Whether we curl up with them by the fire, or bury our noses in them on the subway, books are an escape into another world. In this hour of To the Best of Our Kowledge, a celebration of reading. How to raise a literate child. And, why those in power fear the novel.

SEGMENT 1

Writer and film critic David Denby at the age of 48 returned to his alma mater, Columbia University, to re- experience its required courses in the Western classics. He tells Judith Strasser what he and his fellow students made of it all. Denby's book about the experience is "Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World."

SEGMENT 2

Writer, editor and essayist Alberto Manguel tells Steve Paulson about his personally annotated tour through literature with Jorge Luis Borges, the blind Argentinian author for whom he read as a young man. Manguel says the history of writing is also the history of reading. His new book is "A History of Reading." Also, Arthur Krystal is a writer and was a professional book reviewer until he decided to stop reading. He tells Jim Fleming why he abandoned the literary life. Krystal's essay "Closing the Books" appeared in the March '96 issue of Harpers.

SEGMENT 3:

Children's author Susan Cooper tells Steve Paulson what reading does for children and that she writes what she needs to write and lets the publisher worry about who the book is for. Cooper has won several awards for her "Dark Is Rising" series and has just published "Dreams and Wishes," a collection of essays on writing for children.

Distribution dates:

• week of 11/10/96 - hour 3
• week of 06/29/97 - hour 3