Leon Peters-Limerick is a toddler who enjoys hooning around the backyard on a balance bike and doing his “work”, which involves driving toy fire trucks across the living room rug.

But the two-year-old’s favourite time of the month is when his new book arrives in the mail.

“It’s got their name, it’s their book, it’s specifically for them, so it’s very exciting,” says his mother, Jody Peters.

“He loves books.”

Leon and his four-year-old brother Kinnon were newborns when they were signed up for a program that sends children a free book every month until they turn five.

According to new data, the program has massively increased reading rates in the northern NSW city of Tamworth, where it’s offered to parents during a baby’s first hearing test.

“We hadn’t even been discharged from hospital,” Jody says.

“They said ‘Do you want to be on the program?’ And you just tick a box. We received our book on the spot.”

Her children participate in the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, a program founded by the country singer in 1995 in her home county in East Tennessee.

The model has now been exported to other countries and in 2019 Tamworth became the first Australian city to offer every child a membership.

“We’re currently at about 98 per cent uptake,” says Kelly Makepeace, a speech pathologist.

“We have nearly 3,200 babies. And we’ve got another year until we’ve got all our zero to five-year-olds in the program, so we’re expecting to cap out at about 4,000.”

Ms Makepeace remembers the difficulties Tamworth faced before the program.

“A number of communities in the Tamworth local government area had children that were three to four times more likely to be developmentally vulnerable in language and communication,” she says.

Now, several years in, the local library runs four times as many sessions of its Baby Book Time reading groups. 

“The three- and four-month-olds that are coming along, you’ll see how engaged they are with the books,” Ms Makepeace says.

“They’re tiny babies, but they’ve learned the value of reading. And they love reading with their special adults.”

Jody Peters, who has four children, says she has always encouraged reading but can see a difference in her younger two, who are on the program. She’s “gobsmacked” by Kinnon’s vocabulary and says Leon adores the Baby Book Time sessions.

“The older two didn’t really have those early literacy skills and development, whereas I feel the younger two do have those skills,” she says.

“I feel like they’re already one step ahead.”

The Tamworth program is funded by the council, local businesses and charities, and run by the not-for-profit United Way, which administers it in other locations across Australia.

The results are in

Claire Galea, a researcher with United Way, has been surveying parents since the program started and compiling the results for a PhD with Macquarie University.

The town’s excitement about the program is backed up by her research, which she recently presented at an international literacy conference and has submitted in a journal paper, currently under peer review.

“In Tamworth, we found 65 per cent of kids were read to for more than 10 minutes a day, that’s nearly double the average Australian child, ” she says.

“That’s amazing.”

Galea also found those children who were read to as newborns were five times more likely to be read to daily at six months and three years.

“There’s a misconception out there among many caregivers and governments that reading occurs naturally for children like walking, but it doesn’t,” she says.

“The earlier we start, the longer we read, the better for the kids setting them on a good life trajectory.”

Looking at her own family, Jody Peters says the statistics feel pretty much “spot on”.

“We’ve probably doubled the time we spend reading every day,” she says.

“It would actually make me so happy if this was Australia-wide.”

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