Our annual worldwide campaign to raise awareness about the crisis in early literacy through celebrating the joy of reading with children

"Will you read me a story?" This simple question is an invitation to share the joy of reading with a child in your life. At Jumpstart, we know that reading aloud with preschool children lays the groundwork for strong literacy skills and future success in school and in life.

In 2006, we created Jumpstart’s Read for the Record, an international campaign to bring preschool children together with valued grownups in their lives to read the same book, on the same day, in communities all over the world - all to raise awareness about the crisis in early literacy. In 2008 we broke our own world record as nearly 700,000 readers shared the classic children’s tale, Corduroy. On October 8, 2009, Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar was read aloud in classrooms, libraries and homes from Singapore, Tanzania, and Brazil to big cities in the United States such as Chicago and New York and small towns like Kodiak, AK, Independence, MO, and Honey Brook, PA. Hushed with wonder and tickled with giggles, 2,019,752 children around the world simultaneously experienced the joy of reading with an adult in their life, making history yet again by setting a new world record in an effort to combat the early literacy crisis and raise awareness of Jumpstart’s yearlong programs in low-income communities across the nation.