Today I saw a story on NPR about the new Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Walter Dean Myers.  He is the third person to be chosen for this two-year post.  During the radio interview, he talks about how he wants more kids to be read to nationwide.

It's a generally held belief that kids need to be read to every day from an early age in order to teach them to respect books, love reading, and most importantly of all, to read well.  Most families I've babysat over the years have dutifully incorporated "story time" into their bedtime routines, but is that really all that's needed to teach kids to embrace books?

In fact, it's not.  Reading to kids daily certainly helps, but studies have also found a significant correlation between years of education and how many books the child's home had as they were growing up.  The implication is that being surrounded by books actually has more of an impact on literacy and a love of reading, and if you picture parents who hate reading treating bedtime stories as a chore, you can probably see why.

But wait -- before you run out and buy lots of books for your house, consider this: These studies looked at the number of books in the house simply because it was a good indicator of how the parents and the rest of the family feel about reading.  Adults who love to read, and who value books, tend to own a lot of books.  Adults who don't, won't.

So, in truth, what this all comes down to is modeling a desired behavior -- "monkey see, monkey do," one of the best ways to teach a child anything, whether intentionally or inadvertently.  Parents who fill their house with books and spend their free time reading are likely to encourage their kids to value literacy, whether they realize it or not.

This doesn't mean you can or should give up the daily storytime -- it IS still important to read to kids, after all -- just that the storytime alone isn't enough.  If you design your life around a respect for the written word, your kids will naturally grow up in an environment where reading is an important and valued skill.