Shakespeare and those cows when our first born was having trouble nursing. Oh well. Live and learn.
LOL, Tony! That is true. Live and learn….live and learn.
When I was about 10 years old I discovered Narnia, and felt as if my world has been trasnformed by these books. Talk about imagination… I wondered how someone, like this CS Lewis, could create a story that was so precisely matched up with my own fantasies at the time.
Those books jump-started a vociferous appetite for reading from the time I was 10 – 12 years old (another favorite was “the Diamond in the Window”), and then transitioned into actually writing my own stories from there. I guess that love for words and stories goes way back to our childhood, and carries with us throughout our lives. It’s nice to know about all of the other benefits of reading, but for most of us, I think it’s just because we love it.
Yes, but it’s nice to know we get some fringe benefits, no? I bet you have great social skills, Bradley
At 7 is was Trixie Belden; by 9 it was Hardy Boys and Tom Swift; by 10 it was all the books I could order from Scholastic Book Club at school. At 11 I wrote my own mystery story. But I can very vaguely remember my mother reading to me — from a big green book of fairy tales — Hansel and Gretel and the other Brothers Grimm stories. I read Winnie-the-Pooh and the Narnia books to my own children.
Such a great legacy of stories…
If this isn’t proof that the oral tradition still has the same impact it once did, I don’t know what is! While I know there’s plenty of research to support that reading to kids out of actual books early on helps them to associate sound with words, yours is a perfect example of how it’s the stories themselves, maybe even more than the visible words on a page, that mold and shape us. Still, I admit I love those Eric Carle books, too. Don’t know that my kids’ nurseries would have been quite the same without them. And don’t even get me started on Jane Austen! A world without books. Now there’s a place I won’t even let my mind go. This post blessed my entire day, Laura!
Ahhh, Jane Austin. I’m reading Mansfield Park right now. It’s one of hers I never made it to through the years. She is so bookalicious!
this is AWESOME! I love the study done w/the cows.
Story has such power to create a place for us to enter into safely. Just fondly remembering all of the stories I loved growing up… thanks for taking me back to that place
And doesn’t it make you happy to remember those old friends? I enjoyed writing this one so much because it took me to my happy place. The place of story after story.
What a poignant post, Laura. You are telling us YOUR story, post by post.
I loved fiction as a child and still do. When I’m facing a problem, the last thing I want to read is nonfiction. Send me a hero!
And “Merry Wives” is one of my favorites, owing to the fact that my daughter was in a local production two Halloweens ago. I even posted a poem about it last week (in the “My Mother’s Diary” section), not knowing you were going to cover it this week.
I will have to find your poem, Megan. I also think you hit on something pretty telling here. I think we enjoy those great epics so much because we are waiting for The Hero. Something in our hearts knows that the world is not supposed to be the way it is.
Food for thought.
That cow bit is just nutty. The best way to increase milk production is let the calves suckle, bumping their heads, and pulling the teats… If they listen to something non-soothing, would they make cottage cheese?
Okay to the fiction. I started doing read-aloud books with my son last summer while in the throes of missing his daddy. We have continued it with an insatiable hunger for more (Swiss Family Robinson, the Jim Kjelgaard dog-centered books, A Hole in the Wall, and so many more that I have lost track. Now it is daddy reading to son on hot summer days in the shade or sprawled on the bed before sleep. Me? I’ve been a bookworm ever since I could remember, running flashlight batteries low under the covers after lights-out.
Isn’t it amazing that the most splendid stories that seem to be made of the fiction fabric are actually found in the Truth-filled pages written by God?
Blessings.
The Greatest Storyteller knew the power of a good yarn, didn’t He?
Oh thank you for this Laura. I love fiction. I love a well-written story. I love being so lost in the story that when I look up I am startled to find myself in my own living room.
I have often felt so intimidated by the reading lists on some of the blogs I read – all those deep tomes. I read some nonfiction, but fiction definitely makes up the bulk of my reading.
You story is so dear Laura. I can picture that little girl entering the library for the first time – eyes round with wonder. I think it wonderful that your Mom told you stories – a precious heart gift.
I was thinking of you some when I wrote this, Linda. I feel the same way about getting lost in a story. Just another great thing about being your sister-friend!
You are too funny. The MacBeth Comment got me.
Stories for me helped to bear the emotional confusion of my youth and childhood. For one moment I was Nancy Drew or the heroine in Grace Livingstone Hill or as a teen I was the heroine in the romance books I read. Grimm’s books and Hans Christian Anderson helped me slay my dragons and fight the witches.
So why don’t we make this a priority as adults? Do we not have struggles now? Why do we feel guilty when we step into a fantasy? Fiction can teach too.
I don’t feel guilty. Reading relaxes me, and I do prefer fiction. Plus, some Christian authors have actually given me a new way to look at scripture when they built the point into their story.
