Muhammad Ali lends his name to literacy

The Associated Press’s Jamie Richard reports that famed boxer Muhammad Ali will lend his name to a new classroom collection of children’s books intended to help motivate and empower young students, particularly boys, to overcome a different kind of obstacle to becoming accomplished readers: disinterest. Scholastic’s MUHAMMAD ALI PRESENTS GO THE DISTANCE features books that champion Ali’s values and are aimed at socially disadvantaged students in grades 3-8 who believe neither reading nor education is relevant to their lives, says Lonnie Ali, the boxing legend’s wife.

“The foundation of all education is reading,” she says. “Books can take a child outside of his immediate vicinity, his immediate environment, to someplace else. It makes them learn about other communities outside of their immediate neighborhoods. That’s one of the things this particular library has been designed to do: to take children on that next journey out.” The titles range from multicultural fiction and nonfiction books, folk tales and profiles of notable athletes – like Ali himself.

Ali has long been involved with projects relating to literacy and children, but my own favorite, bar none, has to be the unsung classic ALI AND HIS GANG VS. TOOTH DECAY. Ali and his pals (including Frank Sinatra, Richie Havens and Howard Cosell) tell kids that it’s important to brush your teeth and lay off sugary sweets to fend off the Tooth Decay Monster.) If you think the front cover is trippy enough, look at the back cover. And then listen to the theme song. It will stick in your head forever and ever…

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