Second lady Usha Vance detailed her summer reading program to address the “reading loss” among children, a topic she is “really motivated” to address during her time with the Trump administration.
The program encourages children to read 12 books between June 1 and Sept. 5 and will give participants who complete it a chance to visit the White House. Vance, a mother of three, described how she has seen data indicating how children are not reading “as much as they used to,” and is using this challenge as her “first attempt” to help remedy this loss.
“The goal of the summer reading challenge is just to have children from all over the country read this summer, and if they do that and they tell me about it, then we’ll send them a little prize and enter them into a drawing to come visit the White House and hopefully we’ll have some fun doing it and pick up more books after that,” Vance explained on Fox News’s Fox & Friends.
Vance recalled how she grew up with reading challenges offered in her school, but was not aware of any available on a national level. Because of this, she opted to use her role as second lady to make this a possibility for children across the country.
Looking back on her childhood, she explained that her parents encouraged their children to spend time on “something that you learn from,” and would stock their home with books. This has since been carried into her own family, and this program, in which reading can be viewed as “a positive way” to spend one’s time.
“I don’t think that the summer reading challenge certainly is like the ‘end all, be all’ here,” Vance said. “In my mind, it’s more of a proof of concept. We’re trying to make things work. We’re going to see how they work. If they’re successful, then we’ll try to build on them and do it again next year, maybe even in a bigger form. But we’re going to try a number of things over the course of the year and try to understand what really makes a difference.”
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The online submission form and the reading log for 12 books are available on the White House website.
Earlier this week, Vice President JD Vance said at the American Compass Gala in Washington, D.C., that it will take “the work of a generation” to fully enact President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies. It comes amid speculation Vance will succeed Trump as the Republican presidential nominee in the 2028 election, a prediction Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) shared with the Washington Examiner last month.