I have struggles. Currently, going through a struggle right now. Reading and writing help me to understand those struggles and they help. I can’t be the only one who thinks escapism is okay. A certain amount of escapism is very healthy. The economy is failing, people are without jobs, and times are very dark right now. Why do we have to focus on reality 24/7?
Not to mention, there are benefits to reading. It helps to heighten learning.
BTW…I never feel guilty about taking time out to read fiction. Just ask my husband. LOL. Some of the better fiction books keep me up all hours because I have to finish it. Not finishing a good book is like going to see part 1 of a movie and failing to see part 2.
I’m getting better about this too. Part of the wisdom that comes with age, I guess
. Powerful stories make my life richer.
I think I need to go read some more of Mansfield Park now.
Laura,
Oh, I agree…we can learn so much from fiction! I think sometimes we forget that.
I don’t even think we know all that we DO learn from fiction, Amy. According to the research I read, it must be a subtle acquisition in some cases.
“Fiction can teach too.” I am guilty of avoiding fiction for the more “grownup” nonfiction…unless of course, it is Shakespeare or Jane Austen, etc.. I always feel a bit snobbish admitting that out loud…that the classics can somehow teach me more than a modern piece of literature.
Laura, this really got me thinking that maybe by chosing one type of genre I am limiting myself. Limiting what I will allow to speak to me or teach me. And I find that in my writing voice too, limiting what I am willing to write. Just the other day my morning pages moved into a piece of fiction. Something I have not done since I was in high school. And I have to admit, it was heartracing fun. Adrenaline rush.
Thanks for making me think…
How exciting that fiction showed up on the page out of the blue! Wow! I wonder what Julia Cameron would say?
I’ll have to share that cow ‘tail’ with hubby. He grew up on a farm, and Lord does he love those cows!
Great post, Laura! Very cool to see you here…
Fun to see you here, Debby! Isn’t that the best story? Thanks for hanging out with me today.
I personally am not all that fond of Shakespeare; as a technical writer, he may have been one of the greatest to ever live, other than Plato, Dante, Milton or a few others, but I can’t read more than 5 or 10 lines without dozing off. Well-written fiction can be a powerful tool though, and I’ve seen God teach me things in some of the most unlikely fictions written- Watchmen, The Road, and the writings of J.R.R Tolkien are some of the biggest for me. Fiction as escapism has never been my thing though, I try to learn as much as I can through whatever it is I’m reading.
Hmm. Maybe the Shakespeare bored the cows into a doze? Very well could be the untold part of the story.
I agree with you, Joshua. Learning something through reading is something we value a lot as a society, I think. With fiction, the things I learn are sometimes so subtle that they might be missed…like deeper lessons about the human condition. Or the importance of flexibility and an open mind.
When I think about the parables that Jesus told, he didn’t always tell a straightforward story. He wanted us to THINK. I love fiction that makes me think. It keeps me engaged and changes me.
Hey, thanks for stopping by. I enjoyed your review of Toy Story. Did you cry?
You brought up a point that struck me right after I posted my comment – Jesus was a master storyteller, and I suppose you could technically label his parables as “fiction”, so one could make the argument that fiction is actually a biblical principal(sp?)
I didn’t personally cry during Toy Story though I do know a few who did.
Ah. I was one of those.
But not until the end. I kept thinking the whole going-away-to-college part would get me. But it was the saying-goodbye-to-pretend stuff at the end. Do we really have to? Another reason I love fiction so much, I guess. Keeps me imagining. Sometimes life tries to suck that out of a grown-up.
In my opinion imagination is probably one of the greatest gifts to man from God, and when I hear a beautiful song or read a touching story, even if it’s not “Christian” I can’t help but be reminded of God through it because I know that he put whatever song or story or piece of art in the heart of the person and I notice how if you look hard enough God can be found in almost any kind of fiction and when I see that I am reminded of how much God is woven into the very fabric of our being. That’s why I like fiction.
Seeing as how He has an endless one–imagination, that is–I think it’s something He must find value in. I feel the same way about mainstream works too, Joshua. Beauty breathes God. Even when the artist doesn’t realize, He is all over in the stuff. I guess it really IS in the eye of the beholder…or the ear…or touch.
Very well-said.
As a writer of fiction, I’ve seen that fiction can touch readers hearts and souls in ways that are deep and unexpected. A good story can change you, make you see the world in a different way, help you to see yourself in ways you couldn’t before walking with the characters through their story of change and transformation. Like Joshua said, there’s power in story because it engages the imagination and helps us to really see. So, for those who have drifted away from fiction in their adult years, I encourage to find the authors whose stories stir you, sing to you, capture you, and then immerse yourself again in the wonder of story!
I love the passion I hear in your words, Marlo. Wonder-full.
Laura, thanks for getting us thinking and talking about our love of fiction. I loved a lot of the same books growing up. (Not Shakespeare, I’ll leave him to the cows.)
One of the ways reading and writing fiction has helped me grow is the empathy thing–I think more now about other people’s motivations and “backstories” and am learning to be slower to assume people do annoying or destructive things “on purpose”.