DC Action just delivered a letter to Mayor Gray urging him to sign on to the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The push is to get all children across the country and in the District reading proficiently by the third grade. Why? Because research shows that if children are not proficient by the end of the third grade, no amount of remediation can catch them up.

TV design shows and magazines (my personal weakness) have made me increasingly allergic to clutter around the house. Still, I've always felt that part of what makes a house a home are the books that fill it--bound slices of life afar and ancient, memoirs, fiction and fantasy. And the latest research shows, despite the heralds of technology, the book is not dead. In fact, the more the better when it comes to our children's futures.