As primary educators, parents play a pivotal role in instilling a love for reading in their children. Join us in this episode with Maya Smart, the author of Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six, as she shares insights on the opportune moments and effective methods for teaching children to read. From navigating the impact of technology on kids’ reading habits to exploring diverse strategies beyond simply reading aloud, Maya emphasizes creating an inclusive space for children to learn at their unique pace. She also talks about inspiring teens to embrace reading and sheds light on the substantial reading disparities among children across various socio-economic and racial backgrounds. So tune in and discover invaluable insights from Maya on empowering the next generation by fostering a love for reading.
Resources:
Maya Smart’s book, Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six
Maya Smart’s website for free resources for parents and teachers: www.MayaSmart.com
For more information about all of Dr. Tim Jordan’s programs and resources for kids and parents, go to his website at www.drtimjordan.com
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Listen to the podcast here
Raising Readers: How To Get Your Kids To Love Reading With Maya Smart
I try and have different guests that have interesting topics. We have a topic we’ve never talked about in the 259 episode. It’s a topic of reading and how you help your kids learn how to read, even though sometimes we think, “Read to them.” Our guest, Maya Smart, has also written a book. She has lots of information about more specific things you can do to support your kids to learn how to be good readers. Maya Payne Smart is a parent educator, a literacy advocate, and the author of a book called Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six.
She publishes new book lists and literacy activities. She has all kinds of resources on her website that are free to help you in your role as not only a parent but also as your kid’s first teacher. She has a Master’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern University and a Bachelor’s in Social Studies with honors from Harvard University. She’s on a faculty through the educational policy and leadership in the College of Education at Marquette University. In this episode, she’s with us. Maya Smart, thank you so much for being with us.
Thank you so much for having me. When I heard the name of the show, I said, “That’s for me.” I have one daughter that I’m raising. She is a middle schooler, a skilled fluent, and joyful reader. I’m excited about that and eager to share all of the things I’ve learned with parents of younger kids.
This is an important topic for all parents. I told you that I have an invested interest because my oldest child, our daughter Kelly, is a reading specialist in elementary school. She has her masters in reading. I am very excited to share this book with her as well as this show so thanks so much for being here. First of all, I want to ask you how you got to be what you’re doing, a reading specialist and advocating for reading with parents. How’d you get to that place in your life?
I came to this work as a parent. I had my daughter and we were living in Richmond, Virginia, at the time. I came across a number of news articles that described reading achievement disparities among Black students, White students, lower socioeconomic students, and higher socioeconomic students. As a Black mom, I was curious about what was driving those differences. I had a lot of educational success in my life and strong educational preparation and was named after an author. I named my daughter after an author so reading and writing was a big family and personal emphasis.
I wanted to dig into the details to figure out what parents need to know to get kids ready for school. I felt like we must all be making some assumptions about what’s required. I was driven by that personal quest to figure out what I needed to do to make sure my daughter was not among these statistics. Once I learned those things, how can I share them with others?
Some of the statistics are sobering. I read somewhere in your book about one step. I want to make sure I get it right. Only about 14% of 15-year-olds in our country read well enough who comprehend lengthy text, handle abstract or counterintuitive concepts, and evaluate content and information sources that separate fact from fiction, politics, and other things. We’re not doing a very good job somewhere along the line or all in line in getting our kids to be good readers.
It’s in part because of the way we think about and define what reading is. A lot of us have too low over bar where we think it’s being able to sound out words on a page. We want kids to be able to sound out the word fluently and automatically so that they can read strings of words, paragraphs, and longer passages and make sense of them. What we want is for kids to understand what’s on the page. There are a lot of steps that get kids that high level of reading fluency and comprehension that you need to thrive in a career. It’s something we need to think about much earlier because the foundation for reading is late even before kids get to school.
What we really want is for kids to understand what's on the page. Click To TweetMy next question may sound like a dumb question but when do we start and how?
It’s not a dumb question at all because parents are given no preparation or training in child development and brain development. We don’t know what we’re supposed to do. I thought back to, “What was I explicitly taught to do after I had my daughter?” I was taught how to install the car seat and breastfeed. They’re these very specific and critically important life-saving things. I needed to know how to feed her and get her home from the hospital. I also needed to know about my power as her parent to have conversations that nurtured her brain growth and also build vocabulary and introduce her to this world of books.
