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I spend a lot of time doing my literacy work over at The Children's Village, a residential school for New York City's foster care children. The boys (over 300 of them) who live at The Village have been through terrible times. Their stories are marked by despair and loneliness, tragedy and isolation.

I discovered many years ago that books open up their trust, their hearts and their minds again, after what has sometimes been years of deprivation. Through some magical children's books, I have heard boys at The Village laugh, sometimes for the first time in a long time. They have wept over Charlotte the spider. They have cheered Harry on in a battle. Stories have released their own power to reclaim their stories, for told through the point of view of a tiny spider, each and every boy at The Village comes to see that he too has a story that matters.

One of the most favorite authors at The Children's Village is Dr. Seuss, even for the oldest boys there. I have often wondered why this is so. I love Dr. Seuss myself, but it has amazed me how intense the relationship is that some of our most wounded children have developed with this legendary author. I think it is because while Dr. Seuss was so bitingly funny, he also never talked down to children. His stories were always extraordinarily respectful of the child's complex experience. The boys at The Village so recognize this. And they love me to read those books to them. Whether a boy is eight or eighteen, his eyes light up when I reach for a Dr. Seuss.

The power of literature can help to recover childhood, not only to develop it, and that is the truth.

Even if you do not have a child at home, or are not a teacher or a librarian where you can find a child to read to, there are so many children in your neighborhood who so crave the presence of books and the sound of a human voice reading to them.

I hope my book What to Read When will inspire everyone to find a child to read to. The act of reading aloud is a hopeful thing. It conveys the essence of language, the power of the human spirit and the sheer joy of shared stories. Your voice and one well chosen book could change someone's life.

Pam Allyn, What to Read When, Avery, Penguin Books