Last week while browsing through a bookstore, I saw a toddler about two years old. He was sitting on his heels, as only small children can, looking in a book. There were only pictures on the pages, but he was talking to them, babbling really. Just then his mother walked up and asked “Have you selected the book you want?” It was a stunning scene. Here was a very young child who was (1) a beginning reader, (2) comfortable enough to quietly study a little book on his own, (3) who had obviously been read to, because he was talking to the pictures and (4) he lived in an environment…