Scout makes an analogy between breathing and reading. Explain what an analogy is, and then explain the analogy she makes.

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”(Scout)

An analogy is a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based.

Scout equates the importance of reading with the importance of breathing. This is a subtle joke but we can understand how much Scout loves to read. We can also understand that Scout is a bright girl with an intellectual curiosity that she had been given to by her father.