USING BANNED BOOKS TO SELL READING TO KIDS
Justin Stanley founded the Uprise Books Project with a very simple mission: distribute banned or challenged books to underprivileged kids to encourage them to read. A Winner of our 2013 Innovations in Reading Prize, Stanley shares his personal experiences of poverty, the difficulties of championing banned books to schools, and how an Innovations in Reading Prize is helping propel his important work forward.
National Book Foundation: What inspired your Innovations in Reading-winning program?
Justin Stanley: My family didn’t have much when I was a kid. My younger brother and I were raised by a single mother and when we were in elementary school we were completely dependent on government and community help to make ends meet. I knew what government cheese tasted like and the various ways people looked at you when your mom pulled out a book of food stamps in the grocery store line, what it was like to be we-have-to-skip-the-electric-bill-this-month-if-we-want-to-eat poor.
I also remember the day in second grade when I came to school to find a group of strangers from some place called “RIF” standing behind a table of books, telling us kids that we could have one. For free. I couldn’t tell you what specific book I chose that day, but I’ve never forgotten how great it felt to bring it home.
Continue reading Justin’s interview here.
Want to know more about NBF’s Innovations in Reading Prize? Click here.
We all know how important it is to inspire a love for reading early on in young children — and one place that owns this space is Barbershop Books, a community-based program started in Harlem that creates child-friendly spaces in barbershops across the U.S. for young boys to read in.
How can you even know what the world is until you’ve got those stories in you?
A patron of Innovations in Reading Prize winner Street Books, discussing Lord of the Flies, 1984, and The Grapes of Wrath.
The National Book Foundation’s second annual Why Reading Matters conference returns on June 15 for a full day of presentations focused on building a new audience for books!
The conference will feature a keynote presentation by Emma Straub, author and founder of Books Are Magic; a celebration of the 2017 Innovations in Reading prize winner Barbershop Books; a special appearance by National Book Award Finalist Jason Reynolds; and a variety of breakout sessions focused on how we can foster and increase inclusivity among new readers.
While the situation is better today than it was several years ago, public school libraries still do not have enough books, especially those that are current and compelling for kids.
Carolyn Rodriguez, vice president, program, and administrative manager for City National Bank’s Reading is the Way Up, a 2013 Innovations in Reading Prize Winner.
On March 4, City National Bank awarded 80 Reading is the Way Up literacy grants totalling more than $86,000 to schools in California, Nevada, New York, Tennessee, and Georgia.
“There is a need in our communities, and it is very rewarding to know that Books on Bases is making a real impact in the lives of our military children and families.”
Read our interview with Janet McIntosh about Books on Bases, an Innovations in Reading Prize-winner.
Call Me Ishmael, one of our 2015 Innovations in Reading Prize honorees, has developed a remarkable new way to find your next great read. From the retro style phone, anyone can to listen to reading recommendations from their fellow book lovers. The phone takes Call Me Ishmael’s beloved program from the internet and makes it available in your favorite bookstore, library, or just about anywhere (we set one up at the Brooklyn Book Festival).
Visit their Kickstarter page to learn more and support the project.
“Improbable libraries” are appearing all across the world, thanks to ingenious book lovers who make sure their communities have access to literature. Read more about them at The Guardian.
You can also discover more improbably libraries through our Innovations in Reading Prize, including Little Free Library and Street Books (pictured below).
(The Winner of the 2015 Innovations in Reading Prize will be announced this month!)
10 GIFs from Buzzfeed Books that capture the reading life
Seated atop a throne of books, LeVar Burton, of Reading Rainbow and host of our 2015 5 Under 35 ceremony, reads the 11 of the most beautiful sentences in literature.
alwaysbringabookwithyou
all-these-paperback-dreams
Barnes and Nobles is gonna start serving food and alcohol.
Everybody’s cracking jokes about how it’s a desperate attempt to stay relevant in the age of Amazon.
But you know what? Props to them. This is exactly what Blockbuster didn’t do. At no point was Blockbuster like “Hey, movie rentals aren’t the lucrative enterprise they once were. Perhaps it’s time we become known for our cheesy garlic bread.”
that’s a fantastic plan, honestly? i would 100% go sit at a bookshop, buy a glass of wine, and pick up the newest biography. 50/50 i’d decide to buy it after a couple chapters, and even if i don’t, that’s still money i spent at B&N!
They could host book clubs with food and drinks where one of the employees shares their experiences with a book of their choice and tries to convince the guests to buy it.
Barnes and noble realizing the only reason people go to brick and mortar stores is for the experience and access to an enjoyable physical space they can socialize in (sure isnt for the price) and capitalizing on that is a stroke of genius and a really refreshing approach to the dilemma of competing with online stores
