We can’t wait for you to see the vast array of book titles offered at this year’s Book Fair! From stories, hobbies, and jokes, to science, history, and biographies. You can find books that will incite imagination and inspire learning. Reading levels range from children’s board books to adult chapter books on faith.

Here are a few favorite quotes on why we value instilling a love for reading to any and every child, teen, parent, and grandparent:

Reading aloud with children is an essential component to language development and is one of the most important activities for preparing them to succeed as readers.  – The Commission on Reading

Words. A child needs a forest of words to wander through, a sea of words to splash in. A child needs to be read to… – Frank Bruni, Author and Journalist

Almost as big of a mistake as not reading to children at all is stopping too soon. – Jim Trelease, The Read-Aloud Handbook

A nation that doesn’t read much doesn’t know much. And a nation that doesn’t know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box, and the voting booth. – Jim Trelease, The Read-Aloud Handbook

When we read aloud, we give our kids practice living as heroes. Practice dealing with life-and-death situations, practice living with virtue. As the characters in our favorite books struggle through hardship, we struggle with them. We consider whether we would be as brace, as bold, as fully human as our favorite heroes. And then we grasp–on a deeper, more meaningful level–the story we are living ourselves as well as the kind of character we will become as that story unfolds. – Sarah Mackenzie, The Read-Aloud Family

The books are important, but the conversations they started and the bonds they created are what really matter. – Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise

When read-aloud time doesn’t look like we originally hoped, we begin to doubt that it’s giving us any of those wonderful benefits…But here’s the thing: it still works. Even when it’s noisy, messy, and more chaotic than you’d like it to be, it works. Even when kids are grumbling, complaining, and don’t seem to be listening, it works. -Sarah Mackenzie, The Read-Aloud Family

But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad of eye, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do. – C.S. Lewis