I just heard some great news. And it’s exactly what I need after the amount of money we spent on the kids this summer, with fun outings, babysitters, summer camps and more. A new project has just been launched, called the Bazillion Books for Kids. Last week, thousands of books were collected at the Memorial Coliseum and thereafter delivered to schools that were told to pass them out to children, to take them home and keep them! We’ve never heard of anything like this until now and, to date, it’s not affected us anyway. But now that Jayden is starting First Grade, it couldn’t come at a better time!
And it’s not just one or two either. As Carole Smith, superintendent of Portland Public Schools informed us, each kid will be taking home between 10 and 12 books each! Portland-area schools are going to be taking around 100,000 books from the program. Not surprisingly, Sam Adams, our Mayor, is delighted at this project that aims to “get books into the hands of children who don’t have them at home.” Of course, we do, but the fact that all of Jayden’s classmates will be enthusiastic about taking books home will result in peer pressure and hopefully end up exciting him too.
I really am so pleased about all of this. Getting kids interested in books at a young age is just the perfect way to start their literacy development off on the right foot. I know that this is the reason I became such an avid reader and loved literature – my parents were constantly showing me different books – and I’ve always vowed to do the same with my own kids. Now is the perfect opportunity for me to do just that.