By Richard Bammer
Researchers and educators know that children who read — and are read to — do better in school and life.
That, in part, explains why the first-ever Read Across America Day came to be on March 2, 1998, when, 10 months earlier, a small reading task force at the National Education Association hatched the idea, and, at the same time, wanted to celebrate reading throughout the United States on Dr. Seuss’ birthday year after year.
And so the 21st annual Read Across America Day was Friday across the nation, up and down California, including in Vacaville, where students and teachers at Markham Elementary, just to name one school in Vacaville Unified, observed the day with celebrity readers Mayor Len Augustine and Vacaville Police Capt. Ian Schmutzler.
Augustine, a retired Air Force colonel, held court in teacher Alex Lander’s sixth-grade class in room 33, an aging portable at the Markham Avenue campus.