From day one, start building. You’re raising your child but, in some ways, you’re also raising your expectations for yourself as a person now that you’re responsible for this person. Even before people have children, we should be talking to them about getting some books and starting to read even before they’re born. They can hear your voice at a certain point in utero. Why not start to build those parenting habits of reading even before you have the baby and then continue?
A big piece of your book is talking to kids which sounds so obvious. Not just conversations but turn-taking, how important that is for kids to develop their early reading skills.
Given our personalities, culture, or what we experience, we all have different levels of talking with children and different ways of relating to children. Some parents don’t talk to babies and toddlers that much. If they do, it’s sit down and be quiet. Even parents who are engaging in conversation could do a better job asking more questions, describing more things, and getting down on their level. It’s not lectures. It’s being playful. To your point, it’s the back and forth. That’s powerful.
I do think some advice in early parenting books will tell you to give your child lots of words. Narrate what you’re doing all day as you’re changing the diaper and going through the grocery store, labeling and talking about things. The critical piece I learned in researching this book is that we need to listen to that child and their babble, whatever verbalization they’re making before they’re saying real words and sentences.
In my training, my last mentor and fellowship training in Boston was Dr. T. Berry Brazelton. I saw lots of videos that he was doing with his research showing these interactions between parents and their three-month-old infants. It was interesting because he showed the infant a little pumpkin seat, as we used to call it. They’d have a mother come in and sit down in front of the baby. They start to develop already by three months this beautiful rhythm.
The mother would look and the baby would look. The mother would squeeze her little fat chubby thighs and the baby would giggle. The mom would say, “You’re making noise.” The baby is making noise. The beautiful back-and-forth rhythm means we’re connecting. I’m noticing your needs and I’m following your lead. The baby had as much responsibility in that back-and-forth as the parent did.
I love seeing those videos of those exchanges. There are some of that you’ll see on social media but parents need someone to explain the power in that and explain the difference between that being like, “Go go, ga ga.”
I’ve had some speech therapy people, people who were working in schools with kids. They’ve told me that one of the reasons they feel that kids are not coming to school prepared to read is because we’ve lost the old art, things like nursery rhymes. A lot of cars have TV sets or kids have a pad in their lap. There isn’t as much old-school stuff where you’re singing nursery rhymes. They’re coming to school lacking in phonics because of that. I’m wondering if your research would validate that.
When we think about reading, there are two big buckets of things going on. There is the decoding, matching your letters in print to the sounds that they make knowing that if you see a C, the sound you make is for cat, Catherine, or Coke. Another piece of that has to do with oral language. It’s your ability to understand words that are spoken to you. It also has to do with your ability to discern individual sounds within words. That’s where things like your nursery rhymes and wordplay come in. Kids have to become attuned to those sounds to spell and read down the road. There is something that we’ve lost when we put a phone in front of a child. It’s just not the same as having that back-and-forth dynamic exchange.
We’re talking with Maya Smart. She’s a literacy expert. She teaches at Marquette University in Milwaukee and she has a book out called Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six, which will be great for all parents to grab a hold of. I worry that sometimes we’re pushing kids to start kindergarten already being readers. You aren’t reading when you’re five. You’re behind. I’m wondering if you’ve found that as well.
One of the surprising things in researching this was looking at the expectations of what we think kids should have when they arrive at school. For my daughter, we’re both September birthdays so I was attuned to this. Different states have different cutoffs should you be 5 or 6. I realized that what was expected of kindergarteners were things that weren’t expected of me in the ‘80s until I was in first grade.
There has been this heightening of expectations, standards, and measurement but there has not been a corresponding preparation of parents to get kids to the point where some schools expect them to be. You also find different philosophies around what kids need to know and when. Sometimes, preschools are doing a wonderful job of what they’ve identified as their scope of learning for a child but there is a disconnect between that and what the kindergarten expects. There is a parent element, a community element, and a larger systemic element to making it make sense and helping kids wherever they are getting to the next level.
Hopefully, parents and/or teachers have the developmental knowledge to know that some kids are ready before others. Every kid’s not going to be a fluent reader in first grade. Some kids come a little bit later, in particular, boys more so than girls in general.
Teachers should be aware that there are wide variations in kids’ ability to receive classroom instruction at a certain level, especially coming out of COVID. I’ve talked to so many parents. These kids had speech challenges like physical therapy or occupational therapy issues that have to be addressed that people don’t think of as being connected to literacy but are.
