“…As a result of ancient oral knowledge-transmission traditions (Ganapathi & Pulla, 2015) and historical prioritization of higher education (Chaudhary, 2009;Jagota & Abrol, 2012), people in countries like India remain unaware of the importance of literacy and numerical skills (Chaudhary & Garg, 2015;Venkatanarayanan, 2013;Banerjee et al, 2010). With the highest number of people living without basic literacy, India is also battling teacher shortages (Katiyar, 2016;UNESCO, 2014;Singh, 2016) and insufficient educational resources (McSwain, 2010;Mugambi, 2015). In particular, a reading culture is absent in the country, because of which scholars highlight the need to foster home literacy (Lukie et al, 2014;Sims & Coley, 2016) and the involvement of parents, especially mothers (Reese, 1995) in literacy activities such as reading (Levin & Aram, 2012;Aram & Levin, 2002;Quiroz, Snow & Zhao, 2010).…”