And virtual. No doubt this is a feature perhaps in our helicopter in age but i think this attitude often fails to promote a sense of independence and kids. They entertain themselves without a device in hand so for reasons both selfish and selfless we know this was an important life skill for them. Our kids have trouble reading for pleasure is perhaps the activity that has suffered the most i its fallen by 30 since 2004. If there is a way to reverse the trend, i think it will have to start with our children and i can think of no one who can help us better than pamela the Childrens Book editor at the New York Times is also the author of the book review podcast. She talks about the research and book for a little bit and she and i are going to have a conversation and then we will open up to conversations from the audience with that i will turn over to pamela. Im telling it for a reason. First of all this is something that happened my last time i came down for the National Book festival we were on the training coulthe trainand got seated sepd they were scattered around we were kind of gathering my family and there was an older couple behind me and they said are those your children and usually associate with fear like oh no what have they done. I was reading the most interesting article in the New York Times about this very subject. She pointed to a piece but as you know when you have a book coming out and this is my piece for the oped section of the times called star for reading about not rewarding reading and that in fact is counterproductive. I said i actually wrote that piece so it is true my kids over ten, 13, 14 but the reason i told the story is because i wanted to relay with naomi alluded to which is people are really panicked about kids reading. I think the reason they are so afraid is not only the value of books but what it signifies both for themselves and for our culture and society. For themselves i think it is unquestioned at this point theres a lothereis a lot of re. You know its important to the Cognitive Development and academic success. We also have research that shows it improves executive function closely tied to the childs social and Emotional Development and my personal opinion is that it also just makes us better human beings so now people are very eager to have their kids become readers. This really wasnt the case i want to say in the 70s and 80s when i was coming of age at that point. If you think about the word book worm to have the basic coordinated skills on the Playing Field none of which i had tha but they want their kido be readers and theres all kinds of efforts on the local level to get kids to read, and yet as suggested i was asked by a group at the time to create a kind of side for the website we have done. There was a guide i had read several times even though i have yet to try to meditate and others to sort of live a better life and they came to me and said what about reading and book seemebooks and to me this was te obvious answer because it is something i always wanted to do and something that in my position as the parent of three kids i knew many wanted to do so because together and created a digital guide. It went online and went viral. Questions and comments came in and one of the most common is how do i turn this into a book. You would think that it should be a book and in fact that is ts would see theaboutand in fact tn davis to expand on all of the research that we have done and the advice we had and the recommendation so we had chartered into a book in short order when i was the Childrens Book editor and even ongoing in this job now i got a lot of questions from parents and a lot of what we wanted to do in the book is to address those questions and they can be very basic a lot of times they say he likes graphic novels and hates photographs should he do. So very specific questions but then there are the bigger questions like what do i do if my kid doesnt like to read or winch with mike to start reading. Or my childs recorded teacher says that he is two levels behind where he is steady and i dont know what to do about it and once they learn to read or they wont ask what if shes this reading is boring or only wants to read graphic novels, what if with the jeffersons insd she doesnt want to deal with anything else. So, what we first see in the questions i as there are a lot f myths out there around breathing and what makes a reader. Nothing is as important to raising a reader asked reading aloud to your child. This is the thing Everybody Knows they are supposed to do and in fact it is true you should read out loud to your child and there are a lot of ways in which. Another interesting statistic thats just as powerful as the number of books in your home. Its not immediately obvious but its not tied to income or education levels so it isnt just something people that have a lot of money and books in their home have an advantage that something anyone can do because as we all know they are incredibly easy to acquire online and you can also go to the library. When you have books in your home you are saying something about your family culture and they sure anyone here that has children knows one of the most annoying things to hear from a child is im bored. Its hard to be bored if theyre constantly bookthereare constanu and books not only in the library and the home but for each child if they dont have their own room a bookshelf in a shared room. Kids are inquisitive teachers did like to collect it on things. He should have a place for their own books that they manage on their own but they should also be throughout the house. They should be in the parlor, where the television is, where the computers are, in the kitchen where cooks books can be and in the bathroom where everyone doesnt love reading af they are not on there id have obviously. Former his better than the latter. Its important to keep books in the home. If you dont own the book and go to the library and take out 20 or 30 a week make sure you have a constant rotating in their and that is easy to remember his kids dont always know what they want to read. They are still developing