Rx: Read This to Your Child

Reading to young children helps stimulate their development in many positive ways and makes them more likely to become good readers themselves. But many poor children have access to few books and live in families that may place little emphasis on reading.

Reach Out and Read has been working to change that situation by encouraging pediatricians to expose children to books at an early age. At each medical checkup, pediatricians in the program give a new book to their patients between 6 months and 5 years of age, and “prescribe” reading sessions with the children’s parents. Each child builds a personal library of 10 or more books by the time he or she starts school.

“My goal is that, in another five years, giving books to children and advice to parents about reading will be as routine as giving immunizations,” says Barry Zuckerman, chief of pediatrics at the Boston Medical Center, where he established the program in 1989. “When children share books with someone they love, they learn to love books themselves.”

Reach Out and Read quickly grew beyond Boston’s poor neighborhoods. With support from companies and private foundations — including more than $450,000 from the Annie E. Casey Foundation — it has been adopted across the country. Program participants now include 352 hospitals and medical clinics in 46 states.