Library Reading Programs Prevent the "Summer Slide"

Link to September 12 Capital Times article, "For the love of books".

Excerpt: For Fitchburg's Susan Smedberg, keeping track of her 6-year-old daughter's reading is nearly impossible. Emily reads when she gets up. She reads in the car. She reads when she is walking from the car to the house.

Emily's love of reading developed in large part, her mother says, from the Madison Public Library's summer reading program. Emily, who just started first grade at Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Elementary School on Madison's west side, was at a critical point in her reading development last year when she enrolled in the program.

Emily, who couldn't read on her own yet, got hooked on the "Rainbow Magic" chapter book series about fairies and at the end of the program selected her own "Rainbow Magic" book. "Because she got one for herself to keep, there was no stopping her," says Smedberg.

Programs like Madison's try to lessen "summer reading loss," known in library and education circles as "the summer slide." Research shows that students, particularly low-income children, who don't continue to read over the summer lose reading skills and face other setbacks. A number of studies show that summer reading loss is cumulative. By the end of sixth grade, kids who lose reading skills summer after summer can be a year behind their classmates.