their interest to take out books youre not sure aryouare not suo interest them, books that are more visual to always allow them the opportunity to turn into a book. A child learns to read independently better reader they will be for life. This is a method easy to believe because the appearance and in terms of milestones its natural for us to think they will do something earlier and be better. The analogy i like to think of his shoelaces if a child learns to tie their shoelaces at the age of four isnt going to make her better at the age of 25 spanish didnt learn until she was ten and the same goes for reading. It isnt related to future reading or cognitive ability. This is something many countries in europe know very well. Germany, scandinavian countries to even begin teaching reading until age seven or eight because the Research Supports it. Kids brains are not necessarily all able to do the kind of complicated decoding reading requires and moreover if you do start to teach at a very early age of three or four or five of the child iwhen the child is noy become frustrated, annoyed that they have negative feelings associated, they think this is just something im not good at, this isn isnt for me and it ls to a lot of years of anxiety and frustration that again dont correlate well with the child grows up and says this is something i want to do with my free time. So there is zer theres zero coi can say even through personal experience with my three kids to one reading the latest is the most ambitious. Heres another. Reading the same book over and over i can tell you the number of parents who first it was harry potter sort of my kid will not stop reading harry potter, she doesnt want to read anything else and now people think or know its even worse its a terrible graphic novel. I have some reassurance on that front. Theres actually a lot of good to reading over and over and there is a reason kids do it in to changes for everthe changes t its true for adults. With babies and toddlers they benefit they learn to recognize the words. If your child has memorized board books and this goes back to the family culture. When you go out and run errands and if you end up in the inevitable moments whether it is a Doctors Office rather than to do the easy thing and pull out the phone even if you are occupied if they memorized the book they can read it to themselves and then again, i have a feeling i am a reader from the very early age and older children benefit emotionally from rereading books having been a bookish child myself its good for kids to reread and if any adult knows when you read read a book as an adult you get Something Different from it each time so if you read at age 25 and then at 40 many of the things in the book you actually have experienced yourself and the passing of generations you might not have appreciated when you were 25 and you get more out of it if you think about a child developing at every moment with the read six months from now they are going to read it in a different way than i previously read it. They are going to get more out of it and see more things because they are not only getting to know it better but they are in a different place themselves so its good for kids to read and not worry if they are stuck. Prince to wor that work with thr children starting in preschool and teach them how to read and progress year by year so this again feels like an obvious course because we all hear about Parent Involvement and we know we are supposed to be supportive of our childs education at all if that is true. We should be doing those things, but school is where children learn to read. Home is where children learn to love to read into that i and thy different job for parents. If you think about trying to get your kids to do something to get the mechanics to want to do something thats different from getting a child who wants to do something to choose to do something to enjoy to do something. And so if your child is struggling for astruggling for n to read in school, the last thing he is going to want to do is have that experience replicated at home. If hes feeling bad about the fact that he is in this group and everyone else thinks they are in group n. And then you are forcing him to go through those levels at home its continuing what might be a negative experience. So while hes struggling to learn how to read at school, trust them to do that job. If you have doubts you can always consult your business specialist. You can make sure that its not pressure in your home and when n youre with youyou are with yout rather than have him read and struggled through those books. In the rulings they wrote first along with other readers one of the main characters that is a very traumatizing to process. If the kid wasnt there yet but if they do they read it aloud. It is something to aspire and again its about being the reward if your child wants to read harry potter wait until shes ready to read those books and then let her read them herself and again why would you give that away that is the motivator for her. Similarly there are a lot of theories that are really not great reading for parents and i dont know how many parents of Young Children there are in this room but if you are the parent of young girls you probably know rainbow series. This is a great series for little kids. Its terrible for adult. It is about 70,000 written by a non person named daisy meadows who doesnt exist. Exist. Anand with calls that are four, five, six or seven or eight of them. They are torture for appearing to read out loud. Kids love them if most parents want to try to kill themselves after the fourth book because they start with the same prolog. Im not saying anything bad. They serve a function and that is the kids love them and us what they want to read in order to read this book. They have their own beauty and function and if people dont like looking at the pictures will into adulthood, there would be no instagram to observe the visuals to understand the pictures and follow the sequence of events through the art of the visual storytelling. And if your child is working on a book at school that