My mother was a very difficult woman to please. She was the sort of woman who thought that if I were praised I would get above myself.

I realized with grief that purposeless activities in language arts are probably the burial grounds of language development and that coffins can be found in most classrooms, including mine.

If every parent understood the huge educational benefits and intense happiness brought about by reading aloud to their children, and if every parent- and every adult caring for a child-read aloud a minimum of three stories a day to the children in our lives, we could probably wipe out illiteracy within one generation.

I don't go to church much anymore, but Methodist values still wind me up and send me ticking into my daily life.

When I say to a parent, "read to a child", I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate.

If we are always reading aloud something that is more difficult than children can read themselves then when they come to that book later, or books like that, they will be able to read them - which is why even a fifth grade teacher, even a tenth grade teacher, should still be reading to children aloud. There is always something that is too intractable for kids to read on their own.

I made a lot of friends at school, and they were all Africans. I could have felt very different. I didn't feel different, I didn't notice the color of their skin, I didn't notice the color of my skin and I have remembered that all my life.