Parents in Utah and around the nation are encouraged to make sure their children read during summer vacation to avoid what educators call brain drain. Dustin Fife with the Utah Library Association said time away from the books can cause serious loss of academic skills.
"It's like any skill, if we stop practicing even for a short time, whether it's our reading or our math, or anything else - we still have this as adults, as we let things languish we tend to have to start over," Fife said.
Educators say brain drain can affect some students to the point that they won't catch up academically during the next school year. Fife added that local libraries usually provide summer reading programs that can be hugely valuable for students.
Katie Willse with the National Summer Learning Association said research shows that children who are interested in what they're reading benefit the most, and added that reading a lot can turn brain drain into brain gain.
"There's also programs that can show gains, that can show that they're not only stemming those losses but they're leading, two, three, four, five months in some cases of reading gains over the summer, and actually set kids ahead from where they were when they ended the school year," Willse said.
Willse said research shows that children in low-income families have higher rates of diminished reading skills during the summer, because they lack access to libraries and other sources for books. She added that groups such as the Urban Libraries Council have programs aimed at providing more resources to all children.