Reading Without Walls

Consider Gene Luen Yang's challenge.It's simple. Yang, who is the US National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, suggests that we might expand our horizons by taking down the walls around our reading choices.        Some of us grew up on a diet of books about characters who looked nothing like us and lived very different lives from ours. That's all we had when I grew up. It places you in a pretty humbling position to constantly be reading about a world of which you know nothing. But it can teach you a lot as well. About the world, about empathy, about tolerance and understanding. About what it takes to navigate the mazes of walls we encounter in life.