Children's Literacy Round-Up: February 26

Here are some children's literacy-related stories that caught my eye this week.

• Wal-Mart recently donated $100,000 to Tennessee's Imagination Library program and the Governor's Books from Birth program. The Imagination Library and Books from Birth programs provide free books to all children in the state, regardless of income level, up to the age of five. You can read more details about the Wal-Mart donation, and both programs, here.
• Students at the University of Toronto Scarborough planned to hold a Literacy Awareness Day on February 26th. "The students are volunteer members of Frontier College at U of T Scarborough, a campus chapter of Frontier College, a Canada-wide, volunteer-based literacy organization." Read more about it here.
• There's an interesting article in the Westchester, NY Journal News about how literacy skills learned in one language can be applied to another. The message is that immigrant parents should keep speaking to their children, and teaching them about words, as much as possible, regardless of the language used.
• I also found interesting, if disturbing, this press release entitled "LITERACY BREAKTHROUGH: Children as Young as Nine Months Are Reading With "Your Baby Can Read!(R)," the Revolutionary Early Language Development Program From Smart Kids(R)". I'm all for kids enjoying reading, but I find the idea of teaching a nine-month-old to read a bit scary. My fear would be that these kids would be burned out by the time they're in elementary school. But maybe some of you have more experience with this than I do. 

That's all for now. I'm off on another trip, but I'll be back with you on Friday.