If you’re able to hold the pencil and start drawing the letter, you tend to the letter more. It’s like a domino effect of all these things. Teachers should have some awareness of that but teacher training programs should also do a better job of giving teachers the skills to meet kids where they are. You have this wide arranged range of what kids are entering kindergarten with. It’s hard for any teacher to differentiate to the level that’s needed.
In your book, Reading for Our Lives, you talk a little bit about how parents sometimes feel like if they read to them, that’s it. That’s enough. I also don’t want to diminish the fact that having books around and reading the kids is also invaluable.
I think so. Some studies say that there is a correlation between if you have X number of child-appropriate books in your home. Logically, it makes sense. If your child has X number of children’s books in the home, it’s because you, as a parent, value it. You’re likely not just using the books as decoration. You’re probably reading those books and having conversations with them about the books.
You’re building their exposure to vocabulary beyond the everyday words you would always speak to them. They’re all these things. Having books and reading them is important for kids for their motivation and their introduction to vocabulary. Let’s go back to those two big buckets of what goes into reading, decoding, matching letters and sounds, oral language, understanding words and sentences, what things mean, and having background knowledge.
In the vast majority of cases, reading to them doesn’t teach kids what they need to know about making those letter sounds and matches. If you think about it, when you’re reading that picture book, they’re looking at the pictures more than the text. Unless you drag your finger across, it’s not always obvious to little kids that the story is coming from those little black wiggles on the page and not from the pictures.
Our daughter has two sons. One is in kindergarten and the other one is younger. I’ve been watching the kindergartner. We’ll be driving with him and he’ll start pointing out letters on signs. We’re at their house and he has some of those blocks that have letters and numbers on the different sides. He was showing me how he could make words from the blocks. It’s not just books. There are lots of ways to start teaching. We’re following their lead maybe as another way of saying it.
The way I like to think of it is parents have three big roles when it comes to raising readers. It’s nurturing, reading, teaching reading, and advocating for reading. The things that we do around having games and activities in the home and back-and-forth conversations nurture reading and interests. There is a lot of direct teaching you can do by making letters of the topic of conversation.
When a child sees that stop sign, they’re like, “That’s the S. It goes this way and that way.” Kids aren’t learning what they aren’t paying attention to. Parents should know that it’s a powerful lesson to talk about a letter, have a block, and have them trace it. Having them understand that you can put them together and make something new out of it is exciting. Most parents don’t know all of these ways they can teach easily and quickly in the time they already spend with their kids.
The fun part for me is his grandfather. He gets so excited about it. It’s not like it’s an assignment or he has to do it as homework. He’s initiating it. He’s into it.
It’s a game, wordplay, conversation, and being in a relationship with you. As he’s putting those words together, he sees your attention and feels your presence. The relationship piece is so important.
Another one is modeling. Research shows that if parents have their books and the kids see their parents reading, that’s helpful.
There hasn’t been a ton of research on modeling for a couple of reasons. Most of the reading development and reading instruction research is done in classroom settings. There is one teacher and multiple children. A lot of the better research on parent and children’s interactions around books has been done with talk pedometers. They’re measuring oral language, a number of words spoken, adult word count, child word count, and back-and-forth turn.
There hasn’t been a good way to go about researching. Do you have a video camera in the home that shows the parent reading in the chair for two hours and the kid looking at them? There hasn’t been a lot of good research on modeling but I know that was a big emphasis a number of years ago. There was a public awareness campaign. Let them catch you reading. There is value. I’m a reader. I have books. My husband is a reader. He has books. There are some something our daughter gets out of that but it’s not measurable. It’s not teaching her to read.
Your book focuses on young kids but if it’s okay I’m going to ask you because you have a daughter. When they get older, in middle school, high school, or older than 0 to 6, is there anything parents can do to encourage/inspire their kids to be readers?
I found that having a social dimension of reading is powerful. When my daughter was in the lower grades in elementary school, she had some friends who read and they would trade these books called the Owl Diaries. They went through this little series on the way. Back in the day, we read Baby-sitters Club or Sweet Valley High.
