Reading offers big benefits to children

An Aug. 21 editorial published in The Press stated, “While schools are doing their best to raise the reading bar for kids, one can’t help but wonder why so many entry-level kids already are behind. Well, we know the answer, don’t we? The youngest kids aren’t being taught or encouraged to read at home. That’s a failure on the parents’ part. It’s also an indictment of society, where electronic entertainment is playing increasingly prominent roles in rearing our children. This shortcoming is one of the easiest to overcome: Study after study shows that by reading to our children from the earliest stages of their lives, literacy comes to them more easily and effectively. We’re not talking hours and hours of intensive parental work, either. Reading to your kids a little bit each night can have a dramatically positive, lifelong impact.”

Parents reading with kids at home does have significant benefits for childhood reading success, but it’s not the only path to support young readers. It’s so easy to leave the responsibility in someone else’s corner, but I argue that childhood reading success is not just a parent issue, it’s not just a student issue, and it’s not just a school issue.

It’s a community issue.

A public action campaign called “This Book” was created by Opening Books, Opening Doors in order to create community-wide awareness, a sense of urgency, and ownership for childhood reading success.

The campaign calls on everyone in the community, other than parents and students, to read to a child, donate a book and help build a stronger community.

Every person in the community can play a role in supporting successful childhood literacy by reading to a child, volunteering as a Book Buddy, volunteering to read in a local library, donating any sum of money to the Opening Books, Opening Doors fund at Innovia Foundation for book purchases, adopting a classroom library, creating a public reading space with free, high-value books or attending community literacy events.

Using well-known, recognizable adults in the community reading with kids, the campaign imaging and messaging emphasizes that a book — “This Book” — can have significant benefit for a community.

This Book ...

- Opens doors. Kids who master reading by third grade are five times more likely to be college or career ready

- Removes barriers. Reading to a child is more important to their language and reading development than their family’s income or social class

- Grows our economy. Every dollar spent on a donated book generates $64 in benefits for the whole community

- Fights crime. As the average educational level in a community increases, the crime rate in that same community decreases by 13 to 27%.

An extensive toolkit has been made available to community partners, collaborators, communicators, and businesses to help share this messaging throughout the community. The toolkit is available on the campaign landing page at www.innovia.org/thisbook and includes customizable one-sheets, rack cards, bookmarks, stickers, book lists, reading milestone reference sheets by grade level and shareable social-media posts.

No one organization can successfully increase third-grade literacy rates in the Coeur d’Alene School District. This work requires everyone. Thank you to co-funders Numerica Credit Union, Mountain West Bank, Columbia Trust Bank, Bouten Construction, Innovia Foundation; and to our research partner, the University of Idaho, for its ongoing support of the young readers in the Coeur d’Alene School District.

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Amy Voeller is the program manager of Opening Books, Opening Doors. She lives in Coeur d’Alene. Email Amy at [email protected].