For Lester Fisher, it was a first, and a small sign of progress: Parents stopped him in the grocery store to talk about their children's love of books. "Our kids really don't come from a literature-rich environment," said Fisher, principal of Nailor Elementary -- considered the poorest school in this Mississippi Delta town. "Many of our children really don't have the bare necessities at home."

Nailor Elementary is one of 71 schools across the state seeing the benefits of literacy help offered by Barksdale Reading Institute, a computer mogul's ambitious program.

The institute was launched by former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale, a Mississippi native well aware of how the lack of reading skills contributed to the state's wrenching cycle of poverty.

Ninety-nine percent of Fisher's pupils get free or reduced lunches, and many are being raised by young, single mothers. Most do not normally see adults reading at home, and often start school with no concept of what the letters of the alphabet look or sound like.

Five years ago, Barksdale and his late wife, Sally, put up $100 million of their own money to improve "preliteracy" skills for preschoolers and reading for children in kindergarten through third grade. The Oxford-based institute they created provides books and teacher training for some of the state's neediest and lowest-performing schools.

Barksdale chose his brother, attorney Claiborne Barksdale, to run the institute, with strict instructions that he wanted results.

An independent analysis by a University of Mississippi research center recently confirmed the program was making a "statistically significant difference."

But Claiborne Barksdale acknowledged: "You have so many children come in who have not been exposed to books and words. We cannot expect schools to transform magically children who have been neglected the first five years of their lives."

Nailor Elementary turned to Barksdale Reading Institute when Fisher became principal. Since then, officials said the school's state accreditation rating has improved.

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