Maria Russo, HOW TO RAISE A READER

Maria Russo, HOW TO RAISE A READER

Maria: Yes, exactly. This is what people do to kids all the time. I'm a huge fan of librarians because librarians actually are on the cutting edge of this stuff. They know. They know the research and they watch kids. There are many librarians in this country who are rebelling and refusing to shelve their books by reading level. A lot of this that we've inherited, it's almost like it just won't leave our consciousness that got in there in the sixties and the seventies. We're all still responding to outdated ideas and notions. Another good one is the idea that comic books and graphic novels are not real books. If your kid is really into reading only graphic novels, well, that's not really reading. That doesn't count. That's ridiculous, especially in this culture we're in. It's such a visual culture. When images and words work together, it's even more powerful. Again, this was what was so great about doing this book. We got to really look at the research. The research shows that -- they did MRIs on the brains of kids who are reading. A kid who's reading a text with only words, one side of the brain is really lit up and working, and that's great.