Who We Are

Read to Grow helps build children's literacy right from the start.  We are a statewide nonprofit organization that motivates parents to begin reading to their children beginning at birth and provides free children's books to families and to the program that serve them.

Literacy begins at birth, long before the start of formal instruction in elementary school. By the time a child enters kindergarten, she or he already has been learning for 5 or 6 years. In fact, babies are born learning; parents are their first teachers and home is their first "school."

The first step to literacy is developing language skills. Strong language skills are among the best predictors of later reading and writing abilties. Reading aloud exposes babies to words and speech, and helps build good language skills early on.

• Reading aloud to children is the single most important intervention
  for preventing low literacy.

According to current research, the first three years of life offer a critical window for brain development. The human brain is not fully developed at birth. Each of us is born with a genetic blueprint---a basic design. The brain develops as genes (nature) and experience (nurture) interact. In order to make the most of these plans, children need input from their environment. What they need most in the early years are stable, positive relationships with loving caretakers and good learning experiences. What happens in those earliest years lays the foundation for later growth, development and learning.

Our Approach

Read to Grow works with parents in the hospital when a baby is born, linking health to the importance of early literacy, language development and attachment.

Emphasizing the vital role they play in their child’s literacy development, we encourage parents to begin reading aloud to their babies right from birth. To start them off, we give a "literacy bag" containing a free new children’s book and informational guide to all parents of babies born in our participating hospitals.

To increase families' access to books, we provide free books to children in need, from birth through middle-school age, and to the programs that serve them.

Through our programs, Read to Grow is making a difference in the lives of children.

• Reaching 50% of the state’s newborns and their families with a new children’s book and literacy guidance, in partnership with 8 Connecticut birthing hospitals.

• Distributing more than 100,000 free books to Connecticut children each year.

Read to Grow is primarily donor supported, and depends on hundreds of adult and youth volunteers and partnerships with health, education, literacy and social service providers to assist us in delivering our program services.

Our Mission

Our mission is to improve early literacy for all Connecticut children by providing books, by helping families share books with their babies starting at birth, by encouraging language development, and by promoting an awareness of literacy services.

Our History

Read to Grow began in 1998 in response to a call for children’s books from a New Haven, Connecticut health care center. Local bookseller Roxanne Coady rallied the Shoreline community and collected two busloads of books for the center's pediatric patients. Shocked to learn that so many children did not have books of their own, Roxanne brought together bankers, philanthropists, business leaders, educators and health care professionals to create the Books for Babies program to ensure that all babies in the New Haven area start life with a book of their own and parents who understand the importance of reading to them.

In 2000, the name Read to Grow was adopted to reflect a broader mission and additional services. Over the past 10 years, with support from our donors, volunteers and community partners, Read to Grow has grown, reaching hundreds of thousands of children, and expanding programming to address Connecticut’s literacy crisis and ever-widening achievement gap.

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