Book Harvest is committed to continuous self-assessment, including rigorous external evaluation, to identify best practices as we expand our efforts to rewrite outcomes for all children.
In 2013, Book Harvest launched Book Babies, a home visiting literacy coaching intervention that starts at birth and continues for five full years, through kindergarten entry. Our professional staff works alongside parents, at their kitchen tables and on their living room sofas, to identify their goals for their children, provide them with the resources, modeling, and information they need to thrive in their role as their child’s first and best teacher, and build social capital networks with other parents.
Our model is parent-led and parent-informed. Its unique dosage, frequency, duration, and affordability makes it a candidate for population-level scaling; it holds the potential to confer large-scale kindergarten-readiness, a critical milestone that has long eluded low-income families and families of color stuck in conditions of generational poverty and systemic racism.
Latest Findings
Learn more about our recent research and evaluation findings:
Journal of Early Childhood Literacy Publication (2022)
In their own words: Parents’ voices about a book-provision program, was co-authored by Meytal Barak, Book Harvest's Director of Early Literacy, and Dr. Cristina Gillanders, Associate Professor in Early Childhood Education in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado Denver.
Drawing on research conducted by the Book Babies literacy coaches, this article describes the integral role parents play in children's development, and the importance of Book Babies literacy coaches working alongside families in culturally responsive ways to create sustainable in-home literacy practices.
Book Babies Randomized Control Study: 2021 Final Report, by Iheoma U. Iruka, Ph.D. (Principal Investigator), Ximena Franco, Ph.D., and Fernando Andrade, Ph.D. from Equity Research Action Coalition at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute with The Center for Early Education Research and Evaluation at HighScope Educational Research Foundation
Book Babies Analysis of Parent Focus Groups, 2021, by Cristina Gillanders, Ph.D., University of Colorado Denver and Meytal Barak, MED, Book Babies
Book Babies Research Briefing Webinar (initially aired on 9/8/2021)
Book Babies 2022 Family Survey (below):
