Inside the Second Lady’s Effort to Make Reading Great Again

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Second lady Usha Vance previewed her future literacy efforts and discussed how reading with her own children inspired her to invest in the literacy of America’s children. 

The second lady participated in a fireside chat Wednesday afternoon with the Executive Office of the President librarian, Sarena Burgess, in honor of National Library Week. The Daily Signal had exclusive access to the event. 

When Vance, an attorney, was teaching her own children to read, she noticed the challenges facing other parents today. 

“Until the day that my husband was nominated, I was practicing as a lawyer. All skills and issues that really sort of have no place in this new role, and I was thinking about what I can spend four years on fruitfully,” said the mother of three, soon-to-be four.

“And of course, we have young children, all of whom are of an age where they are either learning to read or are really blossoming as readers,” she added. “And it has become apparent to me during the process of raising my kids, teaching them to read, what an incredibly challenging environment is right now for parents and for children to learn to read, to learn to love to read, and to build the kinds of skills that they’re going to need in order to have important jobs like the ones that are represented here.”

Vance spoke to an audience of White House staff and local librarians. 

She said she wanted to focus her time as second lady on something that can bring people together and that draws on her family’s place in the public. 

She said she is inspired by her own love of reading, fostered by her parents, and the love of reading she sees growing in her children. 

“The experience of introducing my children to reading … was incredibly rewarding, because they’re excited every time they could read a new phoneme, every time they could put something together, they became increasingly excited,” she said. “And the excitement is just only magnified over time. So, it really strengthened our relationship in ways that I didn’t anticipate when I took on this project with each of them.” 

She shared that her oldest child can’t obtain enough Greek mythology books, while her middle child prefers books with facts about animals. 

Vance said the best way to reach children is to speak to them directly, which is why she launched a podcast “Storytime with the Second Lady,” where she reads to children with a celebrity guest. 

Last summer, Vance started a summer reading challenge. She said she will be doing it again this year on a “much bigger scale.” 

In an era of children being inundated with screens, Vance urged libraries to make books their central focus. She said libraries perform many services, but she would like to see books prioritized.

“Many libraries we go to, the books are right there right as you walk in, but in some, they’ve really changed their physical spaces in a way where the books are lining the walls or in the background and in the foreground are all these other very important things that libraries do,” she said. “So, from that perspective, from someone who likes to see kids drawn first to the books and then later to the screens, thinking of ways to kind of physically foreground books in programming and in just the physical space of the library, I think would be incredibly valuable.” 

Vance shared that she and her husband’s taste in books is “quite different”; she prefers reading fiction, while Vice President JD Vance reads a lot of political books. 

“He’s always been very enthusiastic about reading books that I suggest,” she said. “He reads a lot of books about politics, but we do have a lot of overlapping interests, like he is a huge ‘Lord of the Rings’ fan, and I grew up reading those stories.”