Reading aloud is the best advertisement because it works. It allows a child to sample the delights of reading and conditions him to believe that reading is a pleasureful experience, not a painful or boring one.

A nation that does not read much does not know much. And a nation that does not know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box, and the voting booth. And those decisions ultimately affect the entire nation...the literate and illiterate.

Each day millions of children arrive in American classrooms in search of more than reading and math skills. They are looking for a light in the darkness of their lives, a Good Samaritan who will stop and bandage a bruised heart or ego.

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.

Readers don't grow in trees. But they are grown-in places where they are fertilized with lots of print, and above all, read to daily.

The prime purpose of being four is to enjoy being four - of secondary importance is to prepare for being five.

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.