Read a Little,Give a Lot

While surfing one day I came across a wonderful opportunity to give to charity and allow the kids to read a virtual library. It is called We Give Books . It is by the Pearson Foundation. Just sign in (not required for donation!) and read! It is that easy.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
- Maya Angelou

For every book you read on-line one is donated to the literacy campaign of your choice. There are six campaigns and when the goal is reached for one another takes its place. We have used this for only a few days and have read 47 books. We support Bess the Book Bus because they give books to kids to take home! This year they are helping get glasses for kids in need.

Bess the Book Bus will give away 200,000 books in 2011-2012 to support the strong correlation between the number of books a child has in their home and their success in school and thus, later life. According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan, 67 percent of low -income families own no books for their children. Where middle-income neighborhoods have an average of thirteen books per child, there is only one book per three hundred in low-income neighborhoods. Bess the Book Bus is intent on bridging this gap in basic resources. The Success is in Sight tour will bring Bess the Book Bus into America's most underserved neighborhoods with the goal of getting books into the hearts and homes of the children that need them the most.

 

You can read as many books as you want or you can re-read the same one over and over. You give with each book finished!

I think that this is the best and easiest opportunity for us to expose our children and ourselves to giving to our community while ensuring a love of reading at home.

I encourage you to go and read just one so that another can benefit!

“The poor and the affluent are not communicating because they do not have the same words. When we talk of the millions who are culturally deprived, we refer not to those who do not have access to good libraries and bookstores, or to museums and centers for the performing arts, but those deprived of the words with which everything else is built, the words that open doors. Children without words are licked before they start. The legion of the young wordless in urban and rural slums, eight to ten years old, do not know the meaning of hundreds of words which most middle-class people assume to be familiar to much younger children. Most of them have never seen their parents read a book or a magazine, or heard words used in other than rudimentary ways related to physical needs and functions. Thus is cultural fallout caused, the vicious circle of ignorance and poverty reinforced and perpetuated. Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.”  Peter S. Jennison