Response: "The Risks of Reading"

It is not so much that reading is at risk as that belles lettres are at risk. On the cover of the NEA's report, a lone boy in the right foreground reads a thick tome in a paneled and columned library reading room. The herringbone patterned wood floors and the plush draperies in the far background elevate his solitary act of reading literature into a belletristic sacrament.