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Shocking News About America's Teens

This column was written by CBS News Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.



There's shocking news about America's teens — and it doesn't involve sex, guns or drugs.

Despite the Internet, cell phones and a gazillion other distractions, teens reportedly are buying and reading books in record numbers. Books.

Booklist Magazine critic Michael Cart says, "publishers are courting young adults in ways we haven't seen since the 1940s."

The news is that reading is right-on, is so cool, and may extend from a generation that first got hooked on Harry Potter. For a long time, educators feared that video game junkies, nerds and anti-intellectual screwballs would be all that remained at the end of the iPod and the information highway.

Now we learn that the generation well beyond X, weaned on the 24/7 global universe, seems to want nothing more than to curl up with a good book.


Harry's daily commentary can be heard on many CBS Radio News affiliates across the country.

By Harry Smith

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