A good book is the best friend: books open pathways to new worlds.

"Books fire the imagination, unlike watching the screen, where it's someone else's imagination" Debra says. "When you're reading a book, you have to fill in all the blanks, and I think it does more for your synapses to fill in the blanks."

There is power in the written word, reading specialists and educators agree. Reading presents children with a wealth of ideas and experiences and can model expressive, elegant writing. It is a cornerstone of school success, a skill and passion worth nurturing and supervising.

In fact, reading ability accounts for 90 percent of success in content areas, says Reid Lyon, a National Institutes of Health research psychologist and an adviser to President George W. Bush on early-childhood development and education. After grades three or four, Lyon says, "children's vocabulary is much more reliant on written interchange rather than oral interchange, and most of your vocabulary on college tests comes from reading."