Books for Babies
First Steps to Literacy
Books for Babies links health to the importance of early literacy, language and attachment, and meets families in the hospital when a baby is born — an innovative approach to preventing future reading and learning difficulties.
Our goal is to help parents understand the critical connection between verbal stimulation, language development and future literacy, and how they can help their babies learn. Our message is that by reading with and talking to children beginning at birth, parents can strengthen their family and help their youngsters develop the early literacy skills they will need to succeed in school, and in life.
21,000 Connecticut newborns will go home with a Books for Babies literacy bag this year.
Books for Babies provides families of newborns with a "literacy bag" — a new children’s book and an informational guide for parents — during their stay on maternity units, in partnership with: 
- Hospital of Saint Raphael, New Haven
- Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, New London
- Hartford Hospital
- Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center, Hartford
- Manchester Memorial Hospital
- Bridgeport Hospital
- St. Vincent’s Medical Center, Bridgeport
 A unique feature of our program is the in-hospital visit from a Books for Babies volunteer. To help all families get started, volunteers who have been trained by our program visit with parents on maternity units to introduce Read to Grow and to talk about the “how and why” of reading aloud to babies. Gently used books are available for brothers and sisters of newborns to take home in all eight partner hospitals to promote family reading time.
Interested in becoming a Books for Babies volunteer? Click here and fill out an application.
Families can enroll in our Books for Babies Follow-up Program and automatically receive more free children’s books and literacy guidance twice during their baby’s first year of life. All families are encouraged to request children's books from Read to Grow at any time, from birth through completion of middle school.
Partnering with Primary Care Centers
 Continuing the link between literacy and health, Books for Babies is partnering with five primary health care centers in an outreach prevention initiative, serving families that receive health care at the community centers. New developmentally appropriate books are given at the two-month well-child visit; providers encourage families to share books with their babies and also to enroll in RTG programs.
Read to Grow also provides books to the waiting rooms at hospital and community-based pediatric primary care centers for children to read while they wait and to take home to build their personal libraries.
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