What Reading Fiction Makes Possible

Some forms of play are loud. Reading is quieter.

It asks us to make a little time, settle into a space and enter another world—sometimes alone, and sometimes beside someone we love.

When I think about reading with my daughters, what comes to mind first is not literacy, although reading has clear value there. I think about what happens around the book. We are at home. For a little while, the usual pace of life softens. We have made room to sit together, listen and see where a story takes us.

Sometimes reading leads to questions and conversation. Sometimes it becomes laughter or a discussion about a character and the choices they made. And sometimes everyone is simply tired. At those moments, it can be comforting to hear the familiar voice of someone you love reading aloud. You may listen closely, or you may slowly drift off to sleep.

Nothing dramatic has to happen for the moment to matter.

Somewhere to settle

Lately, I have been thinking about how much of life asks us to keep moving. There is always another task, another responsibility or another thought waiting for our attention. Even at home, our minds do not necessarily arrive when our bodies do.

Reading changes the pace.

To read, we first have to make some room. We choose a book. We sit down. We stay with one story long enough for it to begin carrying us. I think this is part of what reading makes possible: it gives our scattered attention somewhere to gather.

The settling is not forced. No one has to announce that it is time to relax or explain how to become calm. The rhythm of the words, the unfolding story and the presence of another person can create their own kind of pause.

For me, this is where reading begins to touch both connection and regulation. Yet I would still place it within Play, because imagination is doing something important. We are not only calming down; we are wondering, anticipating, picturing and entering a world that does not have to be useful in the ordinary sense.

Entering the story world

Years ago, I wrote about a concept researchers call story-world absorption: the experience of becoming so immersed in a story that the world around us briefly recedes. I was fascinated by the idea that children who do not read frequently can still become deeply absorbed when they encounter the right story.

That idea still matters to me. It shifts the question from How do we make children read more? to something gentler and perhaps more curious: What kind of story might invite this child in?

A captivating story can awaken the desire to know what happens next. It may introduce a life very different from our own, or give us a new way to think about courage, friendship, loss, fairness or hope. Fiction lets us encounter experiences we may never meet in everyday life—and, for a while, imagine from inside them.

Research offers some careful support for this. A meta-analysis of experimental studies found that reading fiction produced a small improvement in social-cognitive performance compared with nonfiction reading or no reading. “Small” is important here. Fiction does not automatically make someone more empathic, and reading one story does not transform how we relate to other people. But stories may give us opportunities to practise noticing motives, emotions and perspectives beyond our own.

The story between us

Reading together offers something that reading alone cannot: a shared world.

A parent and child may notice different things in the same chapter. One may sympathize with a character the other finds frustrating. A surprising moment may become an inside joke. A child may ask a question they would not have thought to ask in the middle of an ordinary day.

The conversation does not need to resemble a lesson. In fact, part of the beauty may be that no one is being tested. We can wonder together without needing one correct interpretation.

Research on shared book reading has most strongly established benefits for language development in younger children. A meta-analysis of 19 randomized controlled trials found small improvements in expressive and receptive language, as well as substantial improvement in caregivers’ book-sharing skills. Those studies cannot tell us everything about reading with older children, or about the private meaning a family creates around a story. They do, however, reinforce that reading together is an interaction—not simply words being delivered from a page.

The book gives us something to meet around.

More than an achievement

It is easy to turn reading into another measure of whether we are doing enough. How many books have we finished? Are the children reading at the expected level? Should we be reading every night? Even something restorative can begin to feel like one more responsibility.

I notice this in myself. As I reflect on what reading has offered my family, I also recognize that I would like to make more room for it. But perhaps that realization does not need to become another reason to judge myself. It can simply be an invitation to return.

One chapter can be enough. A few pages can be enough. Listening while someone else reads can be enough. The moment does not have to be educational, profound or perfectly peaceful to have value.

A recent review of research on reading for pleasure in adults identified several possible pathways through which reading may support wellbeing, including space away from daily pressures, perspective-taking, intellectual stimulation and collective meaning-making. The researchers also emphasized that context matters. Reading is not a universal prescription, and it will not feel restorative for everyone in every circumstance.

That distinction feels important. I do not want to make reading productive in yet another way. Its value is not limited to what it improves.

Sometimes the gift is simply that, for a little while, we are somewhere else—and we are there together.

A quiet form of play

Perhaps this is what I am beginning to understand about play: it does not always look like activity.

Play can be curious and imaginative. It can be a voice carrying a story through a quiet room. It can be a child asking what happens next, or a parent enjoying the story just as much as the child. It can be comfort at the end of a tiring day, or a conversation that continues long after the book has closed.

Reading can hold Still, Flow and Glow all at once. We become still enough to settle. We flow into the life of the story. And somewhere within imagination, learning and connection, a little light returns.

The story does not ask us to solve our lives. It simply gives us somewhere to settle together—and perhaps that is more meaningful than we realize.

A gentle invitation

Is there a story you once loved—or one waiting nearby—that might give you and someone you love a place to settle together?

This article offers personal reflection and general education. It is not therapy, diagnosis or individualized clinical advice.

Written and reflected upon by Diljeet K. Jandu