A Day for Book Lovers

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Today is a day for book lovers everywhere! National Bookmobile Day collides with School Librarians' Day in only the best way, celebrating those who make free books available. It's a perfect day to visit the library, whether your library is a school library, a freestanding library or a library on wheels. As someone who volunteered in her local library in junior high, whose first job was in a bookstore, and who wrangles words for a living, I have a particular appreciation for any place that puts books and readers together.

Last year, my local library system became a part of an initiative that does just that. The 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program aims to make it possible for every child to listen to and/or read 1000 books before he or she enters kindergarten. Books can be repeated (that sound you just heard was parents of toddlers sighing over the demand from their pint-sized listeners to read the book "Again!") Programs like these are one way -- and a fairly easy way at that -- of closing the vocabulary gap between rich and poor and leveling the playing field for all kindergartners.

Sound hard? Not really, especially since even babies love to be read to.

"If you read just 1 book a night, you will have read about 365 books in a year. That is 730 books in two years and 1,095 books in three years. If you consider that most children start kindergarten at around 5 years of age, you have more time than you think (so get started)."(1000booksbeforekindergarten.org)

The more we read and talk and sing and share language with our kids, the better their language gets and the less likely it is that our words just sound like blah, blah, blah.

Did I mention it's also Blah, Blah, Blah Day?

What will you read today?