If you are a housewife, take pride in that.
Readers don't grow in trees. But they are grown-in places where they are fertilized with lots of print, and above all, read to daily.
No player in the NBA was born wanting to play basketball. The desire to play ball or to read must be planted. The last 25 years of research show that reading aloud to a child is the oldest, cheapest and must successful method of instilling that desire. Shooting baskets with a child creates a basketball player; reading to a child creates a reader.
You became a reader because you saw and heard someone you admired enjoying the experience, someone led you to the world of books even before you could read, let you taste the magic of stories, took you to the library, and allowed you to stay up later at night to read in bed.
Reading aloud is the best advertisement because it works. It allows a child to sample the delights of reading and conditions him to believe that reading is a pleasureful experience, not a painful or boring one.
The more you read, the better you get, the more better you get, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it.
Every time we read to a child, we're sending a 'pleasure' message to the child's brain. You could even call it a commercial, conditioning the child to associate books and print with pleasure.
The first half of life is learning to be an adult-the second half is learning to be a child.
I hope you either take up parachute jumping or stay out of single motored airplanes at night.
I believe it's our responsibility as citizens to get in there and not accept the constant failure of prisons to deal with racism, lack of privilege, and impoverishment - not accept any of that. Just get in there!
Memories are the only real gifts we can leave our children.