Supermarket to Be Marketplace of Ideas Under Child Book Plan

A new program launched last week by state school officials will put good books for elementary students amid the produce and movie magazines in several hundred supermarket and drug chains around the state.

“This is the place where parents are,” state school Supt. Bill Honig said at a Capitol news conference announcing the plan.

Gloria Alvarez of the Mexican-American Grocers Assn. said many parents don’t take their children to the library, but do go to supermarkets to buy groceries.

The program, a cooperative effort by the state, 25 chains and five publishers, aims to make children’s books as easy to buy as a quart of milk.

The supermarket and drug store chains that are participating will display a turquoise stand containing about 10 books for elementary school students from the state Department of Education’s “Selected Readings in Literature” book list. That list contains 1,010 titles ranging from picture books for kindergartners to science fiction and biographies for eighth graders.

The books, all paperback, will sell for $2 to $4. The stand says, “Give Your Child the Best Start; California Reading Initiative.”

“This is a visually oriented society,” Honig said. “If you get books out and get them in a good display, kids will want them.”

He said many children are exposed only to “mind-numbing ‘See Spot run’ readers and the slick, mind-candy books based on TV shows. Is it any wonder many of our kids resist reading and many more believe it’s only a poor substitute for a 24-inch screen?”

Honig said the state department has been pushing its California Reading Initiative for several years. Recent public service announcements have stressed that parents should interest their children in reading.

“The missing link has been trying to make books available in large numbers,” he said.

He pointed out that the latest survey from the U.S. Department of Labor said that people who aren’t highly literate in the year 2000 will not be able to get jobs.