There are a million ways to get kids to read. Using comic books is just one of them. Using their heroes as reading role models is another. If fuzzy stickers and plastic rulers work for your kid, then more power to trinkets. You could read aloud and make the funny faces and silly noises necessary to convey the fun of making a story come alive.

Comic books and bribes are what works for my kid. This gets me stares, looks of horror and the shame, shame wagging of fingers in my face from library purists, who think 10 year old boys should spend their summer reading Huckelberry Finn because they want to. I get parents who sit around at Little League games bragging that their daughter, at nine, has already finished the entire Harry Potter collection or mothers who claim their ten year old sons spend every waking minute reading biographies of great Americans and when I tell them that my son is clamoring for the next issue of Young Justice, or that I'm reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman aloud to my daughter, they roll their eyes and shake their heads and I'm sure they are thinking about calling the Library Police to come and confiscate my card and my right to choose my son's reading material.

He's reading. He's going to finish the summer reading program this year. And frankly, Mrs. PerfectScholaryDaughter, I'd rather have my kid whiling away the summer with characters fighting for truth and justice than reading MaryKate and Ashley's Adventures in Using Cuteness to Get Away With Causing Trouble.

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