What We're Thankful For: The Opportunity to Create a Love of Reading
We recently shipped out a literal mountain of books to the folks at the Children’s Book Project of San Francisco.
Their goal is to support literacy in the Bay Area by providing books, free of charge, to under-resourced children. Since 1992 they have given away almost 3 million books to disadvantaged kids and build a love of reading.
A Mountain of Books at the Children’s Book Project of San Francisco.
“We’re over the moon thrilled to receive a mountain of beautiful board and picture books of S Is for San Francisco! We just moved last week into our new book site across town, and we appreciate the extra lengths you went to change the delivery location to our new warehouse space!
We’re already giving away copies of your lovely book to children who need them now more than ever. Attached, please find our letter acknowledging your wonderful gift.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we pivoted our operations to a delivery model within days of the mid-March shelter-in-place order and distributed free books to sites in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Mateo County, including meal distribution sites, food banks, first responder child care centers, community organizations serving families in need, visiting nurses, public health clinics, homeless shelters, and public housing.
Your donation allows us to continue giving free books to our most vulnerable families at this challenging time.
Be well, and keep on reading!
with gratitude,”
According to Reading is Fundamental, by 3 years of age, there is a 30 million word gap between children from the wealthiest and poorest families. There are significant gaps in reading achievement by race and income:
50 percent of Black fourth graders scored below the basic level, as do 47 percent of Hispanic and 49 percent of American Indian fourth graders
47 percent of fourth graders from low-income families read below the basic level.
According to the Literacy Project Foundation, a child is 90% likely to remain a poor reader at the end of the fourth grade if the child is a poor reader at the end of first grade.
Our passion is connecting with children to show them the world, and bringing children and their parents a connection and love of reading. We make it a priority to get books into the hands of children who don’t have easy access to creating their own library.
That we can help, even a bit, we are indeed thankful.