Today, children's librarians not only provide and recommend a variety of Mother Goose collections and picture books to their patrons, but they also often play a unique and important role in fostering young children's emergent literacy through their use of Mother Goose rhymes in programs for very young children.

The following links consider the relationship of Mother Goose and young children's emergent literacy and offer the opportunity to explore how Mother Goose programs in libraries can serve infants and their caregivers.

An Introduction
While not as common as story times for preschoolers, programs for infants are considered an important service offered by many public library children's rooms. As with any program, details will differ from library to library, librarian to librarian; however, this site offers a general description of the characteristics of Mother Goose programs for infants.

Goals
Mother Goose programs for infants combine service to both adults and infants, with the ultimate mission of promoting behaviors that will lead to literacy. As reflected in the examples in this site, some consider infant story time as a service directed primarily toward education and training of parents and caregivers. Others see it primarily as a direct service to infants.

Skills
During their studies, librarians trained in the youth services field will probably have had exposure to the materials, skills, and theory necessary to perform a Mother Goose program for infants. This site focuses consideration on issues specific to library programming for infants.

Differences from a Traditional Story Time
Often, people don't think about starting or attending library programs for infants because they imagine that programming for infants will be modeled on traditional story times for older children. These caregivers and librarians recognize that infants are not developmentally ready for the type of group sharing of stories and activities that are offered in a traditional story times. It is important to understand that Mother Goose programs differ from the traditional story time in a number of ways.

Demographics
"Six in ten children spend a substantial part of each day in the care of someone other than a parent" and "six in ten babies are not read to regularly" (Start Early, Finish Strong, 1999). Yet, programs for very young children are often structured so that they are available to only a very small portion of the population and, thus, will reach only a few of the children and caregivers who could benefit from such service.

Cultural Diversity
It is important that Mother Goose programs include songs and rhymes form a variety of cultures. Not only do all children have the right to find their own lives reflected in the literature to which they are exposed, but all children need to be exposed to a variety of cultures.

Evaluation
If we believe the emergent literacy theory, which is based on many studies of children and their interactions with books and other literacy events, then caregivers spending time with very young children in a Mother Goose program must necessarily have a positive effect on their children's literacy development. There are many ways to evaluate MotherGoose Programs to assess this effect.

Emergent Literacy Web Connections
This list offers hot-linked connections to some important WWW sites devoted to emergent literacy issues. Academic, government, and American Library Association sites are included.

Some Key Readings
This eclectic list offers some key readings in emergent literacy that will be of interest to those who care about young children and literature. The authors of these classic titles address emergent literacy from a variety of perspectives including those of teacher and librarian, researcher and practitioner.

Bibliography
This bibliography offers a range of materials , from scholarly articles about emergent literacy, to how-to books for conducting programs for infants n libraries, to book selection guides which introduce developmentally appropriate materials to parents, caregivers, and others who work with children.

Page 1