Can we read?

Everyone with children knows that being a good parent often feels like, to borrow from Winston Churchill, a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma. Should they be helicoptered? Is it better to set them loose to free range? Should their green beans be organic? Which sport or musical instrument should they play, and how exactly will it determine whether they lead a meaningful and fulfilling life 40 years from now? What’s the correct age to introduce them to the vile and relentless toxicity of social media? What can you say to them about the inevitability of suffering and death, or the persistence of beauty, joy and mirth in the face of it?

These questions will likely remain up for debate. But for Sarah Miller, there is one thing at the heart of loving your children: reading. Reading to them. Reading with them. Giving them the endless gift of storytelling, which is universal to all people in all cultures and times, through good times and bad.

“This,” Miller says, “is what it means to be a good parent.”

Miller was fortunate to grow up in a household that understood this.

“My parents never said ‘no’ to me when I wanted to buy a book,” she explains. “I grew up in a book-loving home, and I think it deeply impacted me.” She knows not every parent or child is so lucky, and she has created a popular and growing Substack that guides thousands of people into - and through - the world of books. Called “Can We Read?”, her twice-weekly newsletter is all about children’s books, raising readers and “building a culture of reading in your home.” She started it while the world was mired in the depths of the COVID-19 lockdowns. It was, she says, a way to keep sane while stuck at home, working 40 hours per week, and trying to be all things to all people without actually being able to go anywhere.

“It was in lockdown, and I needed something to be other than someone’s mother or wife or employee,” she explained.

She was already an avid blogger, and late one Friday night, in a house where her three- and five-year-old children slept,  this lifelong lover of books came up with the idea for a newsletter about reading. “I was deep into the world of board books and picture books,” she recalls. “I had 19 people on my mailing list. Literally, like, my grandma and people like that.”

“At the time, I had never heard of a Substack,” she continues. “I was lucky, because I kind of got in on the ground floor.”

Today, just four years later, she has 5,000 subscribers. One of her fans is a literary agent who recently signed her, and Miller is busy working on the architecture and ideas that will eventually form her own first book.

Miller, who is also chair of the WiLS and a member of the Mount Horeb Public Library board, said her little “side project” about books, reading and parenting has grown into something bigger “than I ever dreamed it would be.”

“Can We Read?” covers an eclectic range of genres and topics, but at its core it’s about the stories people share with the people they love.

“The point is, reading aloud to your kids is connecting you to them,” she explains. “It’s also okay if you don’t do any of it perfectly.”

“The majority of [the Substack] is how to do this,” she continues, adding that she doesn’t do it perfectly, by any means. “I try to take what we do with our own family and share that as openly and as honestly as I can.”

In her “day job,” Miller works in marketing and communication for the non-profit WiscNet. She is, she comments, a writer by training, profession and passion. But “Can We Read?” is not the chronicle of a paragon. Rather, it’s the authentic confession of someone who is muddling their way through life just like everyone else, drawing from narratives of joy, sorrow, discovery and adventure while drafting her own narrative and wondering with a touch of awe what stories her children will hear, tell and live as they grow up.

Many of her favorite works remain those for curious young readers.

“I’ve always been a reader, ever since I was a little girl. But when I look back, the books that impacted me the most were almost all middle-grade books,” Miller says. “It’s your first time on your own, but not fully on your own. It’s a transitory period. You kind of go through this portal as a kid.”

As any reader knows, on the other side of every portal are myriad adventures. Every time you step through the looking glass or the wardrobe, every time you walk out your door, and every time you open the cover of a new story, you are taking the first steps of some adventure. That is at the heart of so many books. They are all doorways, just waiting for anyone who longs to go on a journey.

“I know how fried my brain or heart feels at the end of some days,” says Miller. “Sometimes you just need to read.”

Find out more at canweread.substack.com.