Zachary Thomas Hammond, born Aug. 3, 2020, at Women & Babies Hospital, was the first newborn to receive a book under Books and Babies: One Book, One Community, a project created by LG Health Couplet Care nurse Barbara Schmidt, BSN, RNC-MNN.
Every baby born at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health’s Women & Babies Hospital now receives the gift of a new book, thanks to a project conceived and coordinated by Barbara Schmidt, BSN, RNC-MNN, Couplet Care nurse.
The project, Books and Babies: One Book, One Community, provides the same book to every newborn. “Read Baby, Every Day” is a rhyming board book that features faces of babies representing a variety of ethnicities. The back of the book contains information for parents about the benefits of reading aloud to their baby.
Schmidt applied for and received a Penn Medicine CAREs Grant to put toward the purchase of books. She worked in collaboration with Katie Kramer, county coordinator for the Lancaster County Reach Out and Read Coalition, part of a national organization. Kramer enlisted the support of additional donors and, together, they were able to buy 5,800 books—more than enough to meet a year’s anticipated need.
“A parent reading aloud to a child is a shared activity that boosts a child’s brain power, promotes increased bonding, and shows reading can be fun,” said Schmidt, whose own love of reading was fostered from birth. “By promoting literacy from day one, we hope to develop a larger and stronger population of readers.
“The book we chose is written in English, but we plan to translate it into different languages, like Spanish, Nepali, Swahili, Vietnamese and others. It’s only eight sentences, so we can easily hand out a card printed with the appropriate language, as needed,” said Schmidt.
Several LG Health Physicians practices recently decided to join forces with Reach Out and Read to hand out a new, developmentally appropriate book to each child at well-visits, from birth to age 5. Providers will talk with parents about the benefits of making readinga habit, and how to interact with the text and images to help children follow along. By age 5, each child will have received a small library of books and a healthy foundation for a lifelong love of reading.