(August 12, 2026) There is a reading problem in America.
And the numbers deserve our attention.
According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress—the Nation’s Report Card—only 31 percent of American fourth graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level in reading.
Forty percent performed below NAEP Basic.
Average fourth-grade reading scores declined again from 2022 and remained below their 2019 level. Eighth-grade reading scores followed the same troubling direction.
These numbers measure more than whether children can pronounce the words on a page.
The NAEP reading assessment asks students to comprehend literary and informational texts—to understand, interpret, connect, and make meaning from what they read.
That distinction matters.
Because reading is not simply decoding words.
Reading is a doorway into knowledge.
And if children struggle to walk through that doorway, the consequences reach far beyond English class.
We Need Children to Want to Read
There are important conversations happening across education about how reading should be taught.
Those conversations matter.
But there is another question worth asking:
Once a child can read, what makes them want to keep reading?
What makes a child turn the page?
What makes them wonder what happens next?
What makes them encounter something unfamiliar and decide they want to know more?
Story has been doing that for thousands of years.
Before textbooks, search engines, educational apps, and standardized assessments, human beings used stories to preserve history, communicate values, explain the world, remember people, and pass knowledge from one generation to another.
Stories make information human.
And that is where The WayMaker Saga begins.
A Story Can Open a World
Imagine a child reading about a family crossing the Atlantic in 1715.
At first, the child may simply want to know:
Will they survive the storm?
But somewhere inside that story, other questions begin appearing.
How did sailors know where they were?
Why did ships follow certain routes?
What causes ocean currents?
How could people predict weather without satellites?
How was a wooden ship constructed?
What did people eat during an Atlantic crossing?
Why were families leaving Europe?
Who already lived in the American colonies?
What happened when all of those cultures encountered one another?
Suddenly, reading has opened doors into geography, meteorology, physics, engineering, astronomy, navigation, economics, politics, anthropology, ecology, and history.
The child hasn’t been handed twelve separate subjects.
They have encountered one fascinating world.
That Is Why We Began With a Saga
The WayMaker Saga is planned as a twenty-book historical family saga spanning approximately three hundred years.
But the goal is not simply to tell twenty stories.
The larger opportunity is to allow a family to travel through history alongside characters they have come to know.
Wars happen.
Borders change.
Technology advances.
Communities rise and disappear.
People migrate.
Industries develop.
Scientific understanding grows.
Ideas have consequences.
And generation after generation must decide what to carry forward and what to leave behind.
History stops becoming a collection of disconnected dates.
It becomes a living chain of cause and consequence.
Reading Across the Curriculum
This is where the story becomes something larger.
A chapter about a blacksmith can lead into metallurgy, chemistry, heat, tools, engineering, apprenticeship, economics, and colonial trades.
A voyage can lead into buoyancy, weather, ocean currents, navigation, astronomy, shipbuilding, geography, and trade.
A medicinal plant encountered in the woods can lead into botany, ecosystems, Indigenous knowledge, chemistry, medicine, and scientific investigation.
A map can lead into mathematics, surveying, politics, exploration, migration, and the changing boundaries of nations.
The story provides context.
Context gives information meaning.
And meaning makes knowledge easier to connect to something else.
That ability to make connections is central to comprehension.
From Reading to Doing
But we don’t want discovery to end when the book closes.
That is why The WayMaker Saga connects to the larger work of Stone & Arrow.
A child might read about navigation and then learn to use a compass.
Read about plants and begin a field journal.
Read about colonial construction and build a model.
Read about ocean currents and conduct an experiment.
Read about an archaeological discovery and learn how evidence is interpreted.
Read about a historical decision and debate whether the people involved chose wisely.
The book becomes the beginning rather than the end.
Read it. Question it. Explore it. Build it. Test it. Walk it. Remember it.
Families Can Discover Together
There is another reason we chose story.
Stories cross generations.
A grandparent can read the same chapter as a grandchild.
A parent may recognize historical connections a child has never encountered.
A child may ask the question no adult at the table considered.
Everyone brings something different to the story.
And suddenly education isn’t something that happens only between a student and a worksheet.
It becomes a conversation.
A journey.
A shared discovery.
The WayMaker Is the Beginning
The first book of The WayMaker Saga begins more than three centuries ago with one family’s journey across the sea.
But what we are really interested in is what happens after someone becomes curious.
One question leads to another.
One discovery connects to another.
One story opens another door.
At a moment when national reading results give families and educators genuine reason for concern, we believe children need more than additional material to read.
They need reasons to keep reading.
They need stories worth entering.
Questions worth pursuing.
A world worth exploring.
And opportunities to discover that what they learn can take them somewhere they never expected to go.
That is why The WayMaker Saga matters.
Not because a story can solve America’s reading crisis.
But because a powerful story can do something extraordinarily important:
It can make a reader want to turn the page.