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16 Reading: The Sport of Champions!
“Summer Reading and the Ethnic Achievement Gap.” Journal of Education for Students
Placed at Risk, Vol. 9, No. 2, Pages 169-188.)
In a study funded by the Los Angeles County Public Library Foundation, researchers found that
before the summer, 77% of parents reported their child read 9 hours or less per week. During the
summer, parents reported a 9% increase in the number of children reading 10-14 hours per
week, and the number of children reading 15 or more books per week rose 11%. (Evaluation
and Training Institute for the Los Angeles County Public Library Foundation. Evaluation of the
Public Library Summer Reading Program: Books and Beyond…Take Me to Your Reader! Final
Report, December 2001. Available on-line at www.colapublib.org/about/Readingby.pdf.)
From an economic perspective, Steve Brown, director of North Richland Hills (TX) Public
Library, looked at the dollar value of summer reading. In his article, “What Is a Summer
Worth?,” (Texas Library Journal, Summer 2005) Brown calculated the cost for teachers to
review basic reading skills. Based on his figures, public library summer reading programs are
estimated to save schools $873 per reader. Calculate this value times the number of children
who participate in your program and you have quite a return on a small investment.
While we want the children to have fun, use the library, enjoy reading, and check out library
materials, these studies show that public library summer reading programs also play an
important role in the education of our children.
Every Child Ready to Read @ Your Library
Every Child Ready to Read @ Your Library is a joint project of the Public Library Association
and the Association for Library Service to Children, divisions of the American Library
Assocation. Current research on early literacy and brain development indicates that it is never
too early to prepare children for success as readers and learners. Every Child Ready to Read @
Your Library incorporates the latest research into a series of parent and caregiver workshops.
Training kits for workshops, videos, posters, brochures in Spanish and English, information
about research, and more are available from the American Library Association at
www.ala.org/ala/pla/plaissues/earlylit/earlyliteracy.htm. These resources provide public
librarians with vital tools to help inform parents of newborns, toddlers and preschoolers of their
critical role as their children's first teacher. They also enable librarians to offer early literacy
workshops for parents in their community.
Researchers have found that there is almost a 90% probability that a child will remain a poor
reader at the end of the fourth grade if the child is a poor reader at the end of the first grade.
There is a clear relationship between the skills with which children enter school and their later
academic performance. Every Child Ready to Read @ Your Library emphasizes six important
pre-reading skills that children must understand in order to successfully learn to read.
1. Narrative Skills: Being able to describe things and events and tell stories.
2. Print Motivation: Being interested in and enjoying books.
3. Letter Knowledge: Knowing letters are different from each other, knowing their names,
and recognizing letters everywhere.
4. Phonological Awareness: Being able to hear and play with the similar sounds in words.
5. Vocabulary: Knowing the names of things.