In an innovative push to integrate reading into daily routines, a Wisconsin nonprofit is collaborating with libraries and healthcare providers to issue “prescriptions to read” during children’s medical checkups. This initiative seeks to foster early childhood literacy by making books and reading guidance readily available to families.
Thanks to a generous $300,000 grant from the Johnson Controls Foundation, Reach Out and Read Wisconsin is broadening its impact on Milwaukee’s northwest side. By partnering with the Milwaukee Public Library, the program ensures that children, from infancy to age five, receive books and literacy support during their routine medical visits.
Reach Out and Read operates at a national level, primarily serving children from low-income and communities of color. The Wisconsin chapter has a 15-year history of success, having provided age-appropriate books to over 148,000 children across 64 counties.
Parents participating in the program, regardless of their own literacy levels, are given the tools to engage in one-on-one reading sessions with their children. In Wisconsin alone, there are 319 medical clinics involved in this initiative.
In Milwaukee, facilities such as Children’s Wisconsin Good Hope Pediatrics and Aurora Health Care-Good Hope Clinic are already part of the program. The new grant will expand services to the Isaac Coggs Heritage Health Center and Ascension All Saints-Family Health Center, focusing efforts on northwest Milwaukee, an area with a predominantly Black population. This focus aims to tackle systemic literacy disparities, as Black fourth graders in Milwaukee have significantly lower reading scores compared to their white peers, according to the latest Nation’s Report Card. Notably, Wisconsin reported the largest reading score gap between white and Black students among all states in 2024.
“By expanding our partnership into pediatric clinics, we meet families where they are — offering books, resources, and support at a trusted point in their child’s care,” Joan Johnson, the library director for Milwaukee Public Library, expressed in an official statement.
Early childhood reading is crucial, as the initial years of life represent the most dynamic phase for brain development. According to DeDe Williams, the nonprofit’s executive director for Wisconsin, books are as essential as medical instruments in evaluating a child’s early development during well-child visits. Clinicians assess various skills, such as motor abilities and language development, through these interactions.
“Can the child grip the book, reach good, do they have the pincher grips yet to turn those pages?” Williams noted. “They’re also looking at cognitive skills, their language skills.”
Post-visit, parents are encouraged to explore the nearby library with their children. Williams likens this experience to “giving a kid a golden Willy Wonka ticket to tour a chocolate factory.”
“And the library team, they’ve also been trained in understanding what Reach Out and Read is,” Williams added. “They’re expecting this family to come in with a prescription, and they are doing this warm handoff saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to give you a tour of the library’.”
The goal is to reach at least 6,000 children through 13,000 well-child visits in the Milwaukee area over the next two years.
