Filling the Gaps
Posted by Justin Minkel on Tuesday, 03/17/2015
This week Scholastic delivered 10,500 books to our school for the first book fair of its kind. Two things make this book fair different from most:- The kids don’t have to pay for the books.
- The book fair is tied into six family literacy nights planned by every grade level, kindergarten through fifth grade.
Every child in every class gets to choose five books to add to their home libraries, and the children who come with their parents to a family literacy night get four additional books to take home and keep. 98% of our students live in poverty, so providing the books free of charge makes a huge difference in the number of books going into children’s hands and homes.
Today at our book fair, I saw Jasper—a little guy from the Marshall Islands who wears comically big glasses—moping around as the other students chose their books. I asked him why he wasn’t picking out any books and he said in a forlorn voice, “I don’t have a dollar.”
When I explained that this book fair is different, he doesn’t need money to pick out books, he grinned and set out to make his selections.
Angela held up a book and told me, “I picked this one for my brother.”
On our way back to class, Sala said, “When I get home, I’m going to teach my little brother to read.”
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