You love libraries. We love libraries. Really – everyone should love libraries! As a multitype system, it is so easy to see the great value libraries provide to their overlapping communities. It’s great!

We also encourage literacy and reading across our communities! Here is a quick look at some other organizations you can help to connect kids in your community with more books.

Download this flyer to give to your patrons, to easily and quickly share this information! Or add it to your website, so people can check it for themselves.

• Reach Out and Read, Minnesota:

  “Reach Out and Read gives young children a foundation for success by incorporating books into pediatric care and encouraging families to read aloud together. The best time to shape a child’s future is in the first five years, a critical window of rapid brain development that does not occur at any other time. Children who hear fewer words during early childhood start school developmentally behind their peers, and may never catch up.With unparalleled access to families with young children, Reach Out and Read medical providers give books to children at well-child visits from infancy until they start school. More importantly, they encourage families to read aloud and engage with their infants, toddlers and preschoolers every day.”

  By incorporating books into pediatric primary care and encouraging families to read aloud together, Reach Out and Read Minnesota gives young children a critical foundation for success.

  We encourage early literacy by:
  ● Training pediatricians, family physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants to use books during well-child exams to promote early language and literacy development. With age-appropriate tips and encouragement about book-sharing, storytelling, and reading aloud, parents are empowered to become their child’s first teacher.
  ● Providing new, developmentally and culturally appropriate books for children to take home and share over and over and over again.
  ●Partnering with multiple vendors to negotiate deep discounts to give our clinics access to quality books in English, Spanish, Somali, Hmong, Karen, Burmese, and even Ojibwe.
  ●Helping clinics create literacy-rich waiting areas and exam rooms.
  ● Recruiting, supporting, and guiding clinics to implement an intervention that extensive research has shown doubles the likelihood that parents will read to their children, improves children’s language ability, and reduces delays in language ability in at-risk children.

• Reading is Fundamental (RIF):

  “Reading Is Fundamental is committed to a literate America by inspiring a passion for reading among all children, providing quality content to make an impact, and engaging communities in the solution to give every child the fundamentals for success. Headquartered in Washington DC, RIF is the nation’s largest children’s literacy non-profit and creates impact in communities in all 50 states.””RIF develops content and resources that produce measurable results. Through RIF’s various programs and partnerships, we provide opportunities for children and their families to experience the life-changing impact of reading. Reading is the fundamental building block to all life’s essential skills. We invite you to explore our program options for bringing books and literacy resources to children at home, in the classroom, and in the community.”

  • • Books For Ownership
    • Read For Success
    • Literacy Central
    • Literacy Central App

  • Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library:

    “Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free, high-quality books to children from birth until they begin school, no matter their family’s income.After launching in 1995, the program grew quickly. First books were only distributed to children living in Sevier County, Tennessee where Dolly grew up. It became such a success that in 2000 a national replication effort was underway. By 2003, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library had mailed one million books. It would prove to be the first of many millions of books sent to children around the world.

    Dolly’s home state of Tennessee pledged to pursue statewide coverage in 2004 and global expansion was on the horizon. After the United States, the program launched in Canada in 2006 followed by the United Kingdom in 2007 and Australia joined in 2013.”

    Want to help sign up patrons? Find their program office right here!