The Joester Loria Group has tapped Upstart, a publisher of library materials, to develop an early literacy program for young children featuring The World of Eric Carle.

The Very Ready Reading Program has been designed for use by children’s librarians, Head Start teachers and other early childhood educators based on age-appropriate storytimes for children up to age five.

The program was developed by early literacy experts Sue McCleaf Nespeca, M.Ed., MLS and Dr. Pam Schiller and is designed to be a complete solution to promote and host early literacy storytime programs.

The programming manual contains background information and research on the importance of early literacy, reproducible handouts to distribute to parents and 20 complete storytime programs.

In addition, the program includes a CD of original music for each song featured in the storytimes, a promotional poster, bookmarks, informational materials for parents all of which features The Very Hungry Caterpillar along with other iconic artwork by Eric Carle.

“Sharing books with children from a very young age is critical,” says Nespeca. “Introducing individual sounds through rhymes and songs provides the building blocks of language. Research has shown that children with a developed vocabulary have an easier time learning to read. Each of the seven skills we focus on in the program follows a natural path to prepare children to read.”