Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team of LifeHacker, where we help you improve your life one week at a time.

I'm Alice Bradley, editor-in-chief of

LifeHacker. And I'm Jordan Calhoun, LifeHacker's deputy editor. And today we are tackling a parenting

problem. We are and we're getting tips on how to get our kids to be better readers with help from

award-winning comedian and social entrepreneur Alvin Irby. Right now, while your child is young, what you want to be doing is cultivating his reading

identity. As he gets older, his reading preferences may change. But what's going to be more

difficult to change is the extent to which he identifies as a reader.

Alvin is a former kindergarten teacher turned activist, author, and stand-up comedian.

In 2014, he founded a non-profit literacy project called Barbershop Books in an effort to

bring books to kids where they are.

Alvin also has a TED Talk called How to Inspire Every Child to Be a Lifelong Reader,

which has been viewed over a million times,

and in 2016, he published his own children's book called Gross Greg.

So, Jordan, what were you like as a kid?

Were you a big reader?

I was not, Alice.

Let me tell you, I didn't get into reading until later.

I was very much a cliche young kid who grew up in the city and was very much into

cartoons and movies and a lot of pop culture stuff that excluded reading when I got to a certain age.

I think there's, you know, there comes that point around, I don't know, maybe fourth, fifth grade where reading stops being cool as a kid or at least as a boy.

And reading starts to look like a thing that girls do.

I had a very bookish cousin named Gabrielle and she would always be reading.

...