says, you know, the cat sat on the mat, chances are his or her brain go beyond that in terms of what they are interested in an storytellinstorytelling and if m not going to read any more to you, you are essentially punishing them for becoming an independent reader an and so may kids especially if theyve grown up in a home where reading aloud to your child is as a family ht and a pleasure having the rug pulled out from underneath them is in punitive. And moreover, if it denies them the opportunity to enjoy books that have a rich vocabulary that are more visually interesting than those that they are getting at school. In a similar way at the same time that they are struggling through those levels of early readers, you should continue to read aloud picture looks to them but if youre reading the hobbit out loud or little house on the prairie, whatever the series might be, to continue to do that because kids are like adults. They enjoy storytelling in all of its sort of various ways and just like many of us, while we might enjoy reading, we might also occasionally like to read a domestic killer or spy novel or books on audio at any given moment and kids are the same way. The best Childrens Books are classics. This is kind of a mess. There are books out there for kids when we become parents or grandparents we think i cant wait to share dr. Seuss or im a bunny or whatever the favorites are from childhood and there is nothing wrong with you that i think the reason people go back to that is a because they dont know the whole world thats out there. And we are living in a new golden age of Childrens Books and i dont just say that because i work at the review or as a book editor. I was so shocked how Childrens Books have become when i was an editor that i asked at the time i was not the editor of the book review, i asked for more pages and there were still more the tn deserved attention and i deserve to write. I started writing one Online Review a book just to be able to cover a small sliver of the greatness thats out there. The books have improved at every age and a free format. Even with Something Like board books which are those the dead kids chew on, they are now available in many formats like those that are deliberately created to go in the bathtub, theres all kind of board books and because of production along with the ways in which they tend to be created, there are things that they can do with cutouts and things they can do it used to b be good to average a pictue of two adopted into a format because it couldnt hold as many pages and now theyve improved the production to the point where they dont have to average to picturthe picture books so te better than ever. It is such a shame the book review has to be printed on newsprint because of glorious illustrations and quality of the story is truly phenomenal. I have to say also the diversity of the Childrens Book in terms of the kind o of experiences and the children that are depicted in the pages have improved enormously and reflect our world today. You cannot publish a picture book today with all these faces and thats good for not only children of color to see themselves reflected in the pages of the book they read but its also good for children who are white and do not necessarily encounter those experiences in their everyday lives because they will. Ththe exciting to one books i te most powerful paths to. Its a way that we can see through other peoples eyes. We can see their stories and learn about other experiences. That is something now all children can do. They are also much more global we have been coming from europe, latin america, now starting more and more from asia and china and that they are now producing really incredible work and all of that is coming over here so it is opening up. I was obsessed with biography and there was a wall in the library and the Childrens Library biography and ive become an alphabetical looking. I would go from Abigail Adams to clara barton to Dolly Madison and essentially it was all first ladies and nurses and that was great i liked reading about them but now there are childrens biographies of everyone that you can imagine from artists to entrepreneurs, writers, politicians, public service, people who have excelled in public service, sports heroes, across the spectrum and highly illustrated in a beautifully produced and they run from quite young lots of board books you might have seen some of these he wrote books from very Young Children during the through picture books for older kids, kids that are more visual that appreciates seeing rich photography and the photography thats produced in all these books again because of the printing costs and production in asia its gotten much better so we book of photographs that used to be unaffordable from those kids in the 70s or 80s now you have places Like National geographic producing incredible photography books for kids. And then there are lots of books in terms of middle grades that reflect a world in which kids are living now i and another can agree that it of this young adult books. It didnt exist. You basically went and would leapfrog to dc andrews. An older incarnations they reflect the experiences and desires and the way in which they work is truly remarkable because they know what theyre up against. Theyre up against tik tok, fort nite and instagram. If you havent read default in our stores which most people know about to Cancer Patients thatofall in love and basicallye books tap into the immediacy and intensity of our emotions in a way books to do when i was growing up and then in terms of fantasy these are plot driven because if they dont grab you by page two, theyve lost you to the internet or amazon or wherever else kids will go and spend their free time. Im going to run through some quick tips to give you some big ideas and specific things you can do. Reading should be fun. It shouldnt be a chore. If you want to stay up in bed quietly reading you can stay up at 7 30. To want to read and review reading in a positive light. Another big idea everyone learns to read. You were not there as their taskmaster. You can do a lot to help a