Did you know that reading to children is the law in Campania? I’ll explain to you why a book can change the destiny of a life

Is reading to girls and boys an act of love? Certain. But it also has a collective and political value that cannot even be imagined.

All it takes is an open book, a voice that tells and a small heart that listens. Reading from early childhood can and must be a daily gesture, capable of leaving profound traces. It’s not just a way to ignite the mind: it’s an embrace made of words, a bridge between emotions, curiosity and discovery.

A child who grows up among books learns first of all to listen – to stories, to sounds, to himself. His vocabulary expands, his imagination lights up, his desire to understand the world becomes more alive. In the first years of life, the brain is fertile ground: every word, every image, every story is a seed that promotes memory, imagination, the ability to observe and understand.

When an adult reads to a little girl or boy, something invisible but very powerful happens: intimacy, trust and harmony are created. The voice becomes a caress, the gaze becomes home. In that moment there is not just one story, but two lives that meet.

Through characters and illustrations, children learn to recognize emotions: fear, anger, sadness, joy. They discover that they all have the right to exist, that they can be expressed and shared. Reading together means learning to name what you feel, without shame and without fear.

And the effects last over time: a child accustomed to reading grows up with more confidence, with freer thinking, with a more open heart. Early reading reduces the risk of school difficulties, strengthens self-esteem and stimulates active participation.

For this reason, every book read to a child is not just an educational act, but an investment in the future.

So what happens when you read to your little girl and your little boy?

What has been done in Campania

A law has been made!

While in many Regions there are framework laws on libraries and reading, pacts for reading and 0-6 programs (often under the umbrella Born to Read), just as there are regional guidelines or projects in many areas that promote reading in nursery schools and nursery schools, none has ever established by law a network of “Reading Points” as has happened in Campania.

The Region, in fact, has adopted a law here – number 15 of 2020 “Law to support good practices for integrated security policies. Establishment of Reading Points aimed at girls and boys from birth to six years of age and their parents” – which has a single objective: to give girls and boys the chance to redeem themselves through illustrated books.

That’s right. Exactly as it says Don Tonino Palmesepresident of the Pol.is Foundation which is the implementing body of the Law:

Reading with girls and boys is not an antidote but it certainly can be and must be an excellent therapy against that great evil that is the transition from the group to the herd. Today, more than ever, young people are engulfed by this temptation: while they are a group and share passions and joys, they can become a pack and become aggressive, experiencing their own death and the death of others.

What is done in the Reading Points is a sort of miraculous fishing, it is an exercise in civility which, if it did not exist, would make us poorer. It is one way among others that the Campania Region has of intervening where there is educational poverty.

The Seeds of Stories program

It is from this foresight that the regional Semi di Storie Program was born over the years, which is the natural implementation of Law 15/2020. It is from here that 8 Reading Points active throughout the Campania region were born (educational facilities made available by public and third sector bodies), each of which is named after an innocent victim of crime, and more will be created again.

It is in the Semi di Storie Reading Points, equipped with quality illustrated books, that girls and boys and adults and stories and the future intertwine. You enter in the arms of a parent or holding the hand of a grandparent and you discover that a story can become a bridge. A bridge that shortens distances and supports “parents’ skills through reading the report intended as a scientifically recognized effective tool”, as the law itself dictates.

The “universal” mission of sowing stories to make the future grow

Reading in the Reading Points is not only a way to learn to name things, but also to give voice and attention to families living in vulnerable contexts, where it is necessary to intervene to combat educational poverty and social deviance. In fact, it is precisely in the most vulnerable contexts that a book can make the biggest difference: fighting educational poverty before it becomes a destiny, fighting social deviance before it takes root.

Designing a path for girls and boys means offering them the opportunity to get to know the world and feel part of it, even when reality seems to narrow the horizon. Because redemption is possible, and often begins with the simple gesture of reading together.

At the Semi di Storie Reading Points, every day operators bring with them the beauty of a book and the confidence that something greater can be born from those pages. A book placed in the hands of a child is not just paper and ink: it is a seed that germinates in the mind and heart, a gift that restores amazement, curiosity, the desire to understand. The eyes that light up, the fingers that browse, the voices that intertwine: it is there that the community is recreated, page after page.

Reading together is an act of care and belonging, a shared ritual that transforms stories into bonds and the voice into living matter.

Thus, every book read becomes a small revolutionary gesture: a seed of beauty, of active citizenship, of emotional literacy. Because reading together doesn’t just mean learning words, but learning to be in the world — with others, and for others.

And right now more than ever, how much do we need it?

Here and here you will find all the Semi di Storie programs.