Rita Dove, a U.S. poet laureate and Commonwealth Professor of UVA, wrote in her March 5, 2000, Poet's Choice column in the Washington Post:

“The bliss of reading: to curl into the cushions (preferably your father's favorite chair, before he gets home) and open the door to Ali Baba's secrets, Pippi Longstocking's impossible stories, Harry Potter's latest Quidditch victory. Reading is the most renewable pleasure we have; it's portable, inexpensive (public libraries are the unsung oases of our time), and infinitely interchangeable. I cut my teeth on comic books as well as Children's Illustrated Classics: Wooed