Read to your children Twenty minutes a day; You have the time, And so do they. Read while the laundry is in the machine; Read while the dinner cooks; Tuck a child in the crook of your arm And reach for the library books. Hide the remote, Let the computer games cool, For one day your children will be off to school; Remedial? Gifted? You have the choice; Let them hear their first tales In the sound of your voice. Read in the morning; Read over noon; Read by the light of Goodnight Moon. Turn the pages together, Sitting close as you'll fit, Till a small voice beside you says, "Hey, don't quit.

If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.

Because nobody but a reader ever became a writer.

With the poetry of plain speaking, Shannon Hitchcock recreates the daily drama of a vanished world.

I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready

Grandma, how old is she?" "Oh I don't know." Grandma said. "You'd have to cut off her head and count the rings in her neck.

Anyone who thinks small towns are friendlier than big cities lives in a big city.