Q&A About Books and Early Literacy With the Read to Grow Executive Director
In honor of Read Across America Week (March 2-6, 2025), Sparkler chatted with Suzannah Holsenbeck, the executive director of Read to Grow.
What is Read to Grow? What are some of your big programs?
Suzannah: Read to Grow is Connecticut’s premiere early literacy non-profit. Our mission is to support language and literacy skills for children, beginning at birth, and to support families as their child’s first teacher. We distribute more than 100,000 books annually to children across Connecticut through our three main programs: Books for Babies, Books for Kids and our Bookmobile.
Wow! How long have you been doing this work, and why did you get involved?
I was a teacher and administrator in various schools and communities before I came to Read to Grow. I was actually visited by Read to Grow volunteers in the hospital when I gave birth to my children at Yale New Haven Hospital, and received our newborn book “Welcome To The World!” several years before I became the Executive Director. So I come to this work from both a professional place — wanting to ensure that all children have the resources they need to be strong readers when they reach school — and from a very personal place — engaging with my own children. Supporting their development has truly inspired me to do this work.
When should parents start reading to their children?
We actually have a saying at Read to Grow: “Read to your belly!” It is truly never too early to read to your child. Your baby can hear you in utero starting around 24 weeks, and when they are born, your voice can be a really powerful soothing influence on them and when you read to them, they feel safe and secure. The act of reading to your baby also helps you! When we read to our children, it forces us to sit down and take a breath, hold them in our laps or have them cuddle up to us; our blood pressure goes down and the bonding we experience with our children goes up.
Why is reading so important for young children?
There’s a tremendous amount of brain development that occurs in the first three years of a child’s life. Our brains grow the most they’ll ever grow in our entire lives in those first 1,000 days, and when we read to young children, we can directly improve the quality of brain development occurring for the child. Babies as young as six months who have been read to daily show improved receptive language skills (understanding what is being said to them) and expressive language skills (indicating something specific with their voice or sign language). And then, of course, there are so many other benefits to reading as your child gets older, including exposure to tons of awesome vocabulary that goes beyond our day to day conversations.
Are there certain books that help children build early skills? Or are all books "good"?
It is a complicated question because there are so many different benefits from reading books and different books achieve different things, so I try to steer away from a moral or value judgement about a book. At a very basic level, we want to make sure that families know that just sharing a story with their child, regardless of the story, holds so much power for reasons I mentioned earlier. But when we consider the quality of illustrations in a picture book or the amount of varied words in a text or the overall message the book is delivering, then we start to see that not all books allow us to grow our child’s vocabulary or help them make observations about what they see or teach them about ways people overcome challenging experiences, or provide an opportunity for children to see themselves in books or see others different from themselves in stories. We also want to encourage families to pay attention to what their child is responding to and if they are enjoying a book, whatever the book may be, then keep reading it!
On that note, what's your favorite classic picture book?
This is not a fair question to someone who runs a literacy organization! That being said, I really loved Leo Leoni’s book, “little blue and little yellow,” when I was a child.
I love that one, too! What are some of your favorite NEW picture books?
There are so many wonderful books being published every year and we are lucky because we get to feature many of them in our Popcorn & PJs series at Read to Grow. A few recent books I’ve really enjoyed are “Eli and the Uncles” by Jehan Madhani, “The Yellow Bus,” by Loren Long, and “My Dog Just Speaks Spanish,” by Andrea Caceres.
We'll have to check those out! What should parents do if their children don't seem engaged in books and reading? Are there any strategies that can help?
Sometimes parents talk about how their child doesn’t want to sit still and be read to and we encourage them to read and let their child continue playing or walking around them; just because they aren’t sitting, doesn’t mean they aren’t listening. Also establishing a routine of reading books at the same time every day — maybe over meals or at bedtime — can go a long way to establishing the expectation that reading happens no matter what and over time you can work on picking books with illustrations, stories, and topics your child is really interested in. Never underestimate the power of a book that is funny or a little bit irreverent to get a child engaged.
Tell us about this partnership that Read to Grow and Sparkler have around Read Across America Week. What do you hope it will accomplish?
We are so honored to partner with Sparkler for a second year to bring you read-alouds with wonderful authors and illustrators. In addition to the read-alouds, there are activities on Sparkler that align with each story and can extend the learning for the child beyond just listening to the story. We hope that this series is helpful to families and childcare providers during Read Across America week and beyond!
