Lack of librarians will hurt younger readers

How do children become proficient readers? It’s not a mystery. Decades of education research has demonstrated that children become good readers by discovering the joy of reading at an early age.

Stephen Krashen, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Southern California, is one of our foremost authorities on this critical subject. He concludes in his book, The Power of Reading that it is only through what he calls “free voluntary reading” that children become good readers. Reading instruction, according to Krashen, just doesn’t work. Turning kids on to reading by matching their interests to the right books is the only thing that works.

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