A Wonderful, Happy Obligation

"We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside."

--Author Neil GaimanFrom Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreamingA lecture explaining why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens
The Guardian

More excerpts from the same piece (please click on the source link above & read the whole thing!):

"The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them.

"Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like... You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.

"We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy. "