Having a social dimension of reading is really powerful. Click To TweetThere was something about books that they enjoyed that were accessible. There were a number of them in a series so it lightens the cognitive load of understanding what’s going on. They can immerse themselves in the story. There was also something powerful about trading those books with friends and talking about them in a group.
Now that my daughter’s in middle school, school has been a huge help in this. I’m not sure if it’s through their English class or the library but at school, she’s part of a book club. There is this group of girls and they’re reading through this series of books. On their own, they are reading extra books and into it. There is something about building that momentum and interest. Series, book clubs, and social dimensions somehow get kids to talk about books with their peers. It’s powerful as they get older.
Finding topics allows them to search and find what they want. I remember getting an email from the middle school librarian, “Zora is interested in checking out so and so. Is that okay with you?” That was such an odd thing because I was thinking, “Why would there be anything in the middle school library that wasn’t appropriate for?” I had to think, “They’re fifth graders in that building of eighth graders. Maybe some content is more appropriate for one or the other.” I’m like, “Absolutely.” If I said no, that would make her want to read it more.
I wonder too. It’s not any different than adults. I’m in a book club with a bunch of my campers who are in their twenties. We pick a book in about once a month each week, get together at a coffee shop, and talk about the books. I came over because they had their schedules. They are all weird so they came over Sunday evening and we had our book club. It inspires me to read and not be lazy because a book club is like, “In a week, I got to finish this book.” Although, I read. It inspires them more than me. I read and get done but it does inspire them. We get together and talk about it. It’s not just adults who enjoy book clubs.
I’ve had a back-and-forth book club with my husband. We’ll both buy two copies of the same book and inevitably at some point, they get switched up. We both are the type to take notes, underline, and write things and margins. I’ll get to a point where I see his note in the margin and go, “I’ve got his copy instead of mine.” Having the conversation around the book is a part of the fun. That’s kids as well as adults.
I’m going to open up a can of worms. I’m wondering what is the effect of all the technologies like the phones and iPads. I know you’re focusing a lot of this on little kids. Although some of them are watching TV and have iPads or whatever kinds of things, what’s been the effect on that as far as kids’ ability to read?
The impact starts with the parent and the parent’s attention to their phones and devices. When you talk about modeling, from a child’s perspective, it’s looking up and seeing your parents gazing into their phones for hours a day. It not only takes intention away from them but it piques curiosity. What is in that device? The parents are handing the device with a game or a show to kids at younger ages.
There is no learning value for kids under three doing anything on a device. Someone said, and I don’t know who it is to attribute it to, but it’s like, “Your lap is the best app. Those conversations and attention are what you need to give kids.” Parents are so distracted by their phones that they’re talking to kids less. They’re giving kids a lower quality of attention.
They’re not doing the nursery rhyme, wordplay, and a lot of the things that parents may have done when they weren’t glued to their phones all the time. A piece people miss is videos and video games. All that is reading competition. To get better at reading, you have to have a certain amount of time on task, interest, and motivation.
When we don’t do a good job of making it easy and enjoyable for kids to learn to read in the first place, they will gravitate toward videos when they want to learn how to do something or toward media to entertain themselves. The earlier we instill the reading habit so they can have enough skills to have interest, enjoyment, and motivation, and we get the reading in first, it has the better shot of competing with media and technology as they age.
I interviewed four high school girls who are some of my campers. They’re very out there and they’d say anything. We were talking about social media and their perspective on technology. One girl said that her parents had not let her have a phone until she was halfway through eighth grade. She says, “I was the last one in the world at my age to have a phone. I used to feel like I was so behind.”
When I was recording the episode, I had all four of them pull out their phones. I asked them first, “How many hours a day are you on your devices?” They’re like, “2 or 3 hours. Maybe four.” When they pulled out their phones, one of them was 9, and then 7 and 6. This one girl spends nine hours a day and a lot of it on TikTok. She’s an awesome kid. She’s an athlete and does well in school. I don’t know where she finds nine hours.
She said, “I do it a lot of times because I’m bored.” I said, “What did you do when you were in fifth, sixth, seventh grade, and halfway through eighth grade when you were bored?” She thought and said, “I used to be in my head a lot. My imagination. I was imagining myself jumping on a cloud.” She brightened up while talking about that. I said, “That’s what you could do. You could still sit down with a pad of paper and write a story, draw, read, do something to handle your boredom other than picking up a thing and scrolling.”
