Friday 31 March 2006

Pic of the day: Huh? The number of books? I can't believe it!

Books and children

I warmly recommend clicking daily on The Literacy Site, where the proceeds from the advertising goes toward books for children. Books for children is something close to my heart, since when I was small and weak and sickly, books opened doors to wonderful worlds. My parents bought me books about the planets, computers (which were still a recent invention in the 1960es) and marine molluscs. And one of my favorites, a heavy entomological encyclopedia with surely more than a thousand illustrations. I still remember some of the latin names.

Even so, I automatically went "HUH?" when I saw the small blurb there today, saying: "The number of books in the home is directly tied to a child's reading abilities." Because, nice as that would be, it is actually wrong. The tie is indirect, although only barely.

The number of books in the home is actually tied directly to the home-owner's reading abilities, education and income, which tend to go hand in hand (although here in Scandinavia, income is not as strongly tied to education as in English-speaking countries, not above a moderate level). The influence of the parents, and not least the genes, then cause the children to become highly literate as well. Adopting a dyslexic child into a literate home will not help greatly, although it will probably help a bit. A child with a penchant for reading, on the other hand, will read the phone book if need be. (I know because I did that, though I did not memorize it. I was just curious.)

Books are such a wonderful gift to a curious young mind, there really is no need to lie to make it look better. It is already right there after the most basic needs of the body, at least if you count things that can be bought for money. Or in this case, by clicking on an ad-studded website. No purchases necessary.