Literacy Resources

Looking for ways to help your child develop a lifelong love of reading?  Here are some organizations, publications, and other resources that you might find interesting:

Fabulous Literacy Organizations:*

Reach Out and Read:  Reach Out and Read is an evidence-based nonprofit organization that promotes early literacy and school readiness in pediatric exam rooms nationwide by giving new books to children and advice to parents about the importance of reading aloud.

Reading is Fundamental:  RIF is the largest children’s literacy nonprofit in the United States. They prepare and motivate children to read by delivering free books and literacy resources to those children and families who need them most. Their mission is to motivate young children to read by working with them, their parents, and community members to make reading a fun and beneficial part of everyday life. RIF's highest priority is reaching underserved children from birth to age 8.

Reading Rockets offers a wealth of reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better.  Their reading resources assist parents, teachers, and other educators in helping struggling readers build fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.

Raising a Reader:  Created to help families of children aged 0-8 develop, practice and maintain home-based literacy routines critical for school success.

Children's Literacy Initiative: a non-profit that works with teachers to transform instruction so that children can become powerful readers, writers, and thinkers.

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library:  Created to help foster a love of reading among preschool children and their families by providing them with the gift of a specially selected book each month. By mailing high quality, age-appropriate books directly to their homes, Parton's organization helps children become excited about books and to feel the magic that books can create.

Literacy Publications:

Help Me Get Ready to Read by Susan Marx and Barbara Kasok:  An easy-to-follow guide for reading aloud effectively to children starting in infancy through the preschool years. Parents and grandparents, daycare providers, preschool staff, early childhood professionals, literacy volunteers, and librarians can use HELP ME GET READY TO READ to understand early literacy concepts and skills; choose good books to read aloud to young children; create a nurturing environment for reading aloud; and foster children's emotional, social, language, and cognitive development.

Articles of Interest:

Take Time to Rhyme:  How Sharing Rhymes with Your Preschooler Promotes Foundational Literacy Development

Helping Your Child Learn to Read, from HealthyChildren.org

Reading aloud to children:  the evidence:  An article published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood in 2008 that "provides an overview of key research on reading aloud to young children, and its influence on children's language and literacy development" (from Reach Out and Read)

Why We Work:  a look into the science behind Reach Out and Read


* All descriptions taken from the organization's website.