It’s interesting to see how technology changes. We were going through changes in kids’ behaviors. School is such an important piece of this. I saw this amazing essay that our daughter had written as a fourth grader and we just came across it. I was like, “The depth of your thought on this topic.” It was about slavery and the sophistication of her arguments. I was like, “This is an incredible piece of writing that you did as a fourth grader.”
I was thinking then, “What has she done that I’ve seen that demonstrated that level of depth, fluency, and literacy skill?” I realized that what I’ve been seeing because of the age that they’re in and the expectations are they’re doing these slideshows. What they’re teaching them is 3 bullet points and 6 words per bullet. That’s a skillset. Importantly, she has to make corporate presentations down the road but it got me thinking about expectations and what we set up for kids.
This happened a couple of different times when a kid who was in middle school, even a little bit older or in grade school would come up to me and say, “What time is it?” I said, “There is a clock right there in the back of the mess hall.” They said, “I don’t know how to tell time.” They didn’t know how to tell the clock time. I’m wondering with all the distractions that you’re talking about that the kids are so used to little snippets of information.
I’ve read a lot of books about history and people have worried about technology since the dawn of mankind. Every new technology came with, “It’s going to ruin us. We’re all going to be dumb down.” It hasn’t always come true. I am wondering what your experience is. Are we dumbing kids down because they’re so used to doing what you’re talking about? Are they able to sit down and read a full book or text as opposed to bullet points?
It bears watching. My daughter was in second grade when COVID. Suddenly, a kid who didn’t have much technology exposure experience had to have a full school day with a laptop. She uses a mouse and learning to use a keyboard. She’s an only child. Her only interaction with kids her age was mediated through these devices. I do think I don’t have anything personally to compare it to but it has had to have had an impact on their attention spans and the way they relate.
You introduced ChatGPT, even prior to that, voice memos and messages. I have a friend who teaches at a community college. She was getting these horrible essays from her students. She has one-on-one meetings with them where she talks through, “What’s your writing process? What’s your editing process,” trying to figure out what could have resulted in some of this writing. In many cases, it was like, “I voice dictated it into my phone and turned in the document that resulted.”
There is even a lot of education that people in more traditional workspaces and educational spaces have to explain about what’s acceptable and what’s not, and how you put yourself in writing a language. It’s still unfolding and changing. We’re still in a place where reading matters for kids to be able to consume the kind of information they’re going to need to consume and make sense of and apply in their careers.
We may come to a point where even though there are already so many divisions in society, there is going to be an earnings gap and a health and wellness gap. We haven’t even talked about health literacy and being able to comply with your instructions and prescriptions. We’re getting to a point where reading is still important. It’s still important for us to help kids develop the skills to be able to do it well and at length to be successful.
I want to ask you about something you mentioned at the beginning and touched on. There is an inequality gap in a lot of places but it also applies here to reading.
People look at social problems in their local community and nationally. We’re having issues with reckless driving, poverty, and all these issues. What are the career prospects for someone who can’t read, can’t complete a job application, can’t tell time, or can’t do all these things at once? I’m not going to say that we always need it. We need a higher level of literacy to be successful than we ever have.
That’s counterintuitive based on what kids are experiencing.
It’s these shortcuts like voice memos and having a robot write things for you. There is no substitute for reading, writing, and thinking.
There's no substitute for reading, writing, and thinking. Click To TweetMy daughter for years taught in a school down in the city of St. Louis with kids who came from very impoverished backgrounds. She taught kindergarten and first grade. My wife and I would go into class and read stories to the kids for fun. One of the things that she had noticed was how those kids came to kindergarten or first grade so behind. Under five years old, they’re so behind already. COVID was a whole other layer and even beyond COVID. You talk a lot in your book about how important those first five years are in setting kids up for the rest of their educational careers.
It’s critically important. After COVID, I heard from so many teachers of second and third graders that are saying, “I’m having second graders come in who don’t know how to hold a pencil or write their name and don’t know any letters or alphabet.” As a society, we have to think, “What are we going to do about that?” The system of education starts at 5 or 6, depending on where you live. We know that the vast majority of brain growth and development is happening in those first years.
That’s setting kids on a certain trajectory. We have to get very serious about thinking as communities, Nations, policymakers, and concerned citizens about what we are doing to make sure every parent gets the memo. Even if you are not incredibly literate, you can talk to your child and have these back-and-forth nurturing exchanges with your child. You know more words and letters than your baby or toddler.
