Reading for Our Lives: The Urgency of Early Literacy and the Action Plan to Help Your Child [Mīkstie vāki]

Completely revised and updated! Now in paperback. An award-winning journalist and literacy advocate provides a clear, step-by-step guide to helping your child thrive as a reader and a learner

Today’s children face intense pressure to meet rising academic standards and prepare for future careers, but most fall dangerously short. Early struggles with language and literacy often snowball into lasting disadvantages. Millions of U.S. kids don’t learn to read well in elementary school, driving low adult literacy rates and threatening the nation’s economic productivity, public health, and social equity.

In Reading for Our Lives, journalist Maya Payne Smart shows that the literacy crisis starts at home. Too many parents expect schools to unlock their child’s reading potential, unaware that even the best classroom instruction (which most don’t get) can’t make up for weak early preparation or inconsistent support outside of school.

Smart breaks down the latest research to show parents how to do their part to build essential literacy skills. She busts the myth that bedtime stories are parents’ greatest contribution to kids’ reading development. She advocates instead for weaving a range of simple, fun, free literacy habits and activities into everyday family life—and shows you how to do it.

With optimism and evidence, Reading for Our Lives delivers a clear call to action and a path forward for families, schools, and communities to beat the literacy crisis together.

Completely revised and updated! Now in paperback. An award-winning journalist and literacy advocate provides a clear, step-by-step guide to helping your child thrive as a reader and a learner

When her child went off to school, Maya Smart was shocked to discover that a good education in America is a long shot, in ways that few parents fully appreciate. Our current approach to literacy offers too little, too late, and attempting to play catch-up when our kids get to kindergarten can no longer be our default strategy. We have to start at the top. The brain architecture for reading develops rapidly during infancy, and early language experiences are critical to building it. That means parents’ work as children’s first teachers begins from day one too—and we need deeper knowledge to play our positions.

Reading for Our Lives challenges the bath-book-bed mantra and the idea that reading aloud to our kids is enough to ensure school readiness. Instead, it gives parents easy, immediate, and accessible ways to nurture language and literacy development from the start. Through personal stories, historical accounts, scholarly research, and practical tips, this book presents the life-and-death urgency of literacy, investigates inequity in reading achievement, and illuminates a path to a true, transformative education for all.

In this updated edition, new material backs the urgent call for early literacy with even more evidence-based, practice-proven tips and activities, so parents can get to work fast doing the things that matter most. Designed for the parent who wants to spend more time with their child, rather than researching what to do with their child, Reading for Our Lives distills the latest research on all things reading—from the effects of digital devices to the surprising power of conversation.