Bang for the Buck, IL books are a literacy-boosting bargain

We love giving books on the spot at Events, when canvassing, or to preschools on occasion. It’s fun for children and parents, and for us.

But.

Bang-for-the-buck, that hand-to-hand on-occasion book giving does not hold a candle to the value of Imagination Library books mailed month after month after month to a child at their home.

Bang-for-the-buck, hand-to-hand, occasional book giving cannot hold a candle to the long-term literacy boosting power of years of book deliveries to a child. Literacy, like spoken language, is not “taught” in a day, or a month. It is learned over a long period of time and multiple, daily, ongoing exposures to and with it. Babbling, singing and talking with and around infants plant the seeds of speaking. Babbling, singing, pointing to shapes, colors, & objects on a printed page plant the seeds of literacy. Daily is best. Joyfully is best.

Beyond infancy, Ownership is powerful. Imaginary Library (IL) books arrive with the child’s name on the label, an important detail. Another small, powerful part of IL is the Joy of delivery day, feeling important because the mail carrier delivered mail to you; anticipation of what’s inside, opening the wrapper and the cover of your own brand new book monthly. All this is not “teaching a child to read”. It is creating affection and joy for books, a thing not possible to test for, but very easy to see. Excitement about book deliveries is often the first thing we hear about when meeting parents of IL book recipients.

All that Joy and fun aside, the simple fact is: having books in the home every day makes book-sharing and reading time with little ones easy to do.

And WHO is doing that book-time sharing? The child’s parents, most often: Not a “teacher”, not a “tutor”, their parent. Or another household member. Who looks like them. Who the little ones trust, look up to, depend on.

Parents and other adults in a household are a child’s first “teachers”. Learning begins long, long before any formal school or even most care programs begin. Putting books into the home from birth puts them within reach - daily, routinely - of the people infants and toddlers learn from the most and the earliest.

Infants who come in to consciousness seeing their people, their family, handling and sharing books every day know, without formal “teaching”, that books belong in their lives, in their homes, in their hands. They know spending time with books is a familiar, normal part of daily life.

Can we put a dollar value or test-score rating on that innate knowledge? Not that I know of. But I know a child who is familiar and comfortable with books at age 4 or 5 is a child far more ready to begin formal reading than a child to whom a book in their hands is a strange, foreign thing. A child who feels book-time is a time of discovery and fun is open and interested when the cover is opened. That makes teaching and learning exponentially more efficient — and fun.

Bang for the Buck, Books from Birth in the Home delivered constantly, reliably, create a foundation, or lay the groundwork, or build the soil in which the seeds of literacy can be nurtured into lifelong literacy efficiently — and joyfully. Pick your metaphor: they all add up to: Books from Birth are Best.

And Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library makes providing them the best bargain there is.