Will your child be a reader?

I'm reading Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf, a researcher who explains, among other things, how the brain learns to read.

She underscores how essential it is that children be read to often:

"Learning to read begins the first time an infant is held and read a story. How often this happens, or fails to happen, in the first five years of childhood turns out to be one of the best predictors of later reading."

In other words, reading to your child (and don't worry about the "first five years" stuff - the later years are just as important) gives him a huge leg up in terms of becoming a great reader.

This is a wonderful book with great insight on the subject. And you can thank me for reading it so you don't have to, because frankly it can be a bit of a slog. But don't worry, I'll bring you the highlights. Yer welcome. Also, I borrowed this image from the Chapters/Indigo site, which is why it says it's 24% off. But why 24 and not 25? A marketing enigma.