Yet another study concerns books in the home—any kind of books. In a survey of three communities in Los Angeles, there were startling differences in how many books were available to children. In the most underprivileged community, no children’s books were found in the homes; in the low-income to middle-income community there were, on average, three books; and in the affluent community there were around 200 books. My carefully interwoven tale of toads, words, and syntax goes out the window when such statistics appear. The sheer unavailability of books will have a crushing effect on the word
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