HOME LIBRARIES “A home with books as an integral part of the way of life encourages children to read for pleasure and encourages discussion among family members about what they have read, thereby providing children with information, vocabulary, imaginative richness, wide horizons, and skills for discovery and play.” —Dr. Mariah Evans, professor of sociology, University of Nevada, Reno
KEY FINDINGS
> > Conducted over 20 years, Evans, Kelley, Sikorac, and Treimand (2010) surveyed more than 70,000 people across 27 countries and found that children raised in homes with more than 500 books spent three years longer in school than children whose parents had only a few books. > > Even a child who comes from a home with 25 books will, on average, complete two more years of school than would a child from a home without any books at all (Evans, et al., 2010). > > Research from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Mullis and Martin, 2007) shows a similar impact of books in the home. Surveying 215,000 students across 40 countries, PIRLS 2006 was one of the largest international assessments of reading literacy ever undertaken. > > Students thrived as readers when they were from homes where their parents enjoyed reading and read frequently, books were in abundance, and students were engaged in literacy activities—from alphabet blocks to word games—from an early age (Adams, 1990; Mullis and Martin, 2007). > > The only behavior measure that correlates significantly with reading scores is the number of books in the home. An analysis of a national data set of nearly 100,000 United States school children found that access to printed materials—and not poverty—is the “critical variable affecting reading acquisition” (McQuillan, 1998). > > Asking children to “show me your library” is powerful. Children think of themselves as readers when they have books in their homes—changing the literacy dynamic (Constantino, 2014).
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HOME LIBRARIES
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