In his Inquirer essay for The Australian, Simon Haines reflects on how childhood reading, shapes not only memory but also moral and intellectual development. He begins with a nostalgic journey through his own early reading, from The Jungle Book and The Wind in the Willows to Narnia and Swallows and Amazons, recalling how these fictional worlds were as vivid and real as the villages and classrooms of his youth. For Haines, such books do more than entertain: they cultivate imagination, empathy and an enduring moral sensibility that technology cannot replicate.
Haines argues that immersion in literature requires an imaginative and intellectual engagement that physically reshapes the brain, deepening one’s ability to understand others. This, he suggests, is not escapism but a moral education, a way of learning what it means to be human. As readers mature, their companions in literature evolve from Peter Pan and Lucy Pevensie to Emma, Antigone, and Pierre Bezukhov, yet the process of “being read by books” continues, forming both minds and character.
He expands his case beyond fiction, invoking thinkers from Descartes to Thucydides and Milton to show how great works of philosophy, history, and science reveal deeper truths about human experience. Literature and learning, he contends, are central to civilisation itself , “monuments of unageing intellect” that outlast their creators and become “dynamos” of moral and spiritual energy for each new generation.
In an age dominated by screens and shrinking attention spans, Haines insists that classical reading remains essential. The more we rely on artificial intelligence, he writes, the more we need “human intelligence”, the moral and imaginative discipline that only serious reading can form.
Read the full essay on The Australian: The books children read and the people they become