Read to Lead may be the newest literacy organization on the block, but its founder and head, Trey Holder, president and COO of Mercury Retail Services, a wholesaler for books and magazines, likes to think big. After coming up with the idea of doing something on the scale of the Got Milk campaign for books and reading while walking the floor of an H-E-B last December, he created not only the organization but established the first national Let’s Read Day in less than a year. Holder also convinced his leading competitor, Source Interlink, to sign on, along with most of the big six publishers along with Conde Nast, Hearst, and Wild Onion Press, among others.

The first Let’s Read Day, on September 10, included 15 events primarily held at groceries throughout the South and West, with some drawing as many as 500 participants. A number of storybook characters were on hand to greet young readers, including the Hungry Caterpillar, the Cat in the

Hat ,and Kyla and Carlos, the main characters in Holder’s bilingual book for young readers, Kyla and Carlos.

Already Holder is looking forward to making next year’s event even larger and working with businesses like Kraft to promote nutritional literacy. “I think if you don’t think big, you won’t be successful,” he told PW, who caught up with him by phone in California, where he was pitching a film producer on a movie about the effects of reading on a Los Angeles family’s lives.