Research has shown that children that grow up interacting with books in their homes dramatically increase their confidence and success in learning to read and are more likely to graduate from high school. A recent alarming study found that children in middle class families have been exposed to 1,000-1700 hours of 1:1 picture book reading, while in contrast, a child from an economically challenged family on average has only been exposed to 25 hours. In fact 61% of economically challenged families have NO age appropriate books in their homes for their young children and therefore no reading opportunities at home!
Unfortunately, research indicates that this discrepancy is a large contributing factor to the achievement gap in the public schools. The most successful way to improve reading achievement is to increase access to books and subsequent language and code-related literacy skills at an early age. Our goal at A Book In Hand is to get quality picture and story books, as well as basic information on how to use books to foster early language, book handling and pre-literacy skills, into the hands of young children from economically challenged families. These families may not currently have the resources to purchase books for their home.
We are hoping to support these families in providing their children a pre-literacy foundation that can help make the jump to kindergarten programming more successful and enjoyable. We will be partnering with several family friendly food banks in the greater Denver area. Families with children may take home 2 books per child when they come to pick up their food.
A Book In Hand is the brain-child of sisters, Stacy-Turner-Villalaz and Tina Mitchell. Stacy has a Master’s Degree in speech-language pathology and has worked exclusively with children over the past 25 years, both in private practice and at Children’s Hospital Colorado. She has regularly taught preschool groups at the hospital with children diagnosed with a wide variety of medical and developmental challenges using the StoryBook Journey curriculum. This curriculum creates language rich programming using early childhood literature. She has also worked 1:1 with hundreds of young children to support their speech-language, pre-literacy and phonemic awareness skills.
Tina Mitchell has an Associates Degree in Early Childhood Education and a Bachelors degree in Human Development and Family Studies. She has worked with children from various ethnicities and income levels in a variety of educational and therapeutic settings. Her interest in supporting families with low incomes was piqued when she worked at an urban school in Denver dedicated to helping economically challenged families.