child learn to read about the more they read out how the more that will ultimately help them read of school. Trust them to handle the nuts and bolts and go go at their own pace and big mistake is. If you make a mistake that is a good thing. Its good for them to see that this is an imperfect process. A lot of parents after a long day of working in the office are exhausted. Create a family culture around reading. This is important when you were at the family table for dinner you can talk about the books you are reading it about just what you are watching on netflix. You can watch based on books together and show off your own reading. Its a very fun message to kids when they say we are going to watch a movie do you want to come. They would rather finish what im reading. That sends a message to them and its also important if you set rules around screens in your home for example if you say in a public area that you follow that your self which i know can be hard for adults but if you are saying its time to read into youreading yourscrolling on yout sends a mixed message so its important for parents to be part of this. Give them a buck. Personally inscribed it. Its just the books they got from grandpa or grandpa inscribed books to your kids and teach them to treat them with respect and to donate them to the library to donate them to schools, book fairs and then let them show how books are made and what is behind it, allow them to see the process. When i was at the National Book festival, i was worried because they had one room for the largest greatest authors and she had a full house with Something Like 700,000 people on the waiting list and other people who were going to be in a room who is a very popular graphic novelist and they were used to develop the room it was a huge success into the room was filled to overflowing and one of the things she did in that fashion is to show off the books and artworks that she created and about how the process worked as a graphic novelist writing the test for the buck. Let your child take charge. Allow them to feel your respect for your own choices and i will end with an image with my coauthor keys arranged very deliberately according to his own interest. Thank you so much i welcome your questions and then hopefully questions from all of you. You can find many more tips in the book and what i like as a parent as three children myself, becausbut it has recommendationr sort of your role if your child is obsessed with harry potter, they might also like this. Its helpful in that way, too mac. But i want to talk about maybe just a couple of minutes on the question of the competing things. Kids dont have a little free timlot of freetime and so it fet to set aside reading time because there are so many other whether its the structured sports activities or schoolwork or other obligations and how you sort of create that and make that a priority for kids when it seems like Everything Else comes first. It is a challenge for everyone because theres Extracurricular Activities and various distractions making books become something they wanted to because ultimately a lot of this is going to come down to their choice particularly as they get older, and thats when you start to see a lot of falloff in this plan also we as parents and our schools send the message, its important. One thing i think distracting as when you look at the libraries of schools they would be incredibly rich and then they are turned into Media Centers and the librarians are being let go and we try to encourage enthusiasm but i dont think of it as carving up a time for reading. I honestly do think that its always time to read a book and my kids are sort of always shoving it into the nuts and crannies of the moments they have between anything else and thats honestly ideally what you want because it is to sort of set it aside it predates this idea of a task of something that has to be done. Like 20 minutes a night. Its a very different kind of mindset so i urge parents to think about this. I hate to say it but in a way that they think of violin practice, you have to think about how do i create intrinsic motivation as opposed to rewards and punishment because alternately it is going to be that kids choice. From an early age i could see even if you have for example if you are reading to them before bed each night to make sure that isnt the only time. Its good to have the practice. Its especially good to wind down and stay off of the screen, keep them out of the bedroom but you also want to make sure that they are reading in the morning when they wake up and they are reading in between doing other things. So its been like always carrying books with you and when you are going on vacation as a family asking what books are you bringing. Again, little sort of mindset list being like we are not buying books on this trip so if you dont bring enough books and you run out, its on you. I always give in at the bookstore. That is my family policy i dont necessarily spoil them with Everything Else that i usually walk out of the bookstore was quite a big bill. I do, too mac. You can say we are not buying souvenirs but we will always get you books from another country. If you are in the states or somewhere in an englishspeaking country, we will make sure we go to a bookstore and pick out three books when we get there. But that kind of thing where it becomes part of what your family does and there are ways in which to arrange travel around that. If there are again, maybe not, maybe let it run out of batteries and make sure everyone brings a book with them. Make sure again it is scattered in the back of their cars. Ideally you dont want to subset of time for reading you want the atmosphere in which they are looking for that time. And im not the editor of the book review i encourage my kids to read the Childrens Book reviews ddeltreviews ddelta m, ten after seven i encourage them to read the wall street journal and New York Times in the Childrens Book section so they can tell me if there is a book that are interested in and want to order as professional book reviewers. That is a great way to empower kids. At