For the voice that tells us a story aloud is always more than a carrier wave bringing us the meaning; it's a companion through the events of the story, ensuring that the feelings it stirs in us are held within the circle of attachment connecting the adult reading and the child listéning. To hear a story is a social act. Social rules, social promises, social bonds sustain us during it. Which is a kind of defense, when defense has been needed in reading.
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It is when, instead, we read it stumblingly for ourselves, when there's no other voice to link us into the web of relationship, that we feel the full force of the story's challenge: You are alone, in a dark wood. Now cope.
Francis Spufford - The Child That Books Built