From: Jennifer Groff <jengroff_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2010 11:22:49 +0000

This is something that has troubled me too. In my community, there are ve ry active Family Reading Partnership (www.familyreading.org) programs that give children books at well child visits (and now, from birth, in p resc hool, as well as at bookshelves located in stores and businesses in the c ommunity). This is a tremendous, powerful effort to increase print mat er ial exposure for all children.Yet still many children came to elementary sc hool saying they had no books at home. Some actually said, oh, my (par ent/grandparent) threw those away. Some children had a hard time understan ding that school library books had to be cared for AND returned, becaus e they were used to the free books; we spent a lot of time on learning bo ok care and library procedures. I am very much FOR books in the home for chi ldren, but continue to worry that no one is reading the books to kids i n a loving and meaningful way, and have concerns that the books are not v al ued because they are free. (Also, concerned about children from famili es who did use the public library but can no longer take out books due to out standing fines, or frequent changes of address that make it difficult)J en nifer Groffformer elementary librarian, Ithaca, NY I do not mean to sound like a curmudgeon but the subject of free books for kids has always been interesting because many of those same 20 kids own techie stuff, etc., which are not free giveaways.
Received on Thu 11 Nov 2010 11:22:49 AM CST