Reach Out and Read

Dr. Susan Linn, a psychologist, award-winning ventriloquist, and author, explores the deep importance of play in child development. She explains how creative play enables children to process emotions and learn foundational skills. Delving into the impact of commercial toys, Susan contrasts enriching open-ended toys with those that stifle imagination. She advocates for the value of boredom and independent play, discussing her ventriloquy work with puppets like Audrey Duck, and underscores that play is vital for both children and adults.

Native American education is one of our country's culturally richest areas, but it comes at the expense of a very dark past. We take a closer look at the abuse Native American children experienced at government-run schools in the US in the 19th and 20th centuries, the intergenerational trauma that followed, and how Native American educators address this and move forward now. Francis Vigil from the Pueblo of Zia, is Jemez Pueblo, Jicarilla Apache, and an indigenous educator and consultant. He joins us to talk about how Native American educators confront the past, and help build strong, well-supported families — which will boost their children's academic and cultural success going forward.

We've turned the spotlight on many gifted authors, but our next guest is the first to win a children's book award and a Super Bowl ring. Malcolm Mitchell, American football professional, children's author, youth literacy advocate, and CEO of the Share the Magic Foundation, joins us to talk about his journey to literacy, and how he overcame professional and personal adversity in the process.

Stuttering affects approximately 5% of U.S. children—it's very common! Jordan Scott, poet and author of "I Talk Like a River", and Brooke Edwards, Director of Speech for SAY: The Stuttering Association for the Young, join us to talk about how stuttering affects children, and how all of us — caregivers, professionals, and beyond — can make their interactions with people who stutter a more positive and communicative experience.

Thanks to advances in brain imaging, we can measure reading's structural and functional benefits. Dr. John Hutton, a pediatrician and assistant professor in the Division of General and Community Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Medical Center, joins us to talk about what we can learn from neuroimaging about how children's activities can affect their brain structure, and what probably helps — or hinders — children's development.

After three years, the annual Reach Out and Read Leadership Conference was finally back in person. More than 150 leaders gathered in Madison, Wisconsin over three days to share their vision, values, and voice - all in the name of ROR's mission. Listen to their conference takeaways, what inspires their work, and what drives our community forward.

Why would someone write a research paper involving puppets? Well, puppets can not only be a tool for helping children feel more comfortable in medical settings, but more recently have been used to support relational health. Dr. Gretchen Domek, Associate Professor and the Frankenburg Research Professor in Developmental Pediatrics at the University of Colorado, joins us to talk about her work introducing finger puppets as a tool to help caregivers talk with their infants both at home and abroad.

Children are uniquely vulnerable to climate change: rising temperatures and poor air quality increase asthma attacks and allergies, and natural disasters can lead to physical displacement, food insecurity, and an increase in mental health concerns. Dr. Jerry Paulson, Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and of Environmental & Occupational Health at the George Washington University School of Medicine, joins us to talk about this subject - and how caregivers can separate the noise from the science.

There's a lot of conversation around health equity, and rightly so: research suggests that many disparities in overall health and well-being are rooted in early childhood. But how can one meaningfully address that in our healthcare system? Dr. Darrell M. Gray, the inaugural chief health equity officer for Elevance Health, joins us to talk about how to help shift health care from a transactional relationship to a deeper one, using an equity framework.

The world of literacy has a dizzying array of systems that go well beyond schools and home — including legislatures, philanthropies, and other NGO's — but they aren't always collaborating well. Munro Richardson, Executive Director at Read Charlotte in North Carolina, reimagined the way these systems could work, creatively connected groups that hadn't done so before, and got community buy-in in the process; a clear example of how to make a whole greater than the sum of its parts.