Health visitors are teaming up with Keighley Library to run a Books for Babies project.

The scheme will encourage parents to share books with their babies and lay foundations for early learning and reading development. Up to 500 local families will be given packs containing a book, poster, action rhyme card, bookmark, library information and a leaflet from a health visitor. They will be contained in a bag which youngsters can use on later trips to the library to borrow books.

Keighley Library developed the Books for Babies project after discovering that many children arrive at school ill-equipped and unprepared to learn to read. Children on similar schemes elsewhere in the country have begun school more advanced than their classmates.

Library staff are backed by health visitors, who believe there are benefits in communicating with children through sharing a book.

Health visitors will tell parents about Books for Babies when giving nine-month assessments.

, then a project worker will visit to give out a book bag.

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