Content area
Abstract
[...]community access was operationally defined as (a) the quantity and selection of children's books that parents could conceivably purchase in the neighborhood, (b) the environmental print (signs, labels, and logos) in the business area that children might begin to identify, (c) the public areas where children might observe people reading, (d) the quantity and quality of books in the child-care centers they would most likely attend, (e) the quantity and quality of books in the local elementary school libraries, and (f the collections in the local public library. Books in child-care centers. Because increasing numbers of children spend most of their day not around their neighborhood, but in child-care centers within the area in which they live (Children's Defense Fund, 1999), our next step was to focus on access to books in childcare centers. Book-related experiences, therefore, may be intimately related to the cognitive activities usual for children, such as the use of decontextualized language, demonstrating how basic mental processes and activities become integrated through experience. [...]given differential access to reading and writing materials early in life, some children are likely to come to school better prepared for the ways of learning and thinking that are nurtured in school; others might develop problem-solving skills that are either unacknowledged or run counter to school learning. [...]in focusing on the resources considered to influence school literacy success, we did not highlight the specialized funds of knowledge that low-income children bring to early childhood and school settings.
