Dear Readers,

In kindergarten you learned to read by matching letters to sounds. As you learned more words, you didn’t have to think so much about the letters. But then you learned that those letters on the page didn’t just naturally show up there. Someone–someone a lot like you–put them there for a reason.

And now your job as a reader is not just to know what sounds the letters make or what meanings the words have, but to think about why the writer wrote what the writer wrote.

And if you learn to do all of that, then you have a big shiny key that can unlock almost any door in the world.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck