First Book
is a national nonprofit organization
with a single mission: to give children
from low-income families the opportunity
to read and own their first new books.
The primary goal of First Book is to
work with existing literacy programs to
distribute new books to children who,
for economic reasons, have little or no
access to books. Since its inception,
First Book has provided nearly 30
million new books to children in need in
hundreds of communities nationwide.
In the years
since First Book's founding, educators
and policymakers have become acutely
aware of the need to develop strong
community-based resource programs for
low-income children, which is precisely
the focus of First Book at the local
level. One recent report funded by the
Packard and MacArthur Foundations found
that the average child growing up in a
middle class family has been exposed to
1,000 to 1,700 hours of one-on-one
picture book reading before entering
school. The study found that the average
child growing up in a low-income family,
however, has only been exposed to 25
hours of one-on-one reading during this
same time period.
At the local
level, First Book leverages the strength
of its entrepreneurial Advisory Board
model to spark social change. By
providing community-based literacy
programs with an ongoing supply of new
books, First Book plays a critical role
in enhancing the quality of preschool
and after-school programs nationwide. A
literacy program in St. Louis serving 50
low-income children, for example, could
receive 50 books each month for a year
from First Book-St. Louis. The books
would be chosen by program leaders
working directly with the children,
incorporated into program lessons, and
given to the children to take home and
keep.
All books
distributed by First Book are provided
at no cost to the child or program. With
the support of First Book, these
programs are able-often for the first
time-to develop a curriculum around the
books they select, share these books
with participating children, and enable
these children to share the magic of
their new books with siblings and other
family members at home.
61 percent
of low-income families have no books at
all in their homes for their children.
While low-income children have--on
average--roughly four children's books
in their homes, a team of researchers
recently concluded that nearly two
thirds of the low-income families they
studied owned no books for their
children.
The only
behavior measure that correlates
significantly with reading scores is the
number of books in the home. An analysis
of a national data set of nearly 100,000
United States school children found that
access to printed materials--and not
poverty--is the "critical variable
affecting reading acquisition."
The above text comes directly from First
Book's website.
