Harris: 'We’ve been thrilled with the enthusiastic response to our Slide Into Summer Reading program with Reliant this year'

Reliant and the Astros Foundation celebrated the Slide Into Summer Reading program’s second year of existence by treating the top 3,000 participants to one of the three matchups the incumbent World Series champions had against the Cleveland Guardians at Minute Maid Park earlier this month, Businesswire reported.

“We’ve been thrilled with the enthusiastic response to our Slide Into Summer Reading program with Reliant this year,” Astros Foundation Executive Director Paula Harris told Businesswire. “It’s an honor to help these students form great habits by encouraging daily reading at an early age.”

“As an Astros Community Leader, Reliant shares our passion for supporting and inspiring Houston youth, and we’re both proud of how the program is helping combat the summer slide,” Harris said.

Businesswire reports that Reliant joined the Astros’ Community Leaders roster and initiated the program last year. This summer, close to 5,000 students read approximately 19,000 books, registering more than 14,000 reading hours.

“It’s a joy to know we’re helping instill a lifelong love of reading for thousands of students in our hometown,” Reliant President Elizabeth Killinger told Businesswire. “Literacy is an invaluable life skill, impacting nearly every aspect of a child’s potential.”

The children who were invited to a game clocked in the best reading times, with one lucky kid bestowed the honor of yelling, “Play ball!” before the start of the series opener on Tuesday, a 2-0 Houston victory made all the more significant by starter Framber Valdez’s complete game no-hitter and the last-minute blockbuster trade the Astros made with the New York Mets to bring back veteran ace Justin Verlander, Businesswire reports. 

“We applaud these students and their families for their commitment to reading over the summer, and we know these Reliant Readers will be ready to aim for the fences in the new school year,” Killinger said.

The program’s name is in reference to the “summer slide,” or when mostly younger and disadvantaged students can lose up to two months of reading achievement because of summer vacation.