Babies and Books

When Dorothy Butler published her book Babies Need Books in 1980, her ideas seemed to promote a remarkably new concept. To many at that time, the idea that a child should find books of interest before understanding the value of them would seem to suggest putting the cart before the horse. However, Butler’s book was to have a remarkable influence, not least because it was published primarily for a popular market, not for an academic audience, first in hardback by The Bodley Head and then in paperback by Penguin, where it remains in print to this day.

Dorothy Butler’s thesis was born of her long observation of young children and their use and enjoyment of books; as a teacher, mother, children’s bookseller and reading adviser, and grandmother. And, in particular, her observation of her granddaughter Cushla, born with numerous genetic handicaps, who today would be referred to as learning disabled. Butler’s observation and documentation of Cushla’s life over her first three years provided the material for her thesis for her Diploma of Education, the basis of an article published by Signal in January 1977, and a book published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1979 called Cushla and Her Books. This remarkable record of the use of books in one young child’s life, from the age of four months, provided exceptional insight to the value of using books from such an early age.

Pioneering studies

As a study, however, it was not without precedent. Twenty-six years before Cushla’s birth another girl, Carol, was born to a children’s librarian in New Zealand, Dorothy White. White had already published About Books for Children in 1946, and she began a diary of her daughter’s use and enjoyment of books from the age of two, later published in Books Before Five (New Zealand Council for Educational Research).

The benefit of Dorothy White’s earlier observations about the use of books with young children provided Dorothy Butler with something of a benchmark with which to make a comparison. She was not alone. Another mother and former librarian, Virginia Lowe, whose daughter Rebecca was born in 1971, also kept an extremely detailed diary of her daughter’s experience of books, which had already begun by eight months old. She also referred to Dorothy Butler’s work with Cushla, and Dorothy White’s work with Carol, in her article ‘Cushla, Carol and Rebecca’, published in Signal in September 1977, making comparisons of the similarities and discrepancies between all three experiences. Prior to the work of Butler and Lowe, White’s book had been the only available record of a child’s literary development and had become accepted as the norm, while today only exposing a child to books from the age of two would be considered quite late.

Although these three studies laid no claim to being statistically or academically representative in terms of their research, each provided unexpected insights to the benefits to a young child’s development that were enhanced through the use of books from an early age. These benefits included an ability to focus, listen and concentrate for extended periods of time. In turn language development is enriched through hearing the spoken word, and communication skills improved through the constant verbal exchange. All this seems par for the course now, but the idea that this process could be started before a child was thought to be of an age to appreciate books, actually in babyhood, was a relatively new idea twenty years ago.

What is interesting to note is that today, in the fuller understanding of the role books can play in early child development, the integration of this understanding has influenced both further research studies, and the application and provision of services for the under-fives. For example, around 80% of all UK libraries offer special sessions for under-fives, while 92% showed involvement with a ‘books for babies’ project, according to the Library Information Statistics Unit. And certainly the proliferation of children’s picture book publishing in the 1980s demonstrated an anticipated emerging market among the book buying public, with new children’s book publishers like Walker Books coming into existence, while already established children’s book publishers expanded, and other trade books publishers diversified into children’s books.

The Bookstart project

But what of those families for whom books and book buying are low on their list of priorities? Perhaps the most significant contribution to research-based practice over the last 10 years is the Bookstart project, originated by Wendy Cooling at the Book Trust in 1991 and begun with a pilot project in Birmingham in 1992. Bookstart now runs to 30 projects nationwide. Research results over the intervening years have also provided impetus to numerous other pre-school projects, especially during the National Year of Reading launched in 1998. The originating premise of Bookstart, to introduce babies to books, required effective collaboration between those with access to mothers with young babies, health visitors, and those who offered a books service to them, libraries, precipitated by a book pack that included a new, free book suitable for a baby. The pilot project involved 130 babies, whose parents received their Bookstart pack when they visited their local health clinic for a regular check-up at around six to nine months old. The pack contained an age-appropriate board book, a poetry card, an invitation to join the local library, book lists, a poster, a bookmark, and information about local bookshops and other book-related organisations.

