With school out and summer in full swing, many local groups are positioned to take advantage of the plethora of students looking for something to do until school starts back. One of the best examples is the Summer Reading Program put on every year by the Bradshaw-Chambers County Library.

For some time now, the library has put on this summertime event as a way of encouraging kids to read more. It seems to have worked. At this year’s registration, 300 area children signed up on the first day.

The months-long event has much to entice the youth of Chambers County, but what is really important is the promotion of literacy, which is expected of our community libraries.

Simply put, literacy is one of the greatest advantages a person can have. The amount of written information a person consumes and digests on a daily basis is astounding, each of which makes us just a little more informed about the world than we were before.

Reading does so many things. It increases the intelligence and improves the vocabulary. Depending on the book, you can learn just about anything by reading. Reading can open up an untold number of worlds through stories, both old and new. Many of the top movies and television shows are now based around predating books or book series’.

With so many positives, the narrative that reading done by the youth has decreased in recent years is disheartening. There might be some weight to this claim, but the best way to prove it wrong is to get our children interested in reading. This is the summer to do it, with many recent, current and upcoming blockbuster films being based on books.

So, sign your kids up for the Summer Reading Program or just take them to a library. The world could use more readers.