HOSPITAL STORYTELLING

At

BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY

Hospital Storytelling is a family literacy program that encourages parents to read to their children. Hospital Storytellers and Reading Troubadours model reading aloud, increasing awareness of libraries and helping families build their home libraries. Our program brings the library out to hard to reach people and places throughout our community.

We serve in-patient wards and out-patient clinics, group homes, in-patient pediatric psychiatric facilities, and freestanding clinics that serve children with developmental disabilities. We have a total of 39 locations throughout Brooklyn that we visit at least once a month. Our partners include RIF (Reading is Fundamental), Reach Out and Read of Greater New York, the Department of Education’s Schools in Hospital Program and the Comprehensive Community Sickle Cell Outreach Project as well as individual hospitals.

Hospital Storytellers are paid contractors who work at the in-patient facilities and specialty clinics. Reading Troubadours are volunteers who work at out-patient general pediatric clinics. Both receive training in early literacy, reading aloud and hospital protocols, including universal infection control precautions. Our Storytellers and Troubadours speak English, Spanish, French, Cantonese and American Sign Language and have Brooklyn Public Library IDs.

The programs themselves are simple: we read to the children, let them pick RIF books to keep and sign them up for library cards. We also give the children coupons to redeem at the library for another free book, a BPL bag and a bookmark that states, in seven languages, “This book is a gift from the Brooklyn Public Library.” We distribute a pamphlet to parents on early literacy and reading aloud in English or Spanish. In clinic situations we read to children waiting for their appointments and parents are usually present. We talk with the parents about reading aloud and their child’s literacy. In the inpatient wards, we read to the children in either the child life center as a group or at bedside to individual children. At group residences and psychiatric facilities we read to children in communal areas such as the living room or the library. We provide books in Arabic, Braille, Chinese, English, Haitian Creole, Korean, Spanish and Urdu.

The January 2001 issue of Pediatrics validated the structure and philosophy of the program when it reported on the Read Out and Read Program. Their study showed that families who were read to and given a book in clinic settings read to their children at home one more day a week than those in the control group. Those children also had higher receptive and expressive language scores than the control group.

Hospital Storytelling has been an unqualified success. The hospital staff members love it. At one hospital, doctors postpone their visits if we are reading to the children when they arrive. At another, the Director of Pediatrics enjoys the program so much, he personally participates and he has hired the reader to make an additional visit each month. Parents love it. One mother told us that this was the first book her family had ever owned. Another mother’s face lit up when she realized that the book was bilingual and we were reading it in English and Spanish. Yet another family discovered that there was a library in their neighborhood. And the children love it. Once, a girl in a wheelchair came to the group reading on a hospital ward. She then followed the storyteller from bed to bed as he read to the other children. At that same hospital, an adolescent asked if she could to read to the younger child in the room when that child woke up. At one in-patient ward, upon seeing the storyteller for the third month in a row, a child exclaimed, “I’m so glad you’re back.” At a nephrology unit, a child undergoing dialysis wrote:

“Thank you so much for saving Harry Potter part 2 for me. It is greatly appreciated. Your and your staff had give [sic] me part one when I was in the hospital another time….Right now I’m admitted again … So while I’m in this drab room, I can go on an adventure!…

P.s. Try to get part three, please.”

For more information call 718.253.4948 (v) or 718.253.5034 (tty)


Hospital Storytelling