Lazy summer days allow for plenty of time at the local library. In this recent Observer column, Kay reminds us of the power and pleasures of libraries — and the vital importance of reading to children:
When I was a child, my sister Darlene and I loved going to the public library, but for very different reasons.
While I browsed through the stacks looking for two or three interesting fiction chapter books, my younger sister scoured skinny picture books and collected a huge, slippery pile that she struggled to carry to the circulation desk. In the back seat of my mother’s car on the way home, Darlene raced to read her books despite her easy tendency to motion sickness. I, on the other hand, took my time opening a single book in my lap, making sure to read the copyright date and other publication arcana before flicking to the first chapter and smoothing the page with my palm.
By the time the car rolled to a stop at our house, Darlene had usually slammed closed the last of her books with a triumphant whomp.
“I’m already finished!” she would say smugly. She was positively gleeful. Condemned, as all younger siblings are, to playing catch-up, she could, at least on library days, feel that she had beaten me at something.
Darlene and I were lucky to have a mother who took us regularly to the library–and luckier still that she read to us each night at bedtime. According to a recently released survey, Reading Across the Nation, sponsored by the Reach Out and Read National Center, UCLA’s Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities, and the Department of Pediatrics at Boston University’s Medical Center, fewer than half of all American children younger than five years old are read to daily. This lack of early interaction with language shows up dramatically by the time they begin school. Up to one-third lack the skills they need to be successful, and most of those never reach their potential in school.
Reading Across the Nation compiles several sources about children in all fifty states, including the 2003-2004 National Survey of Children’s Health which interviewed parents to assess how often children were read to. The report also includes the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress and the 2007 results from data drawn from the Reach Out and Read program.
Not surprisingly, the results varied from state to state and from region to region. The four states with the highest percentage of children being read to daily were all in the Northeast–Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. The four states with the lowest percentage of children being exposed to reading every day were in the South–Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In Vermont, for example, 67.6% of young children are read to daily; in Mississippi, only 38.1% of young children are read to.
In almost every state, minority children and children in low-income families are read to less than non-minority or higher-income children. Vermont’s child population is predominantly white and middle-class, with only 7.9% of the children living in poverty, but unlike most states, wealthier parents do not read more than parents with more modest incomes, perhaps because of the state’s support for the Reach out and Read (ROR) program. Pediatricians and health clinics that participate in the ROR program tell parents at each of the ten scheduled well-child visits between six months and five years about the benefits of reading aloud to children. They also distribute new age-appropriate books to the children, and researchers note that ROR families have more children’s books in their home and report more literacy activities than non-ROR families.
By contrast, Mississippi has one of the highest child poverty rates in the nation–32.9%–and a low participation rate in ROR. In Vermont 78.1% of children in or near poverty are served by ROR; in Mississippi only 2.7% are. By fourth grade, 38% of the children in Vermont test proficient or advanced in reading, but only 18% of those in Mississippi do.
North and South Carolina fall in the middle of the pack. Half of our parents report reading to their children daily, and 30% of our fourth graders–the national average–score proficient or advanced in reading. However, the Carolinas fall below the nation in access to public libraries. Vermont, for example, has 214 children under the age of five for each library. North and South Carolina are closer to 1700 children per library.
Reading Across the Nation says little that literacy experts haven’t been saying all along–that children need time every day with adults who read to them, that they need to explore words and language through books, and that support for public libraries and programs such as ROR are investments not only in children but in the health of our communities as well. The ideas might not be new, but they are worth saying to every new generation of parents and children.
