on donating books and books changing lives
The project of the week in my son’s current summer camp is to collect “new and gently used books” for Read To Grow, whose mission is explained in the cover letter as “to provide books to children.”
Curious, in the light of Kate’s recent blog about new media and books going online, on phones and high tech, that we are still donating and collecting, hard copy, paper and ink, old fashioned books (media) for children.
The line at the bottom of the letter says, “Books change lives. Help us change a life.” I am struck by the religious-like fervor of the belief that there is a superlative value to books. Of course we as authors believe this, we write for ourselves because we are readers, we write for families who will read our titles together, we write for the child who will curl up in a corner and giggle outloud during quiet time, and we write because we believe in literacy, in propagating and promoting the value of written words, drawn and printed images. At Write Up Our Alley, our own mission statement includes the words “putting quality books into the hands of children.”
When I visit schools as an author/illustrator and as a Connecticut Roster Teaching Artist, it doesn’t take more than a couple minutes for me to discern which students have family reading time. Reading together is an activity which also generates conversation, and conversation generates vocabulary, listening skills, the ability and imperative to ask questions and even interrupt with comments. Next comes critical thinking. Such a big thing from reading picture books aloud in the home and making reading material available?
Yes! And I hope that some child goes home and insists, “Read to me. Please!” with the books that I wrestle from my son’s arms after the gut-wrenching weeding of his bookshelf acreage.
Okay, maybe in a few years we’ll be going through MP3’s and giving those away, but right now books are still, in fact, more accessible than new media, and I can pass them on feeling great about sharing and promoting the quality literature that I believe does have a superlative and life-changing value.
Tags: critical thinking donating mission statement new media parent-child reading aloud Stanley values
August 12th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Here, here! There is simply no subsitute for “family reading time”, with a real, tactile book. Read to Grow and other organizations like it do such important work.
August 16th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
I advocate reading as a family for as long as kids will put up with it. We’ve moved to adult books, and my teenagers still enjoy a good yarn with a parent along for the ride.
August 18th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Being read to is good for everyone! At Harbor Health, a state-funded shelter for victims of serious mental illness in Branford, they hold “book group” once a week. Clients gather to sit in a circle and take turns reading aloud to each other. They just finished the first Harry Potter novel and are beginning Dewey (about a library cat). Good YA’s are their favorites. By reading aloud they relax and listen to each other, take turns in a calm “conversation”, and lose their demons for a time. They don’t discuss. The ‘family’ just gathers and reads together.
August 18th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Kay, that is so wonderful. It reminds me of the age-old power of the storyteller to spellbind and carry people off. And in the group, each member becomes a storyteller for awhile. I know it sounds trite, but it’s. . . lovely, in the most profound way.
August 25th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
What a great name, “Read to Grow”.
Was impressed with a piece I heard recently on Public Radio’s “This American Life” about a “Baby College” for parents set up in Harlem. Turns out that a kid’s success in school is not so much based on economics, race or parental eduation, but on language- the more a parent talks and reads to a child, the more words a kid hears early in life, the better they will do in school.