• Children who live in print-rich environments and who are read to during the first years of life are much more likely to learn to read on schedule.
• Reading aloud to young children is not only one of the best activities to stimulate language and cognitive skills; it also builds motivation, curiosity, and memory.
• Early language skills, the foundation for reading ability and school readiness, are based primarily on language exposure - resulting from parents and other adults talking to young children.
• Research shows that the more words parents use when speaking to an 8-month-old infant, the greater the size of their child's vocabulary at age 3. The landmark Hart-Risley study on language development documented that children from low-income families hear as many as 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers before the age of 4.
• Books contain many words that children are unlikely to encounter frequently in spoken language. Children's books actually contain 50% more rare words than primetime television or even college students conversations.
• The nurturing and one-on-one attention from parents during reading aloud encourages children to form a positive association with books and reading later in life.
• Reading aloud is a proven technique to help children cope during times of stress or tragedy.
• Reading difficulty contributes to school failure, which increases the risk of absenteeism, leaving school, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse, and teenage pregnancy - all of which perpetuate the cycles of poverty and dependency.
• 20% of U.S. workers are functionally illiterate.

Learn more about the evidence supporting reading aloud to children.

• Fewer than half (48%) of young children in the U.S. are read to daily, meaning that more than 13 million children under 5 go to bed every night without a bedtime story.
• The percentage of children read to daily drops even lower (to 36%) among low-income families, whose children face the highest risk of literacy problems. Even among high-income families, however, more than 2 out of every 5 children are not read to daily.

• Families living in poverty often lack the money to buy new books, as well as access to libraries. In fact, 61% of low-income families have no children's books in their homes.
• Parents who may not have been read to as children themselves may not realize the tremendous value of reading to their own children.
• Low literacy rates are not just the result of economic poverty; they are also the result of time poverty, something that affects nearly every parent in our country. Responsibilities at work, community activities, the television, and video games all make it difficult to carve out time for a parent and child to sit down together to read a favorite book.

Find out the percentage of children who are read to daily in your state.

"In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework after dinner, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, and read to their child."