The Gap

• "35% of U.S. children enter kindergarten unprepared to learn, with most lacking the vocabulary and sentence structure crucial to school success".
  
  (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Report, 1991)
  
  
• "One in three American kindergartners arrives in school unprepared to learn and only 50% of infants and toddlers are routinely read to by their parents."
  
  (Carnegie Corporation, 1994)
  
  
• "Children who complete third grade below grade level are most likely to never catch up."
  
  (International Reading Association & National Association For Education of Young Children, 1998)
  
  
• "Over 1 million children drop out of school each year, costing the nation over $240 billion over their lifetimes in lost earnings, foregone tax revenues and expenditures for social services."
  
  (U.S. Department of Education, 1995)
  
  
• "While illiteracy and poor academic performance are not direct causes of criminal behavior, young people who have received inadequate education or who exhibit poor literacy skills are disproportionately found within the criminal justice system."
  
  (The Center on Crime, Communities & Culture, 1999)

• "The single most important activity for building understandings and skills essential for reading success appears to be reading aloud to children."
  
  (Bus, Van Dzendoorn and Pellegrini, 1995; Wells, 1985)
  
  
• "We know that children's understandings about literacy emerge in infancy and are continually in the process of being shaped and clarified by countless experiences and active engagement with oral and written language, books and stories."
  
  (International Reading Association and National Association For Education of Young Children, 1998)
  
  
• "The crucial issue is not how reading is taught in 1st grade classrooms, but how readers are raised from birth. Learning to read is a complex, constantly developing process that involves a wide range of skills, experience and understanding. Reading is like growing-it happens a little bit at a time."
  
  (Miles, 1995)
  
  
• "The single most significant factor influencing a child's early educational success is an introduction to books and being read to at home prior to beginning school."
  
  (National Commission on Reading, 1985)
  
  
• "Literacy of the home is a determining variable in the acquisition of school literacy: Early readers typically come from homes in which storybook reading is a frequent event."
  
  (Clark, 1994; Durkin, 1974/75)
  
  
• "Although many experiences are said to contribute to early literacy, no other single activity is regarded as important as the shared book experience between caregivers and children."
  (Neuman, 1999)

• "Synapses form pathways between and among neurons that allow the brain to communicate. Young children develop twice as many synapses than they will need as adults… Synapses that are activated are kept. Synapses that are not used, atrophy. A young child's experiences have a positive and deep impact on the configuration and complexity of the brain and therefore, early childhood experiences have a long-term impact on cognitive development and learning."
  
  (Shore, 1997)
  
  
• There are statistically significant relationships between the frequency of book reading to children during the preschool period and individual differences in the reading, spelling and I.Q. scores of 550 13-year olds...There seemed to be a cut-off point whereby children who were read to less than 4 times a week achieved less well than those read to more regularly."
  
  (Stevenson and Fredman, 1990)
  
  
• "The frequency of listening to stories between 1 and 3 years of age (as measured directly in the home) was significantly associated with teacher ratings of oral language skill at 5 years of age and with reading comprehension at 7 years of age."
  
  (Wells, 1995)

• "Economic disadvantage has been associated with both gradual and linear declines in cognition across the entire preschool period, with even stronger declines when tests are predominantly verbal."
  
  (Burchinal, Lee and Ramsey, 1989)
• "Once in place, these patterns unfortunately have shown remarkable resistance to change."
  
  (Juel, Griffith and Gaugh, 1986)
  
  
• "A typical middle class child enters first grade with 1,000 to 1,700 hours of one-to-one picture book reading, whereas a corresponding child from a low-income family averages 25 such hours."
  
  (Adams, 1990)
  
  Correspondingly...
  "A two-year old with a college graduate parent typically knows 800 to 1,000 words, while the two-year old with a high school graduate parent knows an average of less than 200 words."
  (Delaine Eastin, 2000)

• "The research is clear and substantial, and the evidence is unequivocal: Students who enter first grade with a wealth of phonological awareness1 are more successful readers than those who do not."
  
  (Fitzcimmons, 1998)
  
  
• "Children acquire through interventions with others the insights that specific kinds of marks-print- also can represent meanings. Although it may seem as though some children acquire these understandings magically, studies suggest that they are the beneficiaries of considerable, though playful and informal, adult guidance and instruction.
  
  (Anbar, 1986 Durkin, 1966)
  
  
• "Children who have not already developed some basic literacy practices when they enter school are three to four times more likely to drop out in later years."
  
  (National Adult Literacy Survey, 1993)
  
  
• "Being read to plays a special role in the literacy development of the young child. By listening to the printed word children can develop a feel for the patterns, the flow, and the nature of written language. Children receive a global sense of what reading is all about and what it feels like. They develop a positive attitude towards reading which is a powerful motivation when the child reaches school. It is also an important means whereby children can begin forming concepts of books, print, and reading."
  
  (Hall, N.R., 1987. The Emergence of Literacy. Portsmouth,
  NH: Heinemann Educational Books.)

• "Parent-child attachment is related to the frequency of reading at home and the frequency of parent-child reading is predictive of emergent literacy skills and later reading development."
  
  (Bus, Van Ijzendoorn, 1995)
  
  
• "Mother-child attachment security is related to the frequency of reading."
  
  (Bus, Van Ijzendoorn, 1995)
  
  
• "The adult reading a story from a book becomes associated by the baby with a sense of comfort and well-being."
  
  (Dr. Neil Bechervaise, 1998)
  
  
• "If books are part of loving parent-child interactions from an early age, children will associate the presence of books with all the positive feelings of being held and loved. Undoubtedly, these associations are encoded in a profound way in a child's developing brain. Picture books provide an ideal context for parent-child interactions that are loving and stimulating." "The voice of the nurturing adult, the comfort provided and the presence of the book become inseparable schematic triad.
  
  (Dr. Roberts Needlman, 1998)
  
  
• "Babies experience the way you look into their eyes, and they see the expressions on your face; they hear you cooing, singing, talking and reading; they feel you holding or rocking them; they take in your familiar smells; they often experience the taste of your skin as well as their own. Touch is especially important: holding and stroking an infant stimulates the brain to release important hormones that allow him to grow. Your love for your child is, of course, the key to the powerful connection between the two of you. But it is the expression of your love that affects the way her brain forms connections.
  
  (iamyourchild.org, 2000)
  
  
• "As you read to your baby, your child is forming an association between books and what is most loved-your voice and closeness."
  
  (National Parenting Information Network, 1996)
  
  
• "I don't think we could ever measure the importance of reading, singing, and talking to our kids from the very beginning." "Recent research tells us that children who have been properly nurtured and loved, and have securely bonded and attached with their parents or primary caregivers, have a much better chance at achieving success in school, and have greater self-esteem, making it easier for them to function in society."
  
  (iamyourchild.org, 2000)