REWARDS      Pleasure   Escape Information Prestige Salary

DIFFICULTIES      Distractions Lack of print Lack of time Disabilities Negative peers Noise level

• Distractions are a major problem in some homes—too many TV 's, DVD's, phones, video games;,or just the general state of chaos in the home or school;
• For others there's a lack of print—no newspapers, magazines, or books to read. This is most true in poverty situations;
• For some folks it's a lack of time—working too many hours, raising too many kids, rushing to too many games or malls, or too much homework;
• For some people it's a case of not being able to read easily; they're plagued by learning disabilities or decoding woes;
• Other people are surrounded by family or peers who have negative attitudes toward school and reading. "Hey! Nicky -- get your head out of the book and get in here and watch TV with us! Who you tryin' to impress with the readin'?"
• And finally there can be a lack of quiet space; they're surrounded by too much noise at home or too many tests and demands in the classroom.

Author's note: I am embarrassed to write that, due to my own ignorance, the above information is not included in any of the editions of The Read-Aloud Handbook. Only in 2007, while surfing the Web for another item, did I discover Wilbur Schramm's theory. One of the blessings of the Web is that it allows authors and educators to add to their original manuscripts and at least partially correct their mistakes. Thus it's here.

Steve Jobs   "Today he [Jobs] had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” Amazon has its own audio store (AmazonMP3) that it hopes will eventually rival Apple's iTunes; Audible presently sells many of its audio materials through iTunes; Amazon's Kindle device, while initially seen as an electronic book, also had a previously ignored capacity for audio; the marriage of Amazon with Audible would join visual with audio for the first time on a single device.