"READ ALOUD HANDBOOK" AUTHOR TO SPEAK IN SPRING 1995

The author of "New Read Aloud Handbook" and two anthologies of children's stories will speak on reading aloud at the Bridging the Gap parenting conference this spring.

Best-selling author Jim Trelease hopes to help motivate children to make books into friend.

Trelease claims that the decline in American literacy is due in large part to the fact that two-thirds of our children no longer want to read.

"No player in the NBA was born wanting to play basketball," he said. "So, too, the desire to read must be planted. It is a fact that reading aloud to a child is the oldest, cheapest and most successful method of instilling that desire. Shooting baskets with a child creates a basketball player; reading to a child creates a reader."

The parenting conference will be held March 4 at the Southeast Missouri State University Center.

For 20 years Trelease was an award-winning artist and writer for a daily newspaper in New England. During this period he visited hundreds of classrooms as a school volunteer, talking with students about the joys of reading.

In 1979, he self-published a 30-page booklet for parents and teachers on the importance of reading to children. Seeing the success of this booklet, Penguin Books signed him to do an expanded edition in 1982. That edition spend 17 weeks as a New York Times bestseller. Two American editions have followed, along with British, Australian and Japanese editions, bringing the total to 1.5 million copies in print by 1991.

In his lecture presentation, Trelease uses an anecdotal style that rings with humor and enthusiasm. The program is about children's reading, but the content is aimed at an adult audience. Citing dozens of titles and demonstrating the simple techniques involved in reading aloud, Trelease traces its need from the cradle to adolescence.

The father of two grown children, Trelease also warns of the dangers of children "overdosing" on television, including Nintendo and videos. He offers a play by which parents can fend off the TV attack on children's living and learning.