Acknowledging children's need for informal conversation, the staff of an eastern elementary school began a reading incentive program to encourage children to read for fun and to increase their leisure by providing a listening ear while they told someone about the books they had read. Adult volunteers were recruited to listen to children's informal, oral book reports. Incentives in the form of ice cream certificates were used for the first 12 weeks of the program. When a child had read and reported on five books, that child received a certificate redeemable for an ice cream cone. When a child had read 12 books, a new book was placed in the school library with a bookplate announcing it as a gift from the child. By the time the incentives were discontinued, the children had developed the library habit and discovered for themselves the pleasure of reading books and sharing them. Students read over 13,000 books in the year and a half the program had been in effect. The rather sophisticated skills required to put their thoughts about the books they read into logical sequence before expressing them led to children's natural, unaffected expressions of ideas and opinions. The program was beneficial both for children whose native tongue is English and for children for whom English is a second language. (HTH)