Out of the Box and Into the Book: Innovative Library Partnerships to Close the 30 Million Word Gap

Abstract

Recent research has shown that early literacy is directly connected to school readiness. Talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing, the basic tenets of Every Child Ready to Read 2 (ECRR2), not only increase young children’s vocabulary, they also help them process new information. However, the disparity in vocabularies of children of lower and higher income families is one of the greatest battles of the twenty-first century.