We have to get to this point where everyone thinks that not just reading every day is important but having those conversations, building vocabulary, and talking about letters. We all have to figure out how can we do that. Is this going door-to-door? Is it talking to your neighbors? Is it creating programming at your church? Is it writing a check to an organization that does this? There are so many grassroots organizations that are getting into the community with parent educators and trying to have an impact. They’re constantly struggling for resources.
There’s one piece for kids going to preschool where they could get some education but unfortunately, a lot of kids are behind already. Sometimes the preschools they go to aren’t great and this sounds so judgmental, I love teachers, but they aren’t that well-trained in what you’re talking about. We need preschools or teachers who know what you’re teaching in your book. Also, how to teach parents how to teach their kids.
We have to go back. The American Academy of Pediatrics has talked about literacy as a tenant of good health. There is a role for pediatricians and doctors to play in teaching parents some of these things. There are programs like Reach Out & Read that provide books through those well-child visits and the pediatrician models for the parent how to read, turn the page, and engage with the child around the story. That’s another touch point with even younger children than preschool-aged. A pediatrician is a trusted figure in a parent’s life at that point with a child but it takes all of the things we’ve mentioned and more.
Even things as “simple” as once a week walking down the street to the local library, sitting for half an hour, and letting your kids take out some books. Sit and read the books for a while. Some things don’t cost money like conversations with your kids and having turn-taking. Parents just need to be aware.
Children’s librarians are some of the best people you encounter. They’re hosting story times. It’s the purpose of having parents come in so you also are in the company of other parents who understand that you have little kids who are going to run around and maybe cry, and all the things that kids naturally do. You’re right. Public libraries are incredibly under-tapped resources in communities.
We have to come from a place of not judging parents. It’s not that they’re not smart but ignorance of they don’t know. None of us got any training. You said breastfeeding. What was the second one?
How to install a car seat.
Maybe a stroller but other than that, it’s about it. We need to educate parents, teachers, and preschool teachers so that it’s not just kids who are well-to-do that are getting those resources.
Parents are in every state. There is a Birth23 program. Although, they have different names in different states. It’s an early intervention program. If you sense that your child has a developmental delay, a speech issue, or a motor skill issue, anything that as a parent makes you a little nervous and you feel like your child isn’t developing as they should, you can reach out even without a pediatrician referral and get an assessment and some support services. Usually, there is a sliding scale. Often the lowest socioeconomic families can get these services for free and all of these things will help in terms of their school readiness.
One resource that parents can turn to is your book. The book is called Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six. I saw it on Amazon but it can be found anywhere.
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all your major booksellers and bookshops if you want to support an independent bookseller.
On your website, you have a lot of free information for parents. What website should parents go to?
They should go to MayaSmart.com. There is a Resources section. There is a big button on the page. Every week, we publish something new. It might be around up of books related to holidays that are coming up, even audio stories to enjoy with kids, or how to do an alphabet scavenger hunt in your neighborhood. We’re trying to come up with a fun easy way for parents to engage with kids.
One popular feature is Read with Me Recipes. We have one for carrot hummus. It’s more about teaching some of the letter, vowel, and consonant sounds than the taste of the recipe. I do give people that warning. I’m like, “These are the tastiest recipes but they have simple ingredients that your child can begin to stand up.”
Parenting is our most important job. One of our most important jobs as a parent is to encourage and teach our kids about reading and how to read. Thank you so much for what you’re doing. Thanks so much for your book and also those free resources on your website. I appreciate it and also your time.
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a wonderful conversation.
Thanks so much.
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Folks, thanks so much. That was a great conversation. Maya told me that her book is also in an audio version. If a lot of you like to listen to your books instead of reading, there is an audio version of her book Reading for Our Lives. I hope that helps. That’s very interesting. It’s such an important topic for us as parents to be more conscious of what our kids need as far as reading. I will be back here as usual with a new episode and topic. Thanks for passing these on and for stopping by. I will see you back in the new episode.
Important Links
- Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six
- Owl Diaries
- Baby-sitters Club
- Sweet Valley High
- Reach Out & Read
- Birth23
- Amazon – Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six
- Barnes & Noble – Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six
- MayaSmart.com
- Reading for Our Lives – Audible