moments i felt like my kids didnt know what to read i might say heres this book i think you might like why dont you pick the one you want to pick and choose and then give me a review and to have a kind of professional advantage when i was the Childrens Book editor to bring a bunch of books from work and okay let me know if these are any good so i know whether we should cover them or not. I wanted to open up for questions. If there is any of the boo book issues or the culture of bringing reading into your home. What is your favorite Childrens Book illustrator . That isnt an easy one. That is a very difficult one. I have so many it is hard to choose. I will mention one person who is a very versatile illustrator and also a book artist whose name is Patrick Mcdonald and i think my Favorite Book by him is me, james and its about the childhood of James Goodall and how she grew up in the notebook observing the world around her and how that led her to become a scientist and ends with a brew productions of that image of baby chimpanzee reaching back to touch her hand and i cry every time i get to that part but what is so beautiful is for very Young Children it really gets to the way in which children think about the world around them it starts off for going into the chicken coop to see how the chicken and egg come to be its also about nature and what Patrick Mcdonald does, he has a book called the perfectly messed up story. I dont know if it is a dog or cat or a bear. Wanderinwandering along and itd in this kind of very nice upbeat wavelike i cant remember the characters name would have been a wonderful day, going along everything was sunny and bright and all of a sudden it breaks the wall and is interrupting his story ruining it. Kids loved that story. Love that story. I am a fan of books that make kids laugh. Anything we called reluctant reader and does the mother of two sons, i definitely understand why because my sons are readers of a lot of boys a are. One great way is humor so i respond well to any book that makes the kids laugh. You were talking about how this was the golden age of Childrens Books it seems we were sort of experiencing a fewer and fewer kids wanting to read for pleasure or want to read for pleasure but it seems to be so much out there why did you see this golden age us let me continue to talk about the boys for one second because i think its important and i didnt touch on it earlier when you look around, and this will come around to answer the question, boys read for less thawest endgirls, they are lessn National Surveys to see that its a favorite activity for them. They read fewer books over the summer. Many of them dont read a single book over the summer. , a couple of statistics with two other things we know from National Surveys, one they say they are less likely to see their mothers reading than their fathers reading and it goes back to roll models. Its important both. Star ratings are kids and then secondly, both parents, mothers and fathers are less likely to read their son into their daughters. I want to get back to that answer your question. One of the things people have observed and theres a lot more books for boys because theres a wider recognition of the different ways in which kids read and some are more they will say my kid cant sit still while he is reading. Okay there are great interactive books, theres popup books and things to do and im not talking about electronic buttons, just books that allow kids to sort of get in there and i also would say its okay to Wander Around while you are reading if they want to see whats on the picture they will come back and mostly they do because they are telling their own story and graphic novels are another way to get boys i talk about the National Geographic books a lot of them are about animals or those are books and its important if your child gravitate towards those and many boys do, and girls but boys we are talking about now, not just to see those are graphic novels or comics, because many of us, when you look at the offers and we ask this question in the times regularly what did you read growing up, many of the novelists grew up reading superhero comics, calvin and hobbes. Everyone can enjoy those books and grow to appreciate tolstoy. There is a lot more books out there. I think graphic novels again you might look back on captain underpants, and i did before looked into them and i do not nowknow, i look up to them. They are doing something incredible. When the kids books, they are getting kids to read and probably otherwise wouldnt and if those kids love those books they will then move on to other books and do so again i think there is a recognition and teetering to a variety of readers. One of the other things i wanted to pick your brain about, you mentioned the new category. My older to have gotten into the category and some of the material feels to be totally inappropriate even for kids who are ostensibly the target for it so what makes a book a buy a book and how can we sort of figure out what maybe we need two categories were Something Like that if the parent isnt going to read every book before handing them over to a child. I think of a lot about what is appropriate and what is not in xavier towards allowing them to read inappropriate books and i do this for a number of reasons. If you are trying to get kids to read a book theres nothing to induce a kid to read a book more than saying that isnt appropriate for you if you want your teenager to read about, told them they cant and they will. I have to say again if they are going to learn about something dangerous or something unknown, something to think beyond their years, and my kids have done it all and i could share some semi horrifying stories would you rather than read it in a book and carefully look at the written, rewritten, edited, overseen by people making sure not to offend that cater to the academic market and institutional market or rather then go online and google it. Not just also the book experience allows them to process it in a way seeing it on the screen takes a lot more time. When my kids have seen something inappropriate