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Making the case for pleasure reading.

Article Excerpt
LAST YEAR A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT APPROACHED ME AND SAID HE WANTED SOME ADVICE, IT SEEMS HE HAD VISITED CYPRUS THE YEAR BEFORE AND HAD BEEN STRUCK BY THE FACT THAT THE BEACHES WERE LINED WITH PEOPLE ENJOYING THE SUN AND READING BOOKS.

He was amazed. "Why," he asked me, "do people read?" He might as well have asked me, "Why do we breathe?" I was taken aback by the very question. How could a student in high school not know the simple pleasure to he found in reading? I answered him as best I could, but mostly I wanted to question him about some of his interests so that I could try to get him hooked on reading. We have had many conversations since then, but during this first encounter it became clear to me that what he was really trying to say was that he wanted to be like those people on the beach, but he didn't know how. Why did they seem to enjoy reading so much?

I mulled over this conversation for a long time. I fretted about it. Why? Because I know how important it is to make readers out of children long before they get to high school. For the past century, social scientists, psychologists, linguists, educators and librarians have been studying reading. We now know all awful lot about reading: How we acquire this skill and how important it is to our success in school and future careers.

Let me share some of the more salient results of this enormous body of research.

> The best predictor of how well a child will do in high school is how well they read in Grade I.

> Readers are better writers.

> Readers...

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