In the Ted Talk, “What reading slowly taught me about writing” , Jacqueline Woodson speaks about lessons she learned through reading that she was able to use to improve her own writing. One of these lessons was that she was able to gain a new perspective on certain topics by taking her time to slowly read each book. She uses the story of the giant and his garden to show that maybe the giant wasn’t the bad guy and was looking for empathy from the children. By rereading the book Jacqueline was able to begin to understand the characters of the book which helped her figuratively put herself into their shoes. 

She also talks about a fictive dream where the reader spends a lot of time reading about the characters and begins to savor the story. This allows them to appreciate the story that many authors spend large amounts of time working on and it also allows the reader to begin to see the story from different perspectives. An example of this in the giant story was the line “My own garden is my own garden”. This could be interpreted in many different ways, one perspective could be the giant being possessive and telling the kids never to return. Or another perspective could be the giant feels lonely and says this because the garden is lonely and is literally his own garden because after the children leave he is the only one able to enjoy it. That is supported by the line “a grey winter fell over his garden” after the giant was able to successfully keep the children out. It shows that the giant could have enjoyed the children’s presence in the garden because it gave him a purpose. This way of reading helps us as readers understand different ways that a book could be interpreted. This helps create creativity between readers by allowing readers to create their own version of each story and encourages them to begin writing themselves.