Before Pleasant Rowland was the creator of American Girl, she was a classroom teacher. And long before she became one of The Reading League’s most consequential supporters, she was watching children struggle to read and wondering why the system wasn’t doing anything about it.
Where It Started
Pleasant spent years in classrooms before building one of the most beloved educational brands in American history. Those experiences never left her. When she developed the curriculum that would later become Superkids, she infused it with and prioritized the same principles that the science of reading had validated as most effective for all learners. She had, in her own words, “cobbled together” from research and intuition what the field was only beginning to name.
Knowing of Pleasant’s historical retrospective-based keynote given at the 2011 IDA Reading, Literacy & Learning Conference in Chicago, titled “Teaching ALL Children to Read: The Challenge of Our Times,” Dr. Maria Murray reached out to her shortly after founding The Reading League. When Pleasant learned that TRL’s mission and vision were aligned with the sentiments in her keynote and the science of reading, a meaningful connection formed.
“When I learned that The Reading League might be the ‘firm, reliable, respected voice informing bewildered parents and beleaguered teachers’ that I had called for in my Chicago keynote, I had to learn more.”
Why a Large-Scale Investment
Pleasant is, by her own account, meticulous. Before committing any support to TRL, she sought the impressions and opinions of experts she knew through her foundation, the Rowland Reading Foundation.
When she called Maria Murray to ask, “What is your dream?”, Maria’s response was modest: to move TRL’s operations out of her house. Pleasant’s response was bold: TRL needs to go national. The ensuing investment was designed to give TRL the ability to attract other supporters while establishing its reach across the country.
“Incremental support produces incremental change — and the problem we are facing is not incremental. If you believe an organization has found the right path, the question isn’t whether to invest substantially. The question is how quickly you can help them scale what works.”
A Ripple Effect
For Pleasant, the case for investing in educators has always been straightforward—change a teacher’s understanding of reading development, and you change every child who will ever sit in that classroom, not just this year, but for the rest of that teacher’s career. The ripple effect, she says, is almost impossible to calculate, making it the right investment.
She is proud to have watched TRL grow from a kitchen-table effort into a national movement with chapters in every state by the end of 2026. TRL’s impactful professional learning partnerships with school districts across the country, combined with its development of resources and vast networks serving multiple stakeholders, such as publishers, professors, and state education agencies, have affirmed her decision to provide support.
Her unambiguous hope for the future is a world where effective reading instruction is the norm, not the exception. It is a future where every child’s potential is honored by a system equipped to ensure their human right to learn to read.
“Reading is the hinge on which everything else turns. Every dream a child carries has a better chance of becoming real if that child can read.”
The Reading League is forever grateful to Pleasant Rowland for discovering its potential and providing both the financial and motivational support to achieve it. We are honored to share her convictions that it is possible to change outcomes for generations of children by aligning reading instruction with reading science.
Your stories help bring our mission to life. If you’d like to share how The Reading League has supported your work, students, or community, we’d love to hear from you.
Stay with us all month. Each week in June, we’re celebrating a partner who makes our mission possible. Next week: Meet Jeff Knauss.
