Amid the push to excellence, with its measurement and accountability, it is easy to lose sight of a key ingredient in reading a book - the pleasure it bring us, something too many boil down to a dirty word: FUN.

Skill sheets, workbooks, basal reader, flash cards are not enough. To convey meaning you need someone sharing the meaning and flavor of real stories with the student.

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

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

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.

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.

Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon--destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroyus. A nation that doesn't read much doesn't know much. And a nation that doesn't know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth...The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns.