Read to your kids and they'll learn to read.(The Orlando Sentinel)

It was magic.

Not Harry Potter magic, with wizards and wands and goblets of fire. But magic all the same. One day I was listening to my mother reading from Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses" and the next instant I was reading the words for myself. The little black marks on the page were no longer just little black marks but symbols that made sounds that made sense.

"Dark brown is the river, golden is the sand, It flows along forever, with trees on either hand "

It was magic. And it still is.

I don't know the exact date that I learned to read, when my eyes and mind made the necessary, amazing connection. But I know that I would not have learned to read as early nor as easily if my parents hadn't read to me.

Reading experts can …