The Enduring Importance of Books!

According to a recent article*, children growing up in homes with many books get 3 years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents' education, occupation, and class. This is as great an advantage as having university educated rather than unschooled parents, and twice the advantage of having a professional rather than an unskilled father.

"A book-oriented home environment endows children with tools that are directly useful in learning at school; vocabulary, information, comprehension skills, imagination, broad horizons of history and geography, familiarity with good writing, understanding of the importance of evidence in argument, and many others."

Public Libraries provide a constant supply of books and other enriching materials into the homes of all children regardless of income. If you know of a family who are not taking advantage of the wonderful resources available in the Library please share this information.

*Evans, M.D.R. et al. Family scholarly culture and education success. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility (2010)