Innovations
in Reading Prize, 2010
Overview
Each year, the National Book
Foundation awards a number of prizes of up to $2,500
each to individuals and institutions--or partnerships
between the two--that have developed innovative means
of creating and sustaining a lifelong love of reading.
In the Foundation's second year of offering the Innovations In Reading Prize, we received approximately 150 applications, with all regions of the country represented.
The 2010 Innovations In Reading Prize Recipients:
Cellpoems
Brooklyn,
NY
www.cellpoems.org
Cellpoems is a poetry journal
distributed via text message and on the Web that publishes
original work by some of the world’s best established
poets, including Charles Simic, Billy Collins, Kimiko
Hahn, Michael Hofmann, and Matthea Harvey, as well
as emerging poets, such as Kate Angus, Chris Bakken,
and Andrew Zawacki.
Cellpoems provides entree into poetry that is naturally congruent with contemporary daily routines. By publishing poems of just 140 characters or less, Cellpoems does not aim to decrease readers’ attention spans; rather, it adds focused, distilled work to a grand tradition of short poems, from the tanka and haiku to the monosonnet, and aims to present poetry to as many readers as possible by making it easily accessible to digitally-minded readers.
To receive Cellpoems on your phone, simply text JOIN to 317-426-POEM. Submissions are accepted via text messages to the same number, or at cellpoems.org.
826 Valencia
San Francisco, CA
www.826valencia.org
826 Valencia is a nonprofit
writing and tutoring center dedicated to helping students
ages 6 to 18 improve their writing skills, and to
fostering a lifelong passion for reading and writing.
Founded in 2002 by author Dave Eggers and veteran
teacher Nínive Calegari, 826 Valencia now has
over 1,600 volunteers including published authors,
magazine founders, filmmakers, and other professionals
who donate their time to work with thousands of students
each year and who allow us to offer all of our programs
for free. Five days a week in our after-school tutoring
program, students work one-on-one with trained tutors
to complete their homework, and then they spend 20
minutes reading books from our library. After homework
and reading, students work on a variety of extracurricular
writing projects that we then publish for real-world
audiences.
Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop
Washington, DC
www.freemindsbookclub.org
Free Minds Book Club &
Writing Workshop uses books and creative writing to
empower teenaged boys charged and incarcerated as
adults at the Washington, DC Jail to transform their
own lives. The young inmates come from some of the
city’s most crime-stricken and impoverished
neighborhoods. At 16 and 17 years old, they read,
on average, at a fifth-grade level, and most have
never completed a book before joining the book club.
Free Minds meets weekly at the jail to discuss works
of literature, choosing titles that will resonate
with the boys’ own experiences. By introducing
them to the life-changing power of books, and mentoring
and connecting them to supportive services throughout
their incarceration into reentry, Free Minds inspires
these youths to see their potential and pursue positive
new paths in life.
Mount Olive Baptist Church
Hopkins, SC
Mount Olive Baptist is a
small church in a rural community in South Carolina
where the nearest library branch is 10 miles away.
In order to give children more exposure to books,
the church membership took the bull by the horns and
created their own children's library by going to garage
sales and buying books, dictionaries, and a set of
encyclopedias. Books are also brought in from Richland
County Public Library in Columbia, one of the nation's
best libraries. Every week, each child in Sunday School
gets to talk about what they are reading. Church officials
have been wonderfully supportive of this secular activity,
and adults are coming in to re-read books they read
as children.
United Through Reading
San Diego, CA
www.unitedthroughreading.org
Imagine a soldier, stationed
in Iraq, entering a tent, dropping his gear, and picking
up a copy of Charlotte’s Web to read
to his daughter at home. Imagine that child sitting
down tonight and listening to her dad read the first
few chapters. And then imagine the comfort she feels
knowing her dad is safe and well, as she picks up
Charlotte’s Web to read the next few chapters
on her own.
United Through Reading connects families through good books. Whether they are separated by oceans and continents or simply by circumstance, United Through Reading offers parents who are away from their children the opportunity to be recorded on DVD reading storybooks from more than 220 recording locations around the world. For families separated by military deployments, the Military Program is available on nearly all deployed US Navy ships, on bases and installations around the world, in desert camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in more than 70 USO centers worldwide. The Transitions Program makes the same opportunity available for incarcerated parents in local, state, and federal corrections facilities—affecting our nation’s most vulnerable, the children of the incarcerated. The Grandparent Program, the newest program, is currently in pilot stages in San Diego County.
A selection process was created
based on the following criteria: level of innovation,
impact and need, with innovation always carrying the
most weight. Impact and need came into play only in
cases where two programs were judged to be equally
innovative. “Innovation” was not limited
to meaning only technologically innovative. In some
cases, innovation meant identifying a need in the
community and developing aprogram
to address that need in a simple and effective way.
In all cases, selections were made to reward programs
that create and sustain a life long love of reading
Sponsored by a generous grant from the
Questions? Contact the Foundation at 212.685.0261.