Books for Babies: 10th birthday wishes from Professor Barrie Wade

Recently we had the enjoyable experience of helping to hand out Books for Babies packs to new parents in the Christchurch Women’s Hospital. This was in addition to the main sessions we were presenting on our research for interested groups of professionals and students in the city. The memory of the pleasure these packs gave to new parents remains, for us, a very clear one, reflected as it was in their expressions of surprise and delight.

We know from our experience that the same pleasure and delight is shown in young children’s faces when they share books with adults, so it is with real pleasure that we congratulate the Books for Babies project on its tenth birthday.

We, ourselves, initially felt that pleasure and delight for both baby and adult were a good thing, but then everybody likes to receive a gift and a book is a special gift which can be experienced over and over again. However, we were determined to investigate this feel good factor further. In England we have followed up the families who received the first Bookstart packs and the good news continues. We found that families who received the pack were much more likely to visit libraries and to buy books for their children: they also said that books were presents that they would be more likely to buy for their children and reported that booksharing was a high priority in their child’s favourite activities at home.

We found this early research encouraging and so we studied the Bookstart children when they entered school. On six measures of Baseline achievement during their first term at school, the Bookstart children were ahead of their contemporaries. Interestingly, this was just as true in the three mathematical checks as in the three devoted to literacy. The strong suggestion is that those children introduced to books as babies have a head start when it comes to schooling.

For these reasons we are delighted to congratulate the Christchurch Books for Babies project and to wish it many more happy, successful birthdays.

Dr Barrie Wade, FRSA,
Professor of English in Education
The University of Birmingham

Barrie Wade and Maggie Moore

Barrie Wade and Maggie Moore have researched the Bookstart project in the UK and have published a book for parents called Baby power: maximise your baby's potential through books.

Barrie is Professor of English in Education at the University of Birmingham and, prior to that, he taught in both primary and secondary schools.

Maggie is Director of School of Arts and Social Sciences at Newman College, Birmingham and has also taught at primary schools.

As well as books and articles on language and literacy Barrie and Maggie have also written numerous books for children.

Read the research article by Barrie Wade and Maggie Moore An early start with books: literacy and mathematical evidence from a longitudinal study [123 KB PDF].