Laura's great expectations

Laura Bush, a former teacher and librarian, toured the Charles Dickens House and Museum in London today, lamenting that many Americans are now aliterate -- they are able to read but choose not to.

"They work on a computer or they watch television," she said. "And it will be a huge loss for all of us if we don't read our literature, because that's how our ideas and our values are transmitted from generation to generation."

The first lady toured the home in Bloomsbury where Dickens lived from 1812 to 1876. According to London's Guardian, she chatted briefly with the author's great-great-great-granddaughter, Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, and inspected a battered journal Dickens kept during his travels to the United States.

"It's so important for us as English-speaking people to be aware of what our literature is," she said.

The Bushes on are on what is being billed as their last White House trek to Europe, returning home to Washington tonight.

Call it a tale of two continents.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo Credit: Public Domain