The list of what a child needs in order toflourish is short but nonnegotiable.
Food. Shelter. Play. Love.
Something else, too, and it’s meted out ineven less equal measure.
Words. A child needs a forest of wordsto wander through, a sea of words to splashin. A child needs to be read to, and a childneeds to read.
Reading fuels the fires of intelligenceand imagination, and if they don’t blazewell before elementary school, a child’seducation — a child’s life — may be anendless game of catch-up.
That’s a t r ut h at the core of theindispensable organization ReadingIs Fundamental, a nonprof it g roupthat provides hundreds of thousandsof free books annually to children age8 or younger, in particular those fromeconomically disadvantaged homes,where books are a greater luxury and inshorter supply.
I shine a light on Reading Is Fundamental,or R.I.F., for several reasons.
We’re in the midst of giving thanks,and this group deserves plenty. It hasdistributed more than 410 million books tomore than 40 million American children.
We’re on the cusp of the year-end holidayseason, during which many people turntheir attention to charity, making the mostgenerous of their yearly donations. I urgeeveryone to think about literacy, books, earlychildhood education and organizations, likeR.I.F., that support them.
And we’re a texting, tweeting, distractedcountry in which too many childrendon’t read at grade level, too many forcesconspire against any improvement in thatand too heavy a price is paid.
R.I.F. just began its 50th year of work— it was born in November 1966 — andis marking that milestone with some newapproaches and a fresh determinationto spread its message despite budgetchallenges. With the clampdown onfederal spending over recent years, it lostabout $24 million in annual funding that ithad come to rely on. That represented morethan two-thirds of its budget, which nowleans harder on private contributions.
Consequently, R.I.F. gives away fewerbooks in a given year than it once did. Itwas down to 1.8 million last year froma high of about 17 million more than adecade ago.
But R.I.F. has signed on as a partnerwith ustyme — a digital platform thatenables multiple users to read or playvideo games together — to make sure thatunderprivileged children in particulartake advantage of ustyme’s Billion e-BookGift, which will provide access to a digitallibrary of 50 previously selected children’stitles, many in Spanish as well as English.
Those titles can be downloaded by visitingRIF.org/50ebooks, starting Dec. 1.
The ebook reflects R.I.F.’s determinationto get kids to read in whatever manner bestaccomplishes that. The goal is to develop amuscle, nurture a habit, maybe even sparka passion. You never know where a littlereading might lead.
Ellen Halliday, the R.I.F. coordinatorfor the Brooklyn Public Library, recalleda mother who worried that her 8-year-oldson was wasting his time with easy, breezy,frivolous books.
“Then one day,” Halliday told me,“when he was about 9 or 10, he said to me,‘You know, I got this book, and this author— I can really see what he’s talking aboutwhen he talks about the shire or the hobbit.
I think this Tolkien guy is an excellentauthor.’”R.I.F. was the brainchild of MargaretMcNamara, whose experience as a teacherconvinced her that for many poor kids, oneof the main barriers to proficient readingwas simply access to books.
The g roup became known for itsBookmobiles, trucks that pulled up toschoolhouses to dispense books the waya Good Humor or Mister Softee truckdispenses ice cream — only for free.
It’s vital nour ishment. Researchsuggests that during their earliest years,kids from disadvantaged homes don’t hearas robust a variety of words as kids fromprivileged ones, and that’s the prelude to aseries of other gaps with bearing on theirsuccess in school and beyond.
Early reading is one of the remedies.
“Reading follows an upward spiral,”said Daniel Willingham, a professor ofpsychology at the University of Virginiaand the author of “Raising Kids WhoRead,” which was published earlier thisyear.
“Kids who read more get better atreading, and because they are better atreading, it’s easier and more pleasurableso they read still more,” he said. “Andkids who read well don’t just do better inEnglish class — it helps them in math,science and every other class, too.”I’d go even fur ther. Reading tugsthem outside of themselves, connectingthem to a wider world and filling it withwonder. It’s more than fundamental. It’stransformative.
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