If adult attention is screen scrambled, what about kids, whose brains are still developing? In a world where we are over stimulated and hyperlinked-in we are deprived of the kind of time with a person or experience that deepens and sustains us. Here, poet laureate George Ella Lyon writes that the story circle can be such an experience. A school child can empathize and imagine in response to the language, character, and emotion in the story she is hearing. This pleasure is offered through the voice, the presence, of the reader. If the child's home doesn't include this ritual--and many do not it's all the more important that she be drawn into the circle at school. The ability to engage with a story in this way is essential to our humanity, for it teaches us to see and feel beyond our own limited lookout. The first gift of the library is the one from which all the rest flow. Our circle widens, but it stays centered in this shared experience. While it is easier to give children a screen that to give them a part of ourselves, Lyon warns that it may change childrens' brains and erode their ability to pay the kind of attention that sustains a fully human life. Lyon is not suggesting that we switch off the screen but rather advocates for a thoughtful balance, one in which the story circle holds the children, the grown-up, and the book. The article closes by warning us that we musn't let the virtual world rob us of what's real.