they are more likely to have a nightmare than to tell me they are having nightmares because they read some scary in a book that happened. Thi this is talking about a culture of readers. It enables you to have a conversation because remember this, too mac kids of all ages often find it easier to talk about the difficult situation or Emotional Experience when it is not about them, so a character in a book they can talk about it that way, something that they are worried about what they can talk about it themselves they can say theres a character in this book. I remember a moment when my daughter was only 10yearsold she came downstairs writing books for kids ages eight to 12 and she said what does this word mean and i thought we are not going to have that conversation yet. My son reads words about sports figures in sports history so the drug conversation comes up a l lot. The reason why it was an ethic is because because the characth to cut a sister that was an opioid addict and that is an issue that affects a lot of americans and if you think about those that have that situation and their family lives or community, to see that in a book and handled in such contexts that is hugely powerful to the child to see something that might be upsetting or disturbing to them handled in that way. For my daughter it was something completely new but again i think that i would rather learn about it there then somewhere i have zero control over and she wont come to mean necessarily an me k what is this because for the child to look something up on the computer i dont think they should have seen that they are not going to bring it up necessarily but in a bucket something they can talk to you about. One last question for you. I noticed you suggested one of the tips in passing reading shouldnt be competitive and is so much of what we are trying to induce orchids to do we use competition as a way with siblings like who can read the most books or whatever it is. I was wondering why you think that is particularly harmful in the context of reading. Its a little bit about extrinsic awards and not intrinsic rewards. You have three children so you know this, too mac. My first child was a girl and my second was a boy and a third one i thought is that going to be like this one or that one, not in terms of a totally different child but they are all totally different readers so there is no competition in a way. My daughter reads for comfort but she also will read history. Right now she was given in school and grew solomons book the treaty and she thought im ditching this i want to read a real book. My middle child loves classics. Hes 13 mostly reading adult books but what was interesting with him he would read books he read the jungle book and came away with these books have not aged very well. Some people say dont give your kids those books, protect them but many kids can handle it and you know your child best so you know the kind of things they can process and my younger child likes to read encyclopedias. The last thing i want to read and my other two wouldnt want to read about so i try to think of it as they are all different you dont want them against each other and what you dont want to do is have one child think im just not a reader, soandso is really good she is the reader. You are readin are reading whate different kinds of books and maybe she is rating long novels but this is you do. We hav have have sorted and d has a different taste so there is an argument whether such a sibling might like this kind of book and the other will get upset like i like those kind of books, too mac. Another way is to foster a more cooperative way of doing it like as each of my kids got folks out of the room because in my profession they get a lot of books. They have to go through them and i ask them which ones do you think should go to this kid were a cousin because i dont think your brothers will be into it, anand they love the process. Im the older brother or sister and i know the younger ones best so im going to give them these books, and it becomes something that offers a different atmosphere. Thank you. Please join in welcoming pamela today. [applause] the tech reporting was largely likely fearing young founders coding the next billiondollar app. And this mythology like a very popular story to tell and i think that exchanged over the past like the narrative has changed theyve appeared on booktv [inaudible] calling on them to ask i know the name they called in my unique walk in the white house in a strange perch that i sit in it is always on the table you may not always hear about it but its always on the table everything deals with matters of race particularly today when you see the president going to baltimore what is the issue and what was said that is my town i grew up there but my story is a story about trying to survive in the white house but did not view me as a person, let alone a reporter. At the white house tried to take me out of there in any way they could calling me names, telling me stop shaking my head, dont have to be lobbying on me, and there is proof. You didnt grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth or a Million Dollars or have the pedigree. And the United States targets me and im still standing. It needs to be told. And i believe it reads like a novel but its real life. Its Reality Tv Show stars its a story that tries to help inspire you to understand your voice matters. Even though im a reporter im telling you what is happening daytoday in the white house. Im still part of this we the people that are forming the more perfect union. At the end of the day, they never realized they were questioning bill clinton, george w. Bush, the first black president , barack obama, they never imagined that donald trump would be. But i stand on the pillars thats that they put in place. My story is your story. Thats the story for all of us, its the story our children need to know that this is what happened. I stand on the shoulders of the trail blazers of the white house and so many other others but wht happened to them in the 50s and 60s, 70 years ago i encourage you to read my story