No player in the NBA was born wanting to play basketball. The desire to play ball or to read must be planted. The last 25 years of research show that reading aloud to a child is the oldest, cheapest and must successful method of instilling that desire. Shooting baskets with a child creates a basketball player; reading to a child creates a reader.

Neither books nor people have Velcro Sides -- there must be a bonding agent -- someone who attaches child to book.

Every time we read to a child, we're sending a 'pleasure' message to the child's brain. You could even call it a commercial, conditioning the child to associate books and print with pleasure.

What we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we make them learn.

You became a reader because you saw and heard someone you admired enjoying the experience, someone led you to the world of books even before you could read, let you taste the magic of stories, took you to the library, and allowed you to stay up later at night to read in bed.

The more you read, the better you get, the more better you get, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it.

Story is the vehicle we use to make sense of our lives in a world that often defies logic.