I would like to speak of reading and of the town where I grew up; I would like to speak of Stow, Massachusetts, some forty miles from here, as it was in the glorious year 1976.In that bicentennial year, our town was still rural, and in the center stood the...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every English-speaking child is the better for an early friendship with “Mother Goose” — early meaning from birth, because nothing boosts language development better than those catchy rhymes and rhythms. Scholars and educators alike praise the virtues and resonances of these traditional rhymes....