A recent piece of research featured in Donalyn Miller's Book Whisperer blog describes how growing up in a home with books confers a distinct advantage...
Family scholarly culture and educational success: Books and schooling in 27 nations by: M. D. R. Evans, Jonathan Kelley, Joanna Sikora, Donald J. Treiman in
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility (10 February 2010)
Abstract : 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. It holds equally in rich nations and in poor; in the past and in the present; under Communism, capitalism, and Apartheid; and most strongly in China. Data are from representative national samples in 27 nations, with over 70,000 cases, analyzed using multi-level linear and probit models with multiple imputation of missing data.
and here is a link to The Book Whisperer's blog (see May 23rd post) with the official press release from the University of Nevada, UCLA and Australian National University study.
Of course, for families without books in their homes, this is where libraries come in, and in particular, school libraries...
"At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better. It's an enormous force for good." Barack Obama
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