For Molly MacNeil and her husband Danny MacKinnon, taking their three-year-old twins to the McConnell Memorial in Sydney, N.S., is a regular part of their routine. “They love it,” MacNeil said. “They just love to come flip through all the books and we read.” The couple’s children were born after the COVID-19 pandemic began, so there has been no real interruption to their journey as readers. “Their vocabulary is just so full,” MacNeil said. “It’s just so helpful for them to be able to communicate and to understand concepts that they don’t run into daily in their lives.” However, the people who run the library remember the impact the lockdown had on literacy. “Lots of programs that we offered, we tried to continue to offer throughout COVID online but it’s not the same”, said Theresa MacDonald, deputy executive director for the Cape Breton Regional Library. Of course, many also missed time in the classroom during the pandemic. A 2023 international literacy test for 15-year-olds found in Canada, 18 per cent scored below the benchmark for reading literacy. In some parts of the Maritimes, the numbers were even worse. “In the case of New Brunswick, for example, 30 per cent of the 15-year-olds are at Level 1 in reading, which means they’re at the lowest-functioning level that you could have,” said Paul Bennett, director of Halifax-based Schoolhouse Consulting. In Nova Scotia, recent standardized test results found that 32 per cent of Grade 3 students failed to meet reading comprehension standards. Bennett said that if you dig deeper into the New Brunswick data, there is another thing that stands out. “If you go to smaller communities, under 3,000 (people), those students are three years behind in reading levels,” he said. Cartoonist and author Kate Beaton of Mabou, N.S., said based on her visits to area classrooms, the appetite for reading seems as strong as it ever was. “If you go into a room and it’s full of Grade 2s, full of Grade 4s or whatever, and you say, ‘Who here likes to read comics?’ all the hands go up,” Beaton said. Beaton added that picture books can lead to an interest in something more complex, like a novel. “They always say that comics are a great gateway for reluctant readers, but it’s the same for enthusiastic readers,” Beaton said. “They really bring everybody in.” MacNeil said she and her husband see literacy as a low-cost resource at a time when so many families are finding it hard to make ends meet. “Prices of things are only going up, and the accessibility of the library is just so important in Cape Breton where there are some serious poverty rates,” MacNeil said.
