Our programs
Reading Is Fundamental’s (RIF’s) program and content offerings provide books and resources for families, educators, and literacy advocates to create a culture of reading in the classroom and at home.
Book equity is critical for reading success
Giving children choice and access to new, age-appropriate books to take home and own is positively tied to reading behaviors including motivation, frequency, and engagement—which lead to enhanced reading and writing performance, language development, and academic outcomes.
Of children living at or below the poverty line in America have no books at home.
In some of the lowest-income neighborhoods, there is just 1 book for every 800 children.
Book ownership solutions
Research demonstrates that the presence of books in the home impacts academic outcomes for children. Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) addresses the critical need for book ownership through our Books for Ownership program and Skybrary digital library.
Books for Ownership
Books for Ownership, RIF’s flagship reading program, enables children to select new, age-appropriate books to take home and own and is supported by resources for families, educators, and local literacy advocates to create a culture of reading. This program relies on a simple yet fundamental truth: if you allow children choice and access, they will become more engaged readers and learners. Download the research that supports the Books for Ownership model.
Skybrary
Skybrary is RIF’s carefully curated digital library of eBooks and video explorations for children ages 2 to 9. This interactive library offers nearly 1,000 children’s books from celebrated authors, illustrators, and leading publishers. It also features hundreds of video field trips hosted by beloved storyteller LeVar Burton to engage young readers and encourage a passion for reading. Skybrary engages children through child-friendly navigation and themed collections of eBooks, with optional read-to-me narration and interactive animation. Skybrary is available for use in the classroom and at home.
Language comprehension
Interactive read-alouds are a research-backed component of a literacy curriculum that builds language comprehension including background knowledge, vocabulary, language structure, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. Children first learn to understand vocabulary and text structures orally, then apply these skills when they begin to read these texts independently. Interactive read-alouds—combined with book access—leads to increased interest in reading and improved reading proficiency, the model for RIF’s Read for Success program.
Read for Success
Read for Success is designed to support children birth through grade 3 as is an interactive read-aloud solution that uses high-quality, diverse, interdisciplinary books with research-backed strategies and activities to engage children in the reading experience and encourage a passion for reading. This research-backed program is based on the wide body of research that demonstrates that both reading to children and independent reading are key components of literacy development. Download the results of the initial study.
The Read for Success program includes 6 critical elements:
- Books for students to choose and take home
- Book collections for classroom read-alouds
- Professional development for educators
- Literacy resources
- Enrichment activities
- Reading strategies for school and home
Continuous literacy support
RIF provides free, research-backed and standards-aligned resources for families, educators, and literacy advocates to create a community of reading support leading to an increase in students’ reading frequency, motivation, enjoyment, and confidence. RIF’s vast resources that supplement books—as well as tips and tools on key reading topics—build capacity for educators and families to impact greater reading engagement in the classroom and at home.
Literacy Central
Literacy Central is an online destination for teachers, families, and literacy volunteers, offering over 30,000 free resources tied directly to the books children love and teachers turn to every day. Literacy Central offers curated book collections with a wide selection of diverse books by diverse authors, literacy activities including games and puzzles, monthly activity calendars, read-aloud videos, and much more.
Professional Development & Community
Literacy Network is RIF’s online community support center offering a suite of resources, information, and tools to support RIF program implementation, community capacity building, and local literacy impact. It serves as a one-stop destination for educators, volunteers, and families to access turnkey, customizable solutions. Literacy Network augments local literacy efforts, offering information and support around literacy issues, RIF’s programmatic solutions, program implementation resources, and volunteer opportunities.
Reading engagement
RIF provides free opportunities for reading engagement all year round to ensure there is new, timely, and meaningful content to drive reading joy and excitement in school and at home. We continuously seek opportunities to re-energize and motivate our nation’s children to read.
Rally to Read 100
This is an annual 6-month reading engagement initiative anchored on monthly themes, read-alouds by popular children’s authors and illustrators, reading activities, a pledge to read 100 books, and a book giveaway sweepstakes for educators. Rally to Read 100 provides teachers and families with new content during the critical back-to-school time to excite young readers each month and culminates during National Reading Month in March.
Soar into Summer
Every year, RIF kicks off a new summer campaign to provide families with compelling reading content to help their child read all summer long, combating the very real declines in reading frequency and motivation that happen during these months. RIF offers fresh, new, recommended summer book collections vetted by RIF’s literacy experts, related reading activities, reading tips for families, summer book club ideas, and more to create purposeful reading connections throughout the summer.
Changing lives for over 55 years
Since 1966, RIF has worked to close the equity gap for children by providing books and reading resources to communities nationwide. In the 55+ years since, we’ve had an impact on the lives of over 190 million children, creating generations of RIF Kids along the way.
Our impactThe RIF grant allowed us to purchase a total of 800 books for our students here at Arcadia Elementary. Thank you for helping us fund high-quality, engaging texts that will be used to grow at-home libraries. Increasing the number of texts in each students’ own reading library helps us extend our classroom impact beyond the time students are in our building, in addition to cultivating a culture of reading at home as a family.
$24 can help get books to 6 children
Your generous gift helps to bring the joy of reading to children, everywhere.
