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Seven Stories Institute’s Word Up Community Bookshop is a volunteer-run, multilingual community bookshop and arts space in Washington Heights, New York City that works through literature to spark dialogue, cultivate education, and inspire community in neighborhoods without easy access to books.
Oakland International High School (OIHS), whose student body is made up entirely of newly arrived immigrant and refugee students, partners its junior class with local elementary school students for a specialized reading curriculum that encourages the critical analysis of texts while also providing a comfortable space for high school students to sharpen their English, reading, and comprehension skills.
Launched in 2004 as a response to the closing of school libraries in Philadelphia, WePAC works to mobilize nearly 200 volunteers to reopen and staff libraries in the area, serving more than 5,000 students and promoting positive reading habits with weekly library programming and special events.
With a focus on supporting literacy development, closing the gap between the resources available to Philadelphia public school students and those in neighboring districts, and sharing the joy of reading through the offering of high-quality books and programs, WePAC approaches each school library