The beginning steps of Main Street at the Chambers County Children’s Museum will feature a “University Library” Exhibit stocked with books sure to entice your child – and the child in all of us! Cozy reading nooks and fun, flexible seating will offer the perfect spot for a afternoon excursion of the imagination found perusing the pages of a novel, mystery, or How To article.
Executive Director, Melody Kraus is actively chatting with Lee College about sponsoring our University Library on Main Street and bringing book heaven straight to Chambers County! On the fence about the power of the written word? Check out the research below and get to reading!!!
Reading Books Makes You Live Longer! A study at Yale University followed 3635 participants for 12 years and concluded that “Book readers had a 23-month survival advantage and experienced a 20% reduction in risk of mortality over the 12 years of follow-up compared to non-book readers.”
Reading Books Exercises your Brain! A team of researchers at Stanford University discovered that reading Jane Austen results in a dramatic and unexpected increase in blood flow to multiple regions of the brain. The MRI images indicate that literary reading provides “a truly valuable exercise of people’s brains!”
Reading Books Makes You Smarter! A study at UC Berkeley and the University of Toronto concluded that “Those who read a lot will enhance their verbal intelligence; that is, reading will make them smarter” and continued “it is difficult to overstate the importance of getting children off to an early successful start in reading.”
Reading Books Reduces Stress Levels by 68%! According to a study at the University of Sussex, people only needed to read, silently, for six minutes to slow down their heart rate and ease tension in their muscles. Listening to music reduced levels by 61%; a cup of tea by 54%; taking a walk by 42%; and playing video games by 21%. But reading was the champ reducing stress levels by 68%!
