Nurturing the next generation of readers

Check out Barack Obama's speech to the American Library Association from earlier this summer. He's really a lovely and inspiring speaker, and to my mind appeals to the best and most hopeful parts of our nature. A couple examples:

And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we’ve changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good.

I believe that if we want to give our children the best possible chance in life; if we want to open doors of opportunity while they’re young and teach them the skills they’ll need to succeed later on, then one of our greatest responsibilities as citizens, as educators, and as parents is to ensure that every American child can read and read well.

I was a library junkie from a young age, but too many children aren't, and that has to change - in order to ensure that we raise a generation of Americans that love reading and learning, that can draw on a wide range of knowledge, and make the connections that our increasingly interconnected world demands.