Literacy has been described as the ability to read for knowledge and write coherently and think critically about the written word. Literacy can also include the ability to understand all forms of communication, be it body language, pictures, video or sound (reading, speaking, listening and viewing). Evolving definitions of literacy often include all the symbol systems relevant to a particular community. Literacy encompasses a complex set of abilities to understand and use the dominant symbol systems of a culture for personal and community development. In a technological society, the concept of literacy is expanding to include the media and electronic text, in addition to alphabetic and number systems. These abilities vary in different social and cultural contexts according to need and demand.

Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print. Key to all literacy is reading development, which involves a progression of skills that begins with the ability to understand spoken words and decode written words, and culminates in the deep understanding of text. Reading development involves a range of complex language underpinnings including awareness of speech sounds (phonology), spelling patterns (orthography), word meaning (semantics), grammar (syntax) and patterns of word formation (morphology), all of which provide a necessary platform for reading fluency and comprehension. Once these skills are acquired the reader can attain full language literacy, which includes the abilities to approach printed material with critical analysis, inference and synthesis; to write with accuracy and coherence; and to use information and insights from text as the basis for informed decisions and creative thought.

David Baldacci (born August 5, 1960 in Richmond, Virginia) is a bestselling American novelist.

Baldacci received a B.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University and a law degree from the University of Virginia. As a student, Baldacci wrote short stories in his spare time, and later practiced law for nine years near Washington, D.C.. While living in Alexandria, Virginia, Baldacci wrote short stories and screenplays without much success. He turned to novel writing, taking three years to write Absolute Power. When it was published in 1996 it was an international best seller.

David Baldacci serves as a national ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and participates in numerous charities as well as founding his own foundation for literacy, Wish You Well Foundation. Baldacci was raised in Virginia and still resides there (in Vienna, Virginia) with his wife, Michelle Baldacci (Mikki), and two children. His second cousin, John Baldacci, was the Democratic Governor of Maine from 2003 to 2011.

James B. Patterson (born March 22, 1947) is an American author of thriller novels, largely known for his series about American psychologist Alex Cross. Patterson also wrote the Michael Bennett, Women's Murder Club, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, and Witch & Wizard series, as well as many stand-alone thrillers, nonfiction and romance novels.

After Patterson retired from advertising in 1996, he devoted his time to writing. The novels featuring his character Alex Cross, a forensic psychologist formerly of the Washington D.C. Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation who now works as a private psychologist and government consultant, are his most popular and the top-selling U.S. detective series in the past ten years. Patterson has written 71 novels in 33 years.^{[citation needed]} He has had 19 consecutive #1 New York Times bestselling novels, and holds The New York Times record for most bestselling hardcover fiction titles by a single author, a total of 63, which is also a Guinness World Record. As the world's best-selling author (250 million copies in total worldwide), his novels account for one in 17 of all hardcover novels sold in the United States; in recent years his novels have sold more copies than those of Stephen King, John Grisham and Dan Brown combined.

Neil deGrasse Tyson ( /ˈniːəl dəˈɡræs ˈtaɪsən/ born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist and science communicator. He is currently the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. Since 2006 he has hosted the educational science television show NOVA scienceNOW on PBS, and has been a frequent guest on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Jeopardy!. It was announced on August 5, 2011, that Tyson will be hosting a new sequel to Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage television series.

Tyson was born as the second of three children in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, but was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Sunchita Feliciano Tyson, was a gerontologist and his father, Cyril deGrasse Tyson, was a sociologist, human resource commissioner for the New York City mayor, John Lindsay, and was the first Director of HARYOU. Tyson attended the Bronx High School of Science (1972–1976, astrophysics emphasis) where he was captain of the wrestling team and was editor-in-chief of the school's Physical Science Journal. Tyson had an abiding interest in astronomy from the age of eleven, following his visit to the Hayden Planetarium at age nine. Tyson recalls that "so strong was that imprint [of the night sky] that I'm certain that I had no choice in the matter, that in fact, the universe called me." He obsessively studied astronomy in his teens, and eventually even gained some fame in the astronomy community by giving lectures on the subject at the age of fifteen.