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Reading for Our Lives

A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six

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Reading for Our Lives

Written by: Maya Payne Smart
Narrated by: Maya Payne Smart
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About this listen

An award-winning journalist and literacy advocate provides a clear, step-by-step guide to helping your child thrive as 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.

©2022 Maya Payne Smart (P)2022 Penguin Audio
Education Parenting & Families Relationships Childhood Education
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What the critics say

"An amazing book for perhaps the most important job parents have: getting our kids to love to read."—Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Daily Stoic, The Obstacle Is the Way, and Ego Is the Enemy

“This book is a wonderful resource for families with young children, as it recognizes them as the child’s first teachers. It weaves together an introduction to early literacy through the child’s ages and stages with recommendations that support raising a reader!”—Ann McClain Terrell, Early Childhood Education Consultant and National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Past President

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