Don’t you hate it when you’re watching a movie and someone comes in the room and immediately interrupts your mood by asking some insistent (and often petty) question, without any regard for what’s happening in your movie, completely unmindful of whether they are interrupting a comic moment or a dramatic moment or an emotional moment? [...] Read More

We All Need to be Challenged by Reading by Mary Curcio Superintendent, McGraw Central School District, 2010-2016 A family reading program benefits parents, children, and the community.  In 1998 the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act defined literacy as “an individual’s ability to read, write, speak, compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary [...] Read More

What is a culture of literacy? The answer to this question really depends on understanding the meaning of the word culture. It’s a powerful word. A highfalutin word – but one with a wealth of meaning beneath it. Culture is an anthropologist’s word. We use it to indicate or describe an entire pattern of behavior [...] Read More

Find the Summer chapter in your text and share it with someone you love. Read to Them‘s family literacy programs are premised on several components – reading a book, a high quality chapter book, at home, with your family, as an entire school.  Reading.  A chapter book.  Aloud.  At home.  As a school.  Together. In [...] Read More

I believe there’s a wave cresting – and I think you want to be on it. The iPhone and the smartphone have now been with us ten years.  In those ten years, we have all become beguiled, fallen in love, even become addicted.  And it’s happened to every generation.  Our parents, ourselves, and…our children. We [...] Read More

The Diversity Gap We get asked it all the time. “I love your list. But why aren’t there more books with people of color on the covers? Your list needs to meet minority readers where they live. It needs to reflect their experiences. Why aren’t there more books for African-American and Latino and Asian students, [...] Read More

Every year my family likes to create a ‘family present.’ Something everyone – kids and parents – can contribute to. Something low cost to produce – that can be shared and shipped to the ever-burgeoning list of family and friends. One year we made a calendar based on kids’ art. One year we made a [...] Read More

Reading is Reflective I am often asked and often write and speak about the differences between reading and other forms of media – especially television and video games. Typically this conversation becomes a discussion of the differences between passive and active media. Thus… – Television is passive. Thus the classic couch potato vegetative look. [Caveat: [...] Read More

Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie has been a very successful book for thousands of families via our One School, One Book program.  I remember the first time I read the book with my family – three daughters then – the first time we experienced the graceful, efficient, poetic prose of Kate DiCamillo – and the simple, rich encounters the [...] Read More

Yes, you can read comic books!  I’ve said it before – but perhaps it’s become sotte voce.  So I’ll say it again here, now:  Yes, you can read comic books! This weekend I got to pull one of my favorite comic book series for kids off the shelf.  I hadn’t read it in ten years. [...] Read More