It's the Love of Books that Counts

Read to Your Child in any Language --

As a parent, you are your child’s first and most important teacher!  For some, this may sound like an overwhelming responsibility.  But providing your child with an enriched home environment for learning is much easier than you may think.  Did you know that just having books in your home already gives your child an advantage?  The presence of books in the home, enhanced by establishing a regular reading practice, is associated with better learning outcomes for children in the early grades and beyond.  

By sending you a book in the mail every month, BEGIN WITH BOOKS creates a little library right in your own home and allows your child to begin developing the early skills she will need to eventually learn to read and write.  Perhaps you did not have books in your home growing up, nor a parent or caregiver who read to you regularly.  You have the opportunity to turn that around for your own child and give her an advantage that you may not have had.  By reading to her from a young age, you are playing an important role in her learning. 

We know that parents’ attitudes and beliefs around reading influence children’s literacy outcomes more than any specific early literacy practice.  One of the best gifts you can give your child is a love of reading and an appreciation for books as a gateway to a lifetime of learning. 

Keep your child’s primary language skills developing

You may be asking how you can be your child’s most important teacher if English is not your first language.  How is your child going to develop the language skills and a foundation for reading if he doesn’t hear English in the home?  And what good is it to have English-language books in the home if you are not able to read them?  Is it better to just wait until your child enters school and leave it to the professionals?  The answer is a definitive NO!  You are still your child’s most important teacher for language and pre-reading skills, regardless of the language you speak at home.  The more fluent your child is in his native language, the easier it will be for him to learn to read and write in English. 

The foundational skills your child needs, such as letter knowledge, phonological awareness, print awareness, vocabulary, and so forth, are transferable to his English language learning.  It’s the “wiring up” of these skills that matters most.  Even if your child is learning English outside of the home, it’s important to keep his primary language skills developing.  Daycare or preschool teachers may send activity suggestions home with your child.  If you’re not comfortable doing them in English, try to do them in your own language instead.  If you’re not being encouraged to do this, your child’s teacher may not be aware of the important role your own language plays in your child’s development. 

Keep in mind that there are many ways to “read” a book besides the words.  “Reading” in any language has far-reaching developmental rewards.  Shared experiences with a book strengthen the emotional bonds between you and your child and build emotional intelligence – the attachment and security needed to regulate his emotions.  And of course, books are the ultimate tool for language development.  They are a great stepping-off point for conversations – the more you talk with your child, the larger his vocabulary will be.  A robust vocabulary in any language is an advantage, and, remember, these skills are transferable across languages.  Your lucky child will become bi-literate and able to read and write in both languages – what a gift!

Nurture a love of reading regardless of language

Let’s talk about the ways in which books help develop the pre-reading skills your child will need to learn to read.  Without ever having to read a word, just the act of picking up a book is teaching your child some important lessons. 

• She begins learning book-handling skills and the conventions of print.  For example, in most Western languages, these conventions include the left-to-right and top-to-bottom orientation of print on a page.
• She begins to discover that there is something special about books compared to her other toys. 
• She begins to recognize that books are a portal to story-telling and learning about the world around her. 
• As she gets older and the books become more complex, she begins to appreciate that books can teach her about people and places not in her immediate environment. 
• And importantly, she learns that books are a place where worlds can be imagined and anything is possible, where curiosity and imagination are free to run wild.

“Reading” aloud to your child in your own language teaches her all of these things.  You can point to the pictures and label the objects.  Ask lots of questions, especially the open-ended kind using the five W’s – What? Where? When? Why? Who? and How?

The importance of making reading an enjoyable habit cannot be overemphasized.  Print motivation is a key concept spoken about in the field of emergent literacy – the foundational skills needed to learn to read.  Print motivation is a way of capturing the value placed on reading.  So, for example, if your child loves to have books read to her, and you read to her often, her pre-reading skills are likely to improve accordingly.  Print motivation, then, is a predictor of later reading success.  Not surprisingly, the best way to increase your young child’s print motivation is to expose her to lots of books and make your shared reading experiences as pleasurable as you can.  So, again, one of the best things you can do for your child is to nurture a love of reading.

Here are the Imagination Library books from BEGIN WITH BOOKS that arrived in your mailbox in October:

• The Pudgy Book of Mother Goose, illustrated by Richard Walz
• Sassy, Let’s Count! A First Book of Numbers, Grosset & Dunlap, Dave Aikins
• There’s a Hole in the Log on the Bottom of the Lake, Loren Long
• Corduroy Takes a Bow, Viola Davis (characters created by Don Freeman)
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears, retold and illustrated by James Marshall
• Carl and the Meaning of Life, Deborah Freedman

All of these books are wonderful whether you can read in English or not.  You may be familiar with the well-known and popular nursery rhymes in The Pudgy Book of Mother Goose.  Perhaps you have an older child who could read them in English.  If not, don’t worry, just use the pictures to tell your own stories.  Sassy Let’s Count! couldn’t be easier as it only has numbers and the corresponding number of items in the pictures.  All these books lend themselves to pointing, labelling and making up your own stories. 

If you know the story of Goldilocks and The Three Bears, tell it in your own language.  Carl and the Meaning of Life has lots of possibilities for labelling the animals and talking about the habitats they live in.  If your child is already learning English and wants to pipe in, encourage her to do so.  Her English language development will not be compromised.  The main thing is you are establishing a regular reading habit and fostering a love of learning.

The Dolly Parton Imagination Library offers some books in English and Spanish

There are roughly 5-million children in the public-school system in the United States who speak English as a second language, equating to approximately 10% of the student population.  The majority of second-language learners are of Hispanic descent and speak Spanish in the home.  In South Carolina, the percentage of children speaking a language other than English in the home is around 6%, with the majority speaking Spanish as you would expect. 

Recognizing the importance of having a child’s language and culture reflected in the books he reads, The Dolly Parton Imagination Library offers several titles in both Spanish and English in its 2020 book list.  Perhaps you have already received a book in Spanish this year.  The following are the 2020 books that have a bilingual English/Spanish title or Hispanic content:

• Baby Sounds, pictures by Joy Allen
• I Love Mommy Because, Laurel Porter-Gaylord, pictures by Ashley Wolff
• Sassy, Baby’s First Words, Grosset & Dunlap, illustrated by Dave Aikins
• I Love my Daddy Because, Laurel Porter-Gaylord, pictures by Ashley Wolff
• I Hear a Pickle, Rachel Isadora
• The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats
• Coat of Many Colors, Dolly Parton
• Blue Sky White Stars, Sarvinder Naberhaus, illustrated by Kadir Nelson
• My Papi has a Motorcycle, Isabel Quintero

 -- Caron Bell, PhD, Early Childhood Development, and beginwithbooks.org volunteer