Just the other day I said to my husband, “Louie, what was your first book? Mine was ‘I Will Love You Forever.’”

I remember my mother holding me and this book in her lap and singing, “I will love you forever, I will love you forever” as I ran my fingertips over the strange figures on the page. That’s the moment when I fell in love with books. As author and songwriter Patti Smith said in her acceptance speech for the 2010 National Book Award for nonfiction, “Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.”

I am no Luddite. I love my Kindle, and I wish it had been around when, years ago, I schlepped “The Collected Works of Thomas Mann” to Puerto Rico. On the beach at Boquerón, I sweated along with Aschenbach in “Death in Venice” and I labored to catch my breath as I ascended the calles of Old San Juan with Hans Castorp and his fun-loving tubercular friends from “The Magic Mountain” in my handbag. But, convenience and weight aside, there is nothing like a real, honest-to-goodness, print-rich book you can call your own.

I brought my bibliophilia with me to my professional life. In my various roles here at the UFT, I have worked with the American Federation of Teachers, our national affiliate, and First Book, a nonprofit organization that connects publishers to communities, so that children from low-income families throughout the nation can hold their very own new, high-quality first books.

This year alone, the UFT, in concert with the AFT, First Book and other labor unions and community groups, has distributed more than 120,000 free books to children at Saturday events in the Rockaways in Queens and on Staten Island. As UFT President Michael Mulgrew said while handing out first books to eager youngsters and their parents on Staten Island in October, “Once you give children a chance to pick out their own books, you have them hooked on reading.”

We also want to hook parents on books and will be sponsoring workshops in the future to ignite their interest.

That’s why, when I heard about the nearly $2 million that the Astor Foundation was offering school districts around the country to develop and support early childhood literacy, I knew it would be the perfect partner to our already thriving efforts. We were fortunate enough to receive a generous planning grant of $120,000 from the foundation this fall, with additional funds of up to $1 million a year for the next four years.

Thanks to this Astor grant, early childhood educators in public schools throughout New York City will have the chance to collaboratively develop programs and strategies to increase family involvement around student literacy, explore and share strategies with families to build higher-order reading skills in grades K–3, and assist parents and fellow educators to reduce the impact of summer learning loss. Teachers can use the time specifically set aside in our contract for parent engagement to do this vital work.

I’m really excited about this project. It has the potential to improve reading skills among some of our most disadvantaged students and forge real home-school connections.

I know that when parents, educators and involved citizens give children access to books while increasing their ability and desire to read, we create a foundation to support them for the rest of their lives. And for that, they will love us forever.