AceShowbiz -

Muhammad Ali learns best from his dyslexia as a child that nowadays he willingly lends his name to children's book.

The boxer, who once experienced difficulties in learning how to read and write, has a new classroom collection of children's books bearing his name being opened for public.

Scholastic Corp.'s "Muhammad Ali Presents Go the Distance" features books that Ali's values and are aimed at socially disadvantaged students in grades 3-8 who believe neither reading nor education is relevant to their lives.

"The foundation of all education is reading," says Lonnie Ali, the boxing legend's wife. "Books can take a child outside of his immediate vicinity, his immediate environment, to someplace else. It makes them learn about other communities outside of their immediate neighborhoods. That's one of the things this particular library has been designed to do: to take children on that next journey out."

The collection, includes a wide range of multicultural fiction and nonfiction books, is aimed to help motivate and empower young students, particularly boys, to overcome a different kind of obstacle to becoming accomplished readers, disinterest.