Wayne State University issued the following announcement on June 17.
A large part of Detroit is covered by book deserts — neighborhoods with no bookstores and few books available for purchase anywhere else. Research shows that, in middle-income neighborhoods, the average home contains 13 books per child; low-income neighborhoods contain a single book for every 300 kids.
The Wayne State University Library System is looking to change that, starting in Midtown. Led by a team of library staff, the group has been working with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to bring the program to the Wayne State community.
“We want to help support early literacy in our Wayne State community by getting books into the hands of kids who may not have easy access,” said Betty Adams, chair of the Wayne State chapter of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. “Research shows that reading to kids has a huge impact on developing language and vocabulary. By the age of 5, kids who have never been read to have only heard around 4,600 words. Kids who are read to every day have heard almost 300,000.”
Original source can be found here.
Source: Wayne State University
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