The poking and prodding are over and now 18-month-old Gecaria Wilson's face lights up. The doctor has brought her a familiar present.
"Boo! Boo!" she says, clutching the present, a book so new the pages stick together. When someone opens the back cover, she turns it upside down - even at her age, she knows front from back.The children's clinic at the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans is one of dozens using a growing national prescription of sorts. The clinic hands out new books at each baby checkup, from when the infant is 6 months old to 5 years. Parents are also told about the importance of reading.
The Reach Out and Read program started at the Boston Medical Center eight years ago is going nationwide: The American Academy of Pediatrics is including it as part of its "Prescription for Reading" program.
That means the academy's 53,000 members in North America and Central America will be urged to use the reading program, which was named a model for child development last spring by the White House.
"I'm just tickled there's a focus on something as vital to success as reading for children," says Stephen Hales, a New Orleans pediatrician. "Very few things are as strong a prediction of success in education and life as a foundation in reading."
Dr. Barry Zuckerman, who developed Reach Out and Read, and academy president Robert Hannemann were explaining the program Tuesday at the academy's meeting.
The program includes pads for doctors to write out prescriptions for reading. The 20-page booklets ask parents whether their children "respond happily to reading by waving hands or batting the pages."