Deb­bie Ja­cob

There's noth­ing like a hol­i­day with­in a hol­i­day to dri­ve a very im­por­tant point home: When it comes to read­ing, there is a very small win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty that opens for par­ents to nur­ture chil­dren who will de­vel­op in­to life-long read­ers.Miss that op­por­tu­ni­ty, and the win­dow slams shut. It's stuck. There's lit­tle you can do to open it again.

It's no sur­prise that thought would cross my mind on an East­er Mon­day that marks the end of East­er hol­i­days for most stu­dents in T&T. My bet is that many chil­dren took a break from read­ing dur­ing this hol­i­day.Many oth­er chil­dren would not have seen this school va­ca­tion as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pick up a book.If par­ents did their job right, then many oth­er chil­dren–even teens–would have been read­ing dur­ing the hol­i­day be­cause their par­ents helped them to de­vel­op the dis­ci­pline of read­ing.

Those are the chil­dren who know that there is no va­ca­tion from read­ing. Read­ing is a habit that they sim­ply can't live with­out.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers