Doctors' orders: read early: a novel literacy program enlists medical professionals and volunteer readers to start young children reading.

Many parents living in poverty may lack the money to supply their children with books; and others may not have been read to as children, making it unlikely that they will share reading with their own kids, experts say. Reach Out and Read is a program that sets out to change this pattern. Founded in 1989 at Boston City Hospital (now Boston Center), through a collaboration of early childhood educators and pediatricians, Reach Out and Read is a national, nonprofit organization that has established 2,337 program sites nationwide.

Pediatricians and nurses, trained in the developmental strategies of early literacy, supply books to children aged six months to five years. They also counsel parents on the importance of reading aloud to their children by reminding them that early literacy is linked to later academic success. Not only that, they say, but reading with children creates a loving bond, a special bit of quality family time.

Reach Out and Read places volunteer readers in clinic waiting rooms. They look over books with the children and teach parents helpful techniques to enhance the reading experience.

"At first, I thought it was odd to get a book from the doctor, and that my son was too young," commented the parent of a nine-month-old child being served by one of the programs (and who did not wish to be identified). "But then I realized, once she gave me the book to read to him, he took to it very quickly, and I realized it made sense."

Since its inception, Reach Out and Read has trained 28,000 pediatricians, distributed 3.2 million books annually and served more than 2 million children. After each checkup, children go home with a developmentally and culturally appropriate book. If parents keep up with their pediatric visits, a child will have his or her own little library by the time they start school.

"We are working to change pediatrics by promoting child development in a very concrete way," says Barry S. Zuckerman, MD, chair and CEO of Reach Out and Read. "I think pediatricians who give books to children are changing those lives, particularly for those children who have been growing up without them."

Reach Out and Read is asking for support to provide books and necessary training for their current programs, as well as new program sites they are hoping to establish. Please visit its Web site www.reachoutandread.org or call 617-629-8042 to see how you can help.

The Reach Out and Read National Conference will be held in Washington, D.C., from May 12-14, 2005.

Suzanne Rust is BIBR's Children's Bookshelf editor.