Hooked on Books : Literacy: A new county library outreach program starts at Chapter 1, contacting pregnant women at health clinics to stress importance of getting children interested in reading.

Books are special to Veronica, a shy, 8-year-old Latina who lives in a working-class neighborhood east of downtown Los Angeles. She likes to touch them. When no one is looking, she likes to pick them up and turn their pages. Yet she rarely reads for pleasure.

That’s because there are no books in her house.

Until this summer, when a county librarian persuaded her and her mother to visit their local library as part of experimental outreach program, Veronica didn’t know it was possible to borrow books from a library and read them--or experience the pleasure of having someone read to her.

Veronica is not alone. Librarians and educators estimate that hundreds of thousands of children in Los Angeles and other cities begin school with almost no exposure to books. Many are immigrants and members of minority groups who now make up more than half of California’s youth population.

Because the immigrant population is so large and the consequences of being deprived of books are so serious, the Los Angeles County Public Library, the country’s largest library system, has begun a $113,000 pilot project to reach pregnant women before their babies are born.

Unlike bookmobiles and other library outreach programs that focus on school-age children, “Begin at the Beginning with Books” is aimed at low-income, poorly educated, minority women who get prenatal care from public clinics.

Set up every week in the waiting rooms of four of the county’s clinics, the program offers informal education on child rearing, story hours for older siblings and enticements to get families to the library, including free teddy bears for those who get their own library cards.

The program is being closely watched by state officials and librarians in other systems as a way for public libraries to combat illiteracy and adapt to the state’s changing population.

What the program tries to drive home to parents is “a love of books” and also “what can happen to children who are deprived of books,” said Marlene Joyner, a bilingual librarian and administrator of the project.

Studies have shown that children who were not read to on a regular basis enter school 18 months to two years behind those who were. Children whose parents are not regular readers themselves and children who do not have extensive exposure to printed material in their preschool years end up being poor readers later in life.

No one knows how many of Los Angeles County’s 2.5 million children lack ready access to books before they enter school. The U. S. Department of Education has found that at least 5% of the country’s nearly 26 million school-age children--about 2.3 million youngsters--have few, if any, books, in their homes. Nearly 15%--6.9 million children--live in households where parents seldom, if ever, read.

That would suggest that from 125,000 to 375,000 children in Los Angeles County have little, if any, exposure to books outside school. Yet many educators believe that the number of disadvantaged youngsters may be even higher in Los Angeles County, where more than half of the youth population is Latino, black or members of other minority groups. Studies show few of these families have patronized public libraries.

“There are many reasons some families shy away from books,” said Penny S. Markey, head of the county library’s youth services department and a creator of “Begin at the Beginning with Books.”

Some parents cannot read, or they are too poor to buy books, Markey said. Some cannot find books in their native languages, she said, or they are so fearful of government agencies, they don’t dare let their children visit public libraries, let alone apply for library cards.

The idea for the county program, Markey said, grew out of conversations she had in 1989 with Floretta Taylor, a county hospital administrator.

“The Health Department saw that the ‘parenting skills’ of its (mostly poor immigrant) population were very low,” Markey said. “We already knew that the illiteracy rate of the county as a whole was high (20% of the adult population has reading skills below the eighth-grade level). And we knew there was a lot of dead time in the waiting rooms of public health clinics.”

When county officials set up the program, they chose four health clinics within a mile of a public library and in ethnically diverse communities: The city of Hawaiian Gardens is 66.6% Latino. Nearly half the population of Norwalk is Latino, with a recent rise in the number of East Indians and Asians. Bellflower is 23.9% Latino and 9.6% Asian. Carson is 25.6% black, 27.9% Latino and 23.7% Asian.

“When we first started, we ran the program much as earlier outreach programs had been run,” Markey said. “We simply went into the clinics and invited families to come to the library. But that was a bit like throwing a party and finding that no one showed up.”

What Joyner has discovered in visiting clinics week after week is “how hard it is to build relationships and a sense of trust in the community. It takes time to persuade parents of the importance of something they have very little experience with themselves.”

As mothers come into the clinic, often with two or three young children in tow, Joyner and library aide Bertha Amezcua wander about, chatting and exchanging gossip. They answer questions about nutrition, home safety--”anything dealing with improvement of their lives and their babies’ lives,” Joyner said.

When new families first come into the clinic, the librarians get their names and addresses, which they will use to send congratulatory notes after the babies are born. Included in the notes are coupons to be redeemed for teddy bears at the library when the parents apply for library cards. At the clinics, families are encouraged to look at a sampling of children’s books, videotapes and other child-care materials available at the libraries.

Since February when “Begin at the Beginning with Books” began, the librarians have seen nearly 600 families and persuaded more than 200 children and their parents to apply for library cards. The county hopes to raise private funds to expand the program to more health clinics next year and is now working on a handbook for the California State Library.

Jacqueline Calderon, an immigrant from El Salvador and an expectant mother, says she has become hooked by the program. Although Calderon has lived in this country for 10 years and has two children, she had no idea that the door to the Clifton M. Brakensiek Library was only a few yards from the clinic in Bellflower where she comes for checkups.

Now, thanks to the librarians’ urgings, even her husband has a library card. “He likes it a lot,” Calderon said. “He says they (the children) can learn a lot there.”

Jesse Castaneda, 10, doesn’t know how much he will learn, but he thinks a library is a pretty remarkable place. Until Joyner escorted him and his pregnant mother inside the Bellflower library this summer, the 5th grader said he, too, had never been inside a public library.

“I think I’ll come back,” he said, beaming as he handed over a library card application and waited for a bilingual story hour to begin.

Joyner’s youngest recruit was 2 weeks old when he first visited the library for a story hour.

“It’s never too soon to begin,” Joyner assured the infant’s mother.