Did You Know?

A child from a low-income family is read to an average of 25 hours before entering kindergarten, while a child from a middle-income family is read to an average of 1,700 hours.

68% of state prisoners do not have a high school diploma.

Children in grades three through twelve learn the meanings of about 3,000 new words a year - the majority of new words are learned incidentally while reading books and other materials.

Children in low-income families have gained about 5,000 word vocabularies by the time they enter first grade.  Children from more affluent families enter school with vocabularies of 20,000 words.

Kids who are read to do better in school.

Children will read on their own, a book that has been read aloud to them.

Reading the print on cereal boxes is good practice for a child.

More than 1/3 of America's young children enter kindergarten lacking pre-literacy skills.

Reading stories and poems to children is the best way to teach them to read.

Pretend reading is a critical step in the development process of learning to read.

Reading aloud to your child is the single most important thing you can do to make him/her a reader.

Telling a story from the pictures is an important step in the learning-to-read process.

Children like to read what they choose to read - not what other choose for them to.

Children, who read the most, also read best according to national tests of reading ability.