This study offered a means of evaluating the long-term effects of the Beginning with Books gift packet program on literacy experiences provided by the family, on the children's literacy and language abilities, and on the skills of the children involved in the program as perceived by their kindergarten teachers. The program is a nonprofit prevention-oriented literacy agency affiliated with the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Subjects included 27 families who had received the gift packet through two different county health department well-baby clinics and 14 families in the comparison group. Three types of measures (language and literacy, family literacy experience, and classroom literacy) were utilized to elicit information about family literacy experiences as well as the literacy skills of the children. Parents and children participated in interviews and the parent responded to a parent questionnaire before participating in a parent-child book sharing experience. Results indicated that participants in the program provided more literacy experiences in the home for their children. The parents who received the gift packet also visited the library more often and provided more reading materials in their homes. The children whose parents received the gift packet were perceived by their teachers as having higher reading ability than children of parents who did not receive the packet. The performance of children from both groups on the literacy tasks was similar. (Two figures and two tables of data are included and seven references are attached.) (MG)