Netflix & TED Talks

In this TED Talk, the speaker argues:

That reading books is an essential thing for everyone, especially for kids who appreciate and enjoy learning about stories, their meanings, and their lessons for them.

First of all, there’s a part where he talks about telling lies to tell children... He shared about this little girl that kept on throwing her melon seeds on the flower pot. So he told her that there will be a melon that will grow one day if she doesn’t stop doing that. One morning, he rushed to the grocery store to buy a melon, then he sneakily placed it on the pot. When he told the little girl about it, she was such in a state of shock that she decided to hold the melon for the whole day to remind herself to never throw seeds on the pot ever again.

Second of all, he talks about his first book that he made for them, which about a young boy who suddenly receives this giant blue whale that he needs to take care of. It wasn’t easy at first, but when he realizes that in order to be responsible for the whale, he needs to free the enormous animal into the sea... He placed command tickets inside those books for kids to try asking a blue whale to be their friends and it was really cute. There was a young boy who actually did not mind calling up his blue whale friend despite the fact that the whale would only respond to him in whale noises. However, it did not stop there, this kid grew so attached to his blue whale friend that he wished him a Merry Christmas on the day of Christmas. This really showed that books can really capture the hearts of any audience, whether they may be young or old, as long as they believe in the essence of reading, they will always enjoy learning new stuff through books.

I chose this TED Talk because Mac explains that art is not just telling stories or lying about the truth in order to expose the truth more, but it is also the fact that through reading, we can open doors to wonderful places where our minds could feel a similarity between fiction and reality. We know that these characters aren’t real, yet they speak to us with each word, each line, each book.

Rima