Sheesh....

I became a devoted reader after we had a special reading program in 2nd grade. I don't remember the prizes--with the exception of an end-of-year pizza party--but I was hooked on books after that, prizes or no prizes. To the extent that a friend of my mother's once accused her of thinking that "all kids who don't sit around reading more books than they have in the state of California need Ritalin!" and some of the local library assistants still recognize me from the time I spent in libraries as a child, even though I'm in my twenties.
I wonder if this mom would discourage her kids from doing things that require them to read as a working activity, like graduate school, for example? Certainly, I read some books for my MA in history which I wouldn't have read otherwise--Andre Gunder Franck's 500-page book on China and the world economy, "ReOrient"springs to mind---to save myself the embarassment of being the clueless one in a class full of smart grad students!