(The Lion) — Second Lady Usha Vance is launching a new video podcast to encourage children to love stories and to fight declining literacy rates, according to a post from the White House.

“Storytime with the Second Lady,” is essentially “an advertisement for reading,” Vance told NBC, adding that she is concerned with the “long-term trend” of declining literacy.

“Through books, we’ve learned so many new things about science and nature, far away countries, ancient civilizations, America’s history and more,” she says in the show’s premiere episode, adding “when we read, we grow,” as a repeated tagline.

The video podcast invites young readers to join Vance in her office, where she has set up a reading nook, using her own family’s Lego projects, she says in the first episode. The family’s dog, Atlas, will join the story times along with a special guest each week, she says.

The premiere aired Monday, and Vance read one of her favorite books, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She said she loved this 100-year-old classic as a young girl and now reads the story to her own children.

“The thing that I really love about it is that Peter reminds me so much of my own kids,” she says. “Like all of you, they’re curious, they’re adventurous. They go out and explore things. They get themselves in trouble sometimes, but they know that every night, they can come home, and we’ll be there for them.”

(Photo by Vitaly Gariev, Unsplash)