You may have noticed a big poster like this picture in your bookstore or library. It's part of the national literacy campaign sponsored by the Association of Booksellers for Children, The Most Important 20 Minutes of Your Day . . . Read with a Child, and it reminds all of us "big people" of the value of reading in the cognitive, emotional and social development of the individual.
Besides it's fun. You can introduce your very favorite children's book to your very favorite child. You can even have the perfect excuse to read a new children's book. "Just checking it out for the literacy campaign," you say.
The poster features the art of Debra Frasier, author/artist of "On the Day You Were Born." Frasier has also written a poem about the experience of reading a picture book with a child. Here are the last lines:
Just lifting the cover of the book between you
can become the silent signal that the way is opening,
and beauty beckons.
This is not a small thing
at the end of a complicated century.
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