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Join the World's Biggest Reading Party!



Serena Williams did it. So did football superstar Tiki Barber and Oscar winners Gwyneth Paltrow and Morgan Freeman. Since the National Education Association (NEA) launched Read Across America in 1997, some pretty famous people have cracked open a book for a cause: the world’s biggest reading party. On March 3rd, your kids can join them!

Learning to read is a rite of passage for kids. But it’s a challenge for almost 40% of them, according to the NEA. That’s why they decided to use Dr. Seuss’s birthday as an excuse to give books a little sizzle. Across the nation, more than 45 million people are expected to take part in the celebration. The mission: make reading fun. Really fun.

Teachers, principals, parents, and librarians are doing some crazy things to get kids excited about reading—from eating fried worms, to parachuting out of airplanes to congratulate a group of kids who completed a reading challenge. They’ve kissed yaks, canonballed into gigantic vats of green jello, and velcroed themselves to gym walls. Seattle’s Pike Place fishmongers painted their daily catch red, blue, and yellow after the Seuss classic One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. 106 meteorologists traded in their weather hats for “reading hats”.

Why all the fuss? Well for one, kids who read for fun, do better in school and better on standardized tests, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s report card. Reading often and early to young children also affects their ability to count and write their names. But more than that, reading is just plain magic. “When children open the pages of a good book, reading can ignite their imaginations,” says NEA President Reg Weaver.

With so many entertainment choices at their fingertips, kids don’t always think to crack open a book. The point of Read Across America, is to urge them to consider it. “Although children have many distractions like TV, video games and high-tech gadgets, nothing rivals the power of reading the written word,” says Weaver. “The challenge is cutting through the competitive clutter to get children energized about reading.”

On March 3rd, there will be teachers cooking up plates of green eggs and ham, principals duct-taped to a wall, traveling Cat-a-Vans zooming across the country on a 1,200 mile, 18-city tour, books in hand. (12,000 of them!) There will be “Read Across Spring Training”, designed to bring books to ballparks, with Major League baseball stars hosting read-ins for local kids—from Baltimore’s Orioles to LA’s Dodgers.

So get thee to a library! And figure out your own way to make reading come alive. Not just on March 3rd, but every day.

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www.education.com/reference/learningread/

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