Twelve hundred educators gathered to talk about ways to improve our kids' reading skills. It's impossible for someone to reach his potential without the ability to read. People who are illiterate can't fill out a job application, follow a recipe or read a warning label. But every year, children fall through the cracks, graduate with diplomas they can't read and enter a world in which they can't compete. It's important that educators find innovative ways to help children learn to read.
Parents can make their jobs a lot easier.
Children whose parents read with them develop literacy skills much easier than those whose parents don't. We need to expose children to reading at an early age. Books allow children to think, to dream and to imagine in ways that a flickering image on a television screen can never do. When you open up a book with your children, you open up a world of possibilities they otherwise could never know. Until next week, this is Gov. Mike Huckabee.