THE PROGRAM
The Children’s Book Bank, founded by a former Teach for America math teacher, strives to improve the literacy skills of low-income children by giving them books of their own before they reach kindergarten. To do this, The Children's Book Bank collects, repairs, and packages used books. The books are then made available to families in need - free of charge. This new organization is administrated by Dani Swope and is located in Portland, Oregon.
THE CHALLENGE
One of the biggest obstacles to literacy is the scarcity of books in the home. In fact, two thirds of low-income families own no books for their children. Since early exposure to books is so important to developing prerequisite literacy skills and since strong reading skills correlate so highly with later school success, The Children's Book Bank is working throughout Portland to collect tens of thousands of books to give to pre-school children of low-income families.
THE PARENT - CHILD LITERACY LINK
The Children's Book Bank seeks to encourage family reading in low-income households. Research has shown that adults with low literacy levels can improve their own reading skills as well as that of the children through active family reading. One of the goals is to help break the cycle of poor literacy which often plagues low-income families, generation after generation.
BOOKS NEEDED
The Children’s Book Bank is committed to being a source for free "read aloud" books for children in need. Board books, picture books, alphabet books, books about numbers, colors, animals, shapes and words, story books, rhyming books, Dr. Suess books, and books in Spanish are greatly needed. Please, no encyclopedias, no musty or damaged books, and no school text books. Early chapter books are acceptable, but at this time our focus is on gathering books for children under the age of 6.
OUR PARTNERS
The Children's Book Bank has distributed books to the following organizations.
Please click on the logo to learn more about these great organizations:
