https://reasonstobecheerful.world/book-banks-for-children/
"When Larry Abrams started teaching English in New Jersey high schools in the
early 2000s, his first two schools were within a few miles of each other, yet
worlds apart.
At the first school in a wealthy suburb, “I taught the sons and daughters of
millionaires,” Abrams remembers. The second school was “at the opposite end of
the socioeconomic spectrum,” and Abrams says he had to “relearn how to teach”
his students there.
“My ninth graders had a fourth- or fifth-grade reading level,” he says, though
they were native English speakers. He realized this was because they were
missing something he had taken for granted: books.
He had an “aha” moment in 2017, when he asked one of his senior students,
Belyeneda Sanchez, what she was reading to her two-year-old daughter Brizzy.
The student responded that she had no children’s books at home: “We just don’t
do that in our culture.”
Abrams admits the response stumped him. The next day, he handed her a box of
children’s books with the words, “Every kid needs books in their home.” Sanchez
confesses she avoided Abrams in the following weeks because every time he saw
her, he would inquire how Brizzy was enjoying the books, and she still hadn’t
read any to her daughter. Eventually, Sanchez picked up
Harold and the Purple
Crayon, and her daughter enjoyed it so much that she started reading to Brizzy
every night.
After that humble exchange, Abrams began requesting donations of gently used
children’s books from friends and students, and within weeks, thousands of
books piled up, first in his garage, then in a storage room. He distributed
them to young parents and elementary schools. The book donations were met with
so much enthusiasm (“It caused a feeding frenzy,” Abrams says) that he is now
the founding director of the nonprofit BookSmiles, one of the biggest book
banks for children in the US."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
