For more than four decades, one of the single most important predictors12 of later reading achievement has been how much parents read to their child. There are by now a spate of excellent initiatives around the world urging parents to do this, such as the US pediatricians’ highly successful Reach Out and Read13 campaign begun by the pediatricians Barry Zuckerman and Perri Klass; the Italian Born to Read14 project; and Judy Koch’s successful Bring Me a Book15 program in California and China.
