Partner Spotlight: The Children’s Book Bank

Eliminating the book equity gap for children in low-income households!

Danielle Swope, founder of the Children’s Book Bank, served as a Teach for America high school math teacher in rural North Carolina from 1991 to 1993, and it was there that she witnessed firsthand how students from poor families struggled to succeed in school.

“Interestingly, the most significant obstacle to teaching math was that my students' reading skills were so limited. The high school in which I taught was neither underequipped, nor understaffed, nor underfunded, as I was expecting when I arrived. Rather, upon reflection, it became clear that the lack of resources at home was a contributing factor, and that the students I taught had, years before, arrived in kindergarten lacking the foundational literacy skills on which their future educations would be built.

In his book, Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol speaks of the inequalities that define the education of children who come from poor families. But inequalities exist well before a child steps foot in the classroom. For children in poverty, one of the biggest obstacles to literacy development (which begins at birth) is the scarcity of books in the home. While the ratio of books to children in middle-income neighborhoods is approximately 13 books to 1 child, the ratio in low-income neighborhoods is 1 book to 300 children, according to one 2006 research report. Consequently, without a variety of rich reading materials in the home, children in poverty enter school significantly behind other children in developing pre-reading skills such as knowledge of letters and their sounds, left to right eye movement, concepts of print, rhyming, sequencing, etc.

It's been many years since my Teach for America experience, but I've finally been able to turn the insight gained by it into action by creating The Children's Book Bank here in Portland. Launched this past spring, The Children’s Book Bank seeks to get more books into the hands and homes of young children who might not otherwise have books of their own. To this end, The Children’s Book Bank invites schools, clubs, congregations, and businesses to host book drives to collect the books their children have outgrown and are no longer reading. Volunteers spruce-up, sort and bundle books for distribution to low-income preschool children in the Portland area. This spring we distributed over 1200 books to children at three Portland Public Schools Head Start sites.”

Interested in volunteering with the Children’s Book Bank?

Volunteers are needed to process and sort books at their NE Glisan workspace on Sept 17, 22, and 24th. Morning and evening shifts are available and volunteers ages 14 and older are welcome to attend. Check out the upcoming September volunteer opportunities!

Interested in hosting a book drive? The Children’s Book Bank is also looking for individuals, schools, clubs, congregations, and businesses interested in hosting book drives to collect the books their children have outgrown and are no longer reading. If you’re interested, please contact Danielle at: danis@childrensbookbank.org.