What the Bookstart pilot also provided was an opportunity for research, and this was carried out at Birmingham University’s School of Education by Professor Barrie Wade and Dr Maggie Moore. Wade’s own study, Story at Home and School, published by the Educational Review Occasional Publishing, in 1984 had already shown the value of sharing books and stories, so the Bookstart project provided an opportunity for further research. A questionnaire for the Bookstart project was completed at the time of receiving the pack, while a subsequent questionnaire was posted to participating families six months later. Further follow-up research with these families, over the years, has continued to demonstrate the effectiveness of this early intervention. By Key Stage 1, for example, Wade and Moore showed from SATS results that children who had received a Bookstart pack in infancy achieved higher scores when compared to a carefully matched comparison group (‘A Sure Start with Books’, Early Years, Volume 20, Number 2, Spring 2000). The benefit of providing children with early experience of books not only gave them a head start at school entry, but this benefit was seen to persist as their primary education continued.

Improving literacy?

However, we could be forgiven for seeing books for babies as a means to an end in order to improve the nation’s literacy rates, which was probably not part of Dorothy Butler’s original intention. Certainly there has been an irresistible challenge in recent years to make books available to families traditionally disinclined to use them with their young children, in order to improve their advantage at school and, by extension, national literacy levels. In a cost-conscious climate, Bookstart could be seen solely in terms of its cost-effectiveness in raising standards.

However, a longitudinal project like Bookstart, and its spin-offs into other areas like library provision could not have come at a more relevant time as more and more families become technologically proficient. Television is a fact of life in almost every home, its viewing capacity extended by video and DVDs. Home use of computers, computer games and the Internet all have their value but can also promote extended periods of passive, isolated and non-verbal activity. For babies and very young children, however, excessive television use can be detrimental to language development. The visual dominates, but listening is too difficult without the necessary one-to-one contact that encourages language development and other pre-literacy skills. Work carried out by Dr Sally Ward, which forms the basis of her Baby Talk programme, has demonstrated quite clearly the benefits to language development of a 30-minute period of one-to-one communication between a baby or young child and his parent or carer, without background noise. Using this time to share a book, sing songs, and play rhyming games, and listening, talking, taking turns, being close and attended to, benefits a child’s language development in a way that is still having a positive impact, according to follow-up research, at Key Stage 2 SATS at age seven.

Sharing an experience

While use of and enjoyment of books from an early age promotes language development and communication skills and, as research has shown, the pre-literacy skills necessary for later success, families are living in an increasingly fast-paced world. What books can, should and do offer is a time to develop a secure and close relationship between parent or carer and child. It is the attentiveness and proximity of an available adult who, as Piaget demonstrated in his work in the 1950s (The Origins of Intelligence in Children, International University Press, 1952), provides a child with the resources in which learning can take place. It is also an advantage for a young child if these experiences are stress-free, democratic and warm, creating opportunities for turn-taking, and where adults don’t always dominate the proceedings.

So the learning that occurs when babies are exposed to books from a young age is not just about learning to be literate in due course, but also learning how to learn about their expanding world and the emotional and intellectual resources that will make it available to them. Here the parent or carer is paramount, and the book becomes a life-enhancing tool to be shared and enjoyed, something that is fun for its own sake, stimulating imagination and creativity. This shouldn’t be forgotten and, all other research aside, brings us back full circle to Dorothy Butler.

Harriet Griffey is a journalist and writer. Her most recent book, with Professor Mike Howe, is Give Your Child a Better Start: How to Encourage Early Learning (Penguin).

Photographs of Ike and Lucy Rogers on pages 4-9 by Martin Ellis.

Signal magazine is published by The Thimble Press, Lockwood, Station Road, South Woodchester, Stroud, Glos GL5 5EQ.

For further information about Bookstart, contact Ann Carty, Ruth Pyner or Rosemary Clarke at Young Book Trust, Book Trust, 45 East Hill, London SW18 2QZ.