We Didn’t Lose Reading. We Shrunk It.
And families are carrying the weight of that narrowing—often in silence.
I’ve been listening to families for years.
Not from a distance. Not in theory.
In living rooms, school hallways, classrooms, and quiet DMs.
Not just as a witness—but as someone asked to help make sense of it all.
What I’ve heard, over and over, is this:
Reading didn’t disappear from families.
But the way we’ve defined it—especially in schools and systems—has made it feel smaller.
More rigid. More performative.
Easier to measure, harder to love.
When we talk about the reading crisis, we talk about scores.
We talk about gaps, and grade levels, and what kids “should” be doing.
But we rarely talk about what reading feels like in the home.
We say: “Read 20 minutes a day.”
But we don’t show what that looks like in a house where everyone’s tired and stretched.
We send home summer reading logs—
But forget that a log doesn’t build a rhythm.
We build apps that track fluency and comprehension—
But we don’t give parents the tools to build connection.
And slowly, unintentionally, we turn reading into a performance.
We make it about outcomes, not origin.
We forget that for many families, reading used to be shared.
Not with milestone trackers.
Not with leveled books.
But with rhythm. With warmth. With the sound of someone they loved holding a story in their voice.
Now, families are told to track minutes.
To log books.
To raise the score.
But what they really need is permission—
to slow down,
to show up imperfectly,
to read without performing.
Because reading to a child isn’t just one thing.
If it were an eight-slice pie, literacy is only one slice.
The other seven? Presence. Trust. Joy. Identity. Curiosity. Safety. Legacy.
When we make room for all of it,
Reading becomes more than a task.
It becomes a way of being together.
A bond. A breath. A way home.
That’s the culture we’re building here at The BookBind.
Not just better bookshelves or booklists—
but better conversations.
Rooted in family truth.
In lived experience.
In the belief that reading can still hold us—if we let it be what it was always meant to be.
If you’ve ever felt the disconnect between the advice and the reality—this table was built with you in mind.
There’s a seat here for educators.
A seat for parents.
A seat for authors, therapists, and community leaders who are ready to lead differently.
Let’s rebuild reading culture from the inside out.
Together.
My best,
Quinn
As always, well said!!!