One year Anne Fleming gave her nephew a book for Christmas and watched from the sidelines as the volume captivated him for the next three hours. Though she hadn’t seen him in months, though she gave him the book that spellbound him, though she would have loved to talk to him about the book, he commenced to read the book from cover to cover, oblivious to everyone around him. Reminded of her own childhood, of not being available to her father or anyone else while she read, she realized that perhaps this ‘was the real reason [her] father turfed [her] out of doors time and again, bookless, to participate in things of this world.’ This is the ‘aha moment’ she recalls in EVENT magazine’s latest Notes on Writing issue (42/1) in her brilliant essay ‘Novels Are for Children.’ After reading countless stories, and writing many of her own, Anne recognizes that becoming wholly lost in a book rarely happens to her anymore. ‘Hyperaware’ of the tricks authors are up to, she reflects on how often our best experiences of reading are the ones we have while we are still wide-eyed children, easily and utterly swept away by a good story. Luckily for us at EVENT, we don’t have any trouble being swept away by her writing.