Our Vision: All children who participate in the Ready Readers program
enter kindergarten with the skills to be ready to read,
as defined by state early learning standards. Ready Readers began in September of 1997 when Pat Simons, Founder and retired Executive Director, and three other St. Louisans organized to help prevent, rather than remediate, reading problems among children living in poverty.
Pat designed a program to excite preschool children about the world of books, so that they would want to read when they were ready. In 1999, an independent Missouri nonprofit corporation named Ready Readers was formed and a Board of Directors was established.. Ready Readers received tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status in June of 1999. Ready Readers is premised upon the well-studied fact that children who are unmotivated to become readers rarely learn how to read well. Wanting to learn, however, depends upon regular exposure to reading aloud and access to children’s books at home. Children living in poverty are insufficiently exposed to regular read-aloud sessions, and they lack sufficient access to books. Nearly two-thirds of low-income American children have no books at home. (Source: Reading Literacy in the United States, 1996; Magnitude, Facts on Illiteracy, www.firstbook.com)
To begin closing the achievement gap between low-income children and those who are more fortunate, we must make sure that underserved children have access to more books at home. Early intervention such as ours – which supplies weekly read aloud sessions and gives each child a regular supply of picture books – works to motivate pre-kindergarten children to want to learn to read. (Source: Ready Readers 2005 Study of Outcomes and American Academy of Pediatrics Reach Out and Read program studies, www.reachoutandread.org.)
