Look what a book can do!

Ready, Set, Read! provides books, resources, and support to Los Angeles families, helping them lay the foundation for their children’s lifelong learning. We love supporting parents in using books to bolster children’s healthy development, starting from birth. Beyond building knowledge and curiosity about the world, reading with your child has other benefits. These include:

Parent/child attachment: Children whose caregivers read to them daily enjoy warm, attentive bonding time with a cherished adult. They benefit from the predictability of this routine. While laying the foundation for future cognitive learning, regularly reading together reinforces children’s sense of emotional security. This sets the stage for future social emotional growth.

Sensory exploration: When babies chew and throw books, they are doing important exploration. Infants use all five senses to learn: they love to look, touch, taste and feel books, exploring their colors, shapes, textures and weight. Hearing your voice share sounds and stories helps their own language development.

School readiness: Interacting with books builds children’s early literacy skills. They discover how books work: turning pages; finding the top, bottom, front and back; and seeing text read from left to right. They learn that shapes form letters, letters make words and print has meaning. Hearing a variety of words improves children’s vocabularies, preparing them for independent reading. Time spent reading aloud with children fosters a love of reading and readiness to succeed in school.

There’s much more to share! Ready, Set, Read!’s parent workshops showcase how books can be a launchpad for limitless learning.

Lauren Wagman
Executive Director, Ready, Set, Read!