Taylor Swift urges schoolchildren to discover: Taylor Swift has urged hundreds of schoolchildren to start reading books for pleasure. The country singer visited the headquarters of educational organisation Scholastic Inc. in New York City to address around 200 young pupils. Swift took to the stage and told the youngsters about her favourite novel, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and encouraged them to take up reading for themselves. "It doesn't have to be a big, thick, long book. You don't have to pick up something that looks scary,” the Daily Star quoted her as saying.
"I think that smart kids are the coolest kids. (Without books) you can let little things pass you by, little details. Like, say you're driving down the road and there's just this really beautiful autumn tree and it has these gorgeous orange leaves. You might just let that pass you by if you have never read books that describe how beautiful they are, from somebody else's perspective," she added. Swift also treated the kids to a short performance with her band at the end of the talk, performing her new single, ‘Mine’.