Reading is good for babies

A.C.C.E.S. will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2012. Founded by three psychiatrist-psychoanalysts, Marie Bonnafé, René Diatkine and Tony Lainé, Actions culturelles contre les exclusions et les segregations (Cultural Action Against Exclusion and Segregation) was inspired by a colloquium that showed that access to the written word and narrative through entertaining listening, storytelling and children’s stories as well as the handling of books as soon as language develops played a role in illiteracy prevention. Since then, in partnership with libraries, work on making works available has been established in parallel with seminars, training and events-readings. These take place in places frequented by mothers with young children – maternal and child health center (P.M.I. in France) consultations, crèches, child minder centers, schools and leisure centers, drop-in centers for parents and children, camp grounds where travelers are living, even the nursery for Fleury-Mérogis women’s prison…Moderators come with books, but the children can choose the stories. In 2008, event-readings were held in some thirty towns in the Paris region. A.C.C.E.S. also publishes brochures and works and has a traveling exhibition available, Lire, c’est bon pour les bébés (Reading is good for babies). Since the deaths of René Diatkine and Tony Lainé in 1997 and 1992 respectively, Marie Bonnafé presides A.C.C.E.S.