Friday, December 2, 2011

Nonprofit Partner Spotlight: Children's Book Bank


There is an old Ukrainian folktale where a puckish young lad loses a mitten in the forest. While the boy blissfully romps about the snowy woods, a mouse takes refuge from the cold in the boy’s wooly mitten. One by one, different forest creatures emerge from the chilly forest and insinuate themselves into the ever-expanding mitten. The over crowded mitten finally bursts and the animals are again left to fend for themselves in winter’s bitter chill.

At its core, The Mitten is a story about the difficulty of sharing limited resources.

Even in this digital age, books are everywhere we turn, and for many of the fortunate among us, tales like The Mitten line the seemingly endless shelves of bookstores. But in neighborhoods that live in poverty, books are few and far between with one book for every three hundred children. That is one book passing from one pair of eager little hands to the next until, like the fabled mitten, only shreds remain.

Enter the Children’s Book Bank, a three-year old non-profit organization committed to putting books into the hands of children before they hit kindergarten. At no charge, the CBB collects, repairs, packages and distributes used books to needy families. A few times a week, a dozen Hands On Greater Portland volunteers gather at the CBB in northeast Portland for book cleaning parties.

This evening, former Hands On Volunteer Robin Anderson, now the CBB’s operations manager works alongside Hands On Greater Portland volunteer leader Ben Pike to help make old books new again for young children in need. But before the work begins, the volunteers briefly introduce themselves and name their favorite children’s book. That quick round robin makes clear just how ingrained the works of Theodore Geisel, Shel Silverstein and Margaret Wise-Brown are in the American consciousness.

“Most people here bond through books, so naming your favorite kid’s book is a perfect way to break the ice before getting to work,” says Anderson, a library and information sciences graduate from the University of Wisconsin.

The sorting room at the Children’s Book Bank feels less like a bank, and more like Santa’s workshop. A large group of tables is gathered toward the center of the room displaying the tools of the trade: scissors, stickers, tape, spray bottles, dust cloths, rubbing alcohol and enormous bottles of Goo Gone stain remover.  The perimeter of the room is lined wall to wall with every sort of child’s book crowding the shelves. Books are sorted and stacked into towering boxes filled with chapeau-donning cats, curious monkeys and rabbits bidding the moon adieu.

Anderson isn’t kidding when she says most of the cleaning session volunteers bond through books. Without the spray bottles and scissors, the group could be mistaken for an impromptu literary society.

“None of us are shy when it comes to showing our passion for books,” says volunteer Sandy Axel, a Buffalo, N.Y., native, and self-described “empty nester” who has lived in the Portland area for 25 years. Axel now volunteers sorting and stacking books for the CBB, but got her start with CBB at the cleaning parties. “It’s definitely more fun when different generations get to talking about what they read as children.”

Anderson says cleaning party volunteers are typically come from pretty diverse group ages and backgrounds. She adds that it’s also common for entire groups to volunteer en masse for a cleaning session, “Scout troops, a class of middle schoolers, even some birthday parties show up.”

The Children’s Book Bank with the help of Hands On Volunteers have made strides toward closing the gap on that grim one-for-300 statistic. The CBB delivers 300 to 500 backpacks to needy kids each month. Each backpack is stuffed with 16 books ranging from picture books to early chapter books. In 2010 the CBB delivered nearly 52,000 picture books to needy kids, many of them Headstart preschoolers.

That’s tens of thousands of books that might see a landfill or get boxed away in an attic, landing in a child’s hands instead. Hands On Greater Portland volunteers play a big role in that effort, comprising over 25% of the CBB’s volunteer base.

“The passion for stories and reading begins before kids are three years old. You have to get children started early. Getting those first books to kids in kindergarten is just too late.” Says volunteer Jeannie Fagnan. Fagnan got her start at the CBB as a Hands On volunteer, and has her M.A. in education specializing in children’s literature.

“It’s not just a love of reading that a book can open up to a kid,” adds Fagnan, “some of these books have fantastic illustrations that can introduce a child to the world of art.”

“Portland is a big city, the quality of some of the books we receive are amazing,” says Fagnan, “There simply is no reason those books shouldn’t be in a kid’s hands.”