Books Are a Love Language

Help me celebrate Children’s Book Week May 5-11

I will never forget B. B arrived at our house with his cousins as an emergency placement last summer. It was the first time we had welcomed older children—tweens—into our home, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. B’s cousins were surprisingly upbeat; they were excited about exploring a new space and thrilled about all of our animals. B was cautiously interested, but I could tell the change was hitting him hard.

On their first night with us, I took them to buy toothbrushes and toiletries and then hovered nearby to answer questions, find things in the cupboards, grab waters, and otherwise help them get ready for bed if needed. I wasn’t quite sure how to say goodnight; with our previous, younger fosters, we’d had a several-step process that included bedtime stories and snuggles. But if there’s one thing I learned from our time as foster parents, it was that every child in foster care just needs more connection and love. And the best way I know how to offer love and connection is through books. (Books are a love language, right?) We only had children’s books for little kids, but I thought—maybe they’ve never had someone read to them. Maybe they’ve never had bedtime stories. Maybe they won’t care if I read them a little kid story?

So I offered: “Do you want me to read you a story before bed?”

B’s cousins jumped at the chance, I think mostly just wanting me to stick around a little bit longer and delay bedtime.

“Nah, no thank you,” B said. He was unfailingly polite the whole time he was with us. He laid down on his bed and rolled away from me. I smiled and wished him a good night, and then I went to read to his cousins in a different room. I chose Pete the Cat and The Little Red Hen—classics I thought maybe they had heard before. (They hadn’t.) They asked a million questions and looked at me with absolutely gob-smacked faces when the Little Red Hen didn’t let the cat and the goose and the pig help her eat the bread she had made. I think they were impressed that she enforced boundaries and stood up for herself. I asked them to try to sound out some of the words. Their eyes glazed over. Even “cat” was a struggle for these tweens just entering sixth grade.

I suspected that reading would be a struggle for them, just as it had been for the six-year-old who had stayed with us for a couple months earlier that year. The six-year-old who couldn’t even spell her name when she came to us. We worked really hard on that in our short time together, and I was overjoyed when she finally got it. At the same time, I was frustrated that she wasn’t receiving extra support in the form of tutoring or an IEP through school to help her catch up to her peers because of this obvious gap in her education.

She was the first inkling I had that kids in foster care are chronically underserved in school—not through the school system’s fault, necessarily! But because foster kids have so often been absent, sick, switching between schools, underfed/malnourished, and lacking in support and encouragement from caregivers, they are often also, as a result, years behind their peers in academic achievement. This is backed up by several studies (see Keenan, 2024; Somers, 2021; Pears, 2011; etc.), although, unfortunately, the research on foster kids’ academic achievement (especially specifically literacy) is sparse.

When I realized that first night that a thirteen-year-old and eleven-year-old couldn’t even recognize the word cat, my heart felt like it plummeted to the bottom of my stomach. These children are illiterate, I realized. What will that do to their futures? How will they ever catch up? They weren’t receiving any kind of additional in-school support either. Who could allow this to happen? Who would fix it?

I still don’t have the answers to these questions. I just focused on doing the very little I could do while they were with me: reading to them.

The next night, I made the same offer to the kids. B turned me down again, but it was his turn to hover nearby, listening in the doorway for a few minutes before finally taking himself to bed. On my neighbor’s recommendation, on the third day I stopped by a used bookstore and bought a book from the Dog Man series, something more appropriate for their age.

This time, when I offered to read to them, he said yes. Well, he actually said, “Yeah, okay, I guess.” I played it cool, but I was thrilled. It turned out, B could read fairly well compared to his cousins. I’m not an expert, but I estimated that he could read at perhaps a second or third grade level. At least, at 11, he could make it through Pete the Cat without my help.

But the biggest thing B wanted—all three of them wanted—was the connection that reading at bedtime gave us. For the next couple weeks, we would read a handful of pages from Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas each night and laugh together at the shenanigans and silliness.

This week, the nonprofit Every Child a Reader is hosting Children’s Book Week, a national celebration of books and the joy of reading. The hope is to instill a love of reading in every child in the U.S. And when I think about the power of books, the power of reading, the reasons why I have dedicated my life to supporting authors, to putting more of this incredibly simple yet revolutionary technology (books) into the world… I think about B.

I think about every foster child who cannot spell their name. I think about the 5-10 minutes it takes to read a child a bedtime story—one of the most effective ways to build a child’s literacy and love of reading—and the millions of children who do not get that simple intervention. I wish I could clone myself and magically appear in every foster child’s room at night to read them a story. They deserve it.

If you’re reading this right now, it’s probably because a loving adult took the time to read to you when you were a kid. My mom did. She’s told me that every morning, I would wake up and go to the couch with a book and beg her to read to me. Some of the happiest memories I have of my childhood are reading in the car at night, anxiously waiting for the light of the next streetlamp to illuminate the page so I could quickly gobble up one more sentence because I just had to know what happened next. Reading a book together with my parents and sisters in our motorhome on family vacations. Going to the library and picking out a stack of books. I’ve always felt that the more books I have, the richer I am.

I took books and my own ability to read for granted until I started fostering. I didn’t realize until just recently what an incredible treasure I’ve been bestowed with. Maybe you feel the same way. You have no idea how many kids there are growing up - in your neighborhood, in your city, in your state - right now who do not have access to the same information, the same skills, and the same love that most of us had.

We can’t fix it for all of them, but by supporting projects like Children’s Book Week, we can empower schools, libraries, bookstores, and other community organizations with materials and funding to bring the love of reading to more kids.

This week, I encourage you to donate to Every Child a Reader. At the very least, read to the children in your lives. They need it. Their futures literally depend on it. Post on social media using the hashtag #StoryOcean. There are tons of ways for you to get involved.

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My story with B doesn’t have a happy ending. The cousins’ stay with us was an emergency placement, meaning that DCS was still looking for a permanent home for them—and as much as we enjoyed these kids, my husband and I knew it couldn’t be us. We were still recovering from our first losses in foster care and we weren’t ready for a long-term commitment, especially to older kids. But when their case worker told us that they had found a home for B (and not for the other two), it broke all of our hearts. B didn’t want to leave us. On our last night together, we read Dog Man and I put an arm around his shoulder as he cried. I listened and affirmed that it wasn’t fair. I told him he was brave. I told him I was proud of him. I told him what a good kid he was. I told him that we were so grateful that we got to know him. I offered what meager comfort I could, and the next day, I helped him pack up his things—including, of course, Dog Man.

I think about B everyday. I think about all of the things that get left behind when foster kids move from home to home, and I pray that somehow, Dog Man stays with him and reminds him of someone who cared enough to read to him.