Yesterday, as I walked Daisy, I listened to an old Brain Burps about Books podcast by Katie Davis. Katie was interviewing the amazing Carol Rasco of Reading is Fundamental. I stopped mid-stride when I heard Carol say something so important.

I paraphrase but the gist of what she said was that…

… we have keep children connected to literature until they have that aha moment.

For all the reading, talking and thinking I have done about the power and importance of reading, I had never quite thought about it that way but Carol is right. Reading is so powerful that once a child has that moment, the parent and teacher can, in many cases, almost step back. The child can take it from there.

But the key is to hold on to the children until they get there. For some kids, that aha comes while sitting on a parent’s lap at the age of four. For some they will be sitting in a circle on the rug of their first grade class. For others, they will be struggling through short vowel words with the reading specialist at their school in the third grade before that moment comes.

And for many, many others we will let go of them before that moment comes. In many cases, we are letting go of an entire school, an entire community. And our children deserve more than that. Let us hold on to each one of them for just a little bit longer. Just long enough for that aha moment…