The Greatest Gift We Can Give to Our Youth is a Passion For Literacy

It is my belief that literacy provides our youth with the soul of education and allows them to attain a deeper understanding of what makes us human; the joys, perils, and insights of our experience. I applaud and celebrate those who understand the importance of instilling a passion for literacy in our young people and I am a firm believer that it can start with just a single spark.

Looking back to my childhood, which took place in Brooklyn in the 1920s, the memory of my mother’s reading habits takes root. When she finished her chores for the day and I returned home from school she would be sitting and reading, waiting to serve the evening meal. She was a prodigious novel reader and I watched her read day after day, getting her books out of storefront lending libraries for what I think was ten cents a day.


As a very young child, before I was able to read on my own, my parents read to me from storybooks. My parents’ gift to me one holiday when I was six years old meant more to me than they could know and it was absolutely essential to my grounding in literature. They bought me a set of MY BOOKHOUSE by Olive Beaupré Miller, which was six volumes of stories and rhymes chosen from international literature for children. The offerings in these wonderful books began with nursery rhymes and progressed to material for children as they grew.

I loved those books. I reread them over and over again. They were gorgeously illustrated and I never grew tired of reading them. It was like crossing a moat from the reality of a world of struggle and strife, to a paradise of storytelling, which opened infinite possibilities and aspirations in a young boy confronting a strange and scary future.


Literacy is a prize to be savored and a path to insight and wisdom. Lack of literacy is a creeping danger and neglecting the teaching of literacy to children through indifference, impoverishment and neglect is a travesty that can condemn them to a life of ignorance and enslavement. To truly appreciate the power of literacy is to understand its ability to empower, to get to the heart and soul of human intercourse.


