Alexandria Agrees - Reading to A Child Makes Everything Better

    /24-7PressRelease/ - ALEXANDRIA, VA, August 11, 2006 - With the thousands of children's books available, it's encouraging to know that African Americans and other minority parents are committed to exposing books to their children. As an example of this, in a recent Alexandria Times article, July 27, 2006, it was stated the "Color Book Gallery was one of the busiest booths of the day" at the Alexandria African American Heritage Festival on July 22nd. Having returned from a nine year hiatus, Deborah Gary, owner of the Color Book Gallery has relaunched the Multicultural Children's Bookstore, presently as an online ezine with plans to vend at community festivals, bookfairs or private events. This was the first opportunity to exhibit the Color Book Gallery since it was relaunched and clearly represents the expected outcome of the theme for American Booksellers for Children, which the Color Book Gallery is a member, "Reading Makes Everything Better".

Ms. Gary has always felt that her love of reading started early and could be duplicated, if the child's interest is being served. It was found by the National Center for Educational Statistics in Special Analysis 2003 on Reading - Young Children's Achievement and Classroom Experiences that "children from a "literacy-rich" home environment (i.e., those who are read to, sung to, and told stories to more frequently and those who have more children's books, records/audiotapes/CDs in the home) demonstrated higher reading knowledge and skills than other children." With the thousands of children's books available, there is sure to be some that each child would love. Ms Gary felt that there would be two steps to address this: finding more interesting books and making reading more exciting. She focused on the first step by carrying the largest selection of multicultural children's books - books with characters and languages that the children could relate to. To address the second step, the online resource provides activities and tips to use when reading with the child. In addition to the selection of books for sale and tips that will be provided monthly, the Color Book Gallery web ezine gives parents, teachers, caregivers a forum to share activities, insights, and resources. With your help and input, this site can be a quality resource for us all.

About The Color Book Gallery
The Color Book Gallery offers a web ezine with activities, tips and a selection of multicultural children's books. It provides a forum to share activities, insights, children's books and resources. For further information, please call 703-313-9757, email [email protected] or visit their website at www.colorbookgallery.com

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