Jim Trelease famous quotes

05-16-2025

No player in the NBA was born wanting to play basketball. The desire to play ball or to read must be planted. The last 25 years of research show that reading aloud to a child is the oldest, cheapest and must successful method of instilling that desire. Shooting baskets with a child creates a basketball player; reading to a child creates a reader.
-- Jim Trelease

#Basketball #Children #Reading
You became a reader because you saw and heard someone you admired enjoying the experience, someone led you to the world of books even before you could read, let you taste the magic of stories, took you to the library, and allowed you to stay up later at night to read in bed.
-- Jim Trelease

#Book #Night #Magic
The prime purpose of being four is to enjoy being four - of secondary importance is to prepare for being five.
-- Jim Trelease

#Children #Purpose #Four
The more you read, the better you get, the more better you get, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it.
-- Jim Trelease

#You Like It
A nation that does not read much does not know much. And a nation that does not know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box, and the voting booth. And those decisions ultimately affect the entire nation...the literate and illiterate.
-- Jim Trelease

#Home #Decision #Voting
Story is the vehicle we use to make sense of our lives in a world that often defies logic.
-- Jim Trelease

#Stories #Use #World
Skill sheets, workbooks, basal reader, flash cards are not enough. To convey meaning you need someone sharing the meaning and flavor of real stories with the student.
-- Jim Trelease

#Real #Book #Skills
Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon--destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroyus. A nation that doesn't read much doesn't know much. And a nation that doesn't know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth...The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns.
-- Jim Trelease

#Children #Reading #Book
Students who read the most also read the best, achieve the most, and stay in school the longest. Conversely, those who dont read much cannot get better at it.
-- Jim Trelease

#School #Get Better #Students
What we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we make them learn.
-- Jim Trelease

#Children #Desire #Teach
Each day millions of children arrive in American classrooms in search of more than reading and math skills. They are looking for a light in the darkness of their lives, a Good Samaritan who will stop and bandage a bruised heart or ego.
-- Jim Trelease

#Children #Reading #Heart
If you don't read much, you really don't know much. You're dangerous.
-- Jim Trelease

#Danger #Dangerous
Like Scout and her father in To Kill a Mockingbird, my father would pull me onto his lap each night in our four-room apartment and read aloud.
-- Jim Trelease

#Father #Night #Lap
Instead of educating the I.Q., we need to educate the H.Q., the heart quotient, the matters of truth, love, justice, and compassion. There are two ways to do this. One is through the read life experiences and the other is through literature. Literature has the power to take us outside ourselves and returns to ourselves a changed self.
-- Jim Trelease

#Heart #Compassion #Self
We have instant pudding, instant photos, instant coffeeâ€”but there are no instant adults.
-- Jim Trelease

#Coffee #Adults #Pudding

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