The Creation of the Book Showcase: An interview with Anna McBee

Our team at All About Books has been working with Reach Out and Read for years. This incredible program provides books to children during their well-child visit, sending them home with a brand-new book to add to their at-home library. A few years ago, we connected with Anna McBee, a Reach Out and Read program manager in South Carolina. With her expertise as a program manager and as a mother, she has taken extra time and effort to curate lists of specific books to provide a deeper look at the developmental highlights and diverse elements within those books. Through this training, called the Book Showcase, she teaches providers how to connect their knowledge of developmental milestones and markers to the books children are interacting with and reading.

We wanted to learn more about this program and how it came to be, so we decided to connect with Anna and ask her about her work:

What inspired you to start the Book Showcase program?  

During a site visit, a provider asked me if we had any training available to share with the staff on book selection. My immediate thought was to share a training video on book ordering, but on my drive home from that site visit, the wheels in my head began turning. I began to wonder if there was something more that we could give them. We know shared reading is a proven strategy to promote early relational health, that critical time with parents and children to connect and bond. We want to ensure that the books our clinicians use in the well-child visit and give to the families are ones that they are going to enjoy and connect with. I thought, “What if we share how books provide an opportunity to highlight cultural pride in the family, healthy routines, early relational health, and bonding in a very tangible way. This was really the inception of the Book Showcase.

How do you go about selecting the books you are going to highlight every year?

Selecting the books is such a fun experience because it means I get to go through and listen to so many different books that I may or may not have read before. It opens my eyes to so many new titles and experiences.

Typically, I review the book catalog when it comes out each year. In doing so, I make note of new titles (as well as some older or more familiar ones), and I will listen to a read-aloud of the book. I make note of diverse and developmental elements as well as different ways that the book could be used to support the clinician in the well-child visit. In many cases, I will do additional research to find out different titles or types of books that might help support children experiencing developmental delays.

How does a provider use a book to help during a doctor’s visit?

One of the true joys of my job at Reach Out and Read is to hear stories from clinicians about how they use the book in well-child visits. While this may look a little different for each Clinician or even each well-child visit, Reach Out and Read Clinicians follow our 3-part model, where they prescribe an age, language, and culturally appropriate book during each well-child visit aged 0-5 years and give anticipatory guidance to caregivers. While I could share many ways clinicians use the book, I think it’s best to share a quote that I received from a clinician recently when I asked her to share about the impact of Reach Out and Read in her clinic.

“Getting to share Chicka Chicka Boom Boom today with a patient who has resolved speech delay. He loves the alphabet, and I love the cadence of this book. We flipped through it, reading while I repeated his head circumference. He was anxious at the beginning of the visit, but involving a favorite home activity made it easier. It is fun and it is normalizing. We see a lot of children with developmental delays and medical fragility. Books are for everyone! Family connection with their provider over a shared experience. Providing a book and fostering a parent-child connection is so invaluable. It allows some insight into family dynamics and strengths that may be overlooked. In an office where continuity is already a strong suit, it improves our ability to tailor individualized care. I hope it strengthens families' trust in their physician/medical team.” -Dr. Cady Williams

What do you look for in a good children’s book?

Through my work at Reach Out and Read and as a mother of four boys, I have had the true joy of reading many children’s books. (I look for) books that allow children and families to see themselves, see others, spark imagination, adventure, and have poetic devices and figures of speech are all important components for ensuring an enjoyable experience of shared reading with a child and caregiver.

What’s a tip you can give to a doctor new to the Reach Out and Read Program?

We are always so thrilled to partner with new clinics and clinicians. One thing that I love to share with them is that Reach Out and Read is here to support the amazing work that you are already doing and to enhance to well-child visit experience. It offers an opportunity for them to see first-hand the interaction of a child with a book, which then lends itself to observing developmental milestones and parent/child relationships.

We have been so proud of the work Anna is doing and honored that she has chosen to select titles we carry at All About Books to feature in her training. To try and expand this knowledge, we have added her Developmental Highlights and Diverse Elements notes to all of the books we carry that she has chosen to highlight. You can find these on the All About Books website, indicated by the “Book Showcase” icon on the items. Find the whole selection under the Featured section on the top menu.