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Everyone needs to watch this 8-year-old’s speech about books

"The world needs books. We... need books."

 

EJ Dickson

IRL

Posted on Nov 30, 2014   Updated on May 30, 2021, 2:37 am CDT

Although most kids would rather get their teeth yanked out with a plier one by one before cracking open a Boxcar Children, there’s always a select number of little kids who really, really love books

But however much you loved to read as a child, you probably didn’t love it as much eight-year-old Madison Reid of Cleveland, Ohio, who recently won the Internet by expressing her ardour for literature in an interview with WKYC Channel 3.

For the first minute of the interview, which was for the opening of a free library in her neighborhood, Madison sorta just seems like a hyperactive little kid trying to ham it up for the camera. It isn’t until the 1:40 mark that she launches into oratory mode, extolling the virtues of books like an evangelical preacher:

The world needs books. What would the world be like without books? They fuel our mind like cars and gas. A car can’t go without gas. Our brains can’t go without books. The world needs books. We… need books. It would break my heart if one book was a lost. Just a page, just a word, just a letter was gone. I would be heartbroken. What would the world do without books? It would be empty. Like a bucket without water, like a brain without knowledge, like a file cabinet without papers. We… need books.

Please, for the love of God, give this girl her own PBS educational TV show. Next to Madison Reid, LeVar Burton looks like an illiterate putz.

H/T Reddit | Screengrab via Jeff Reidel/YouTube

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*First Published: Nov 30, 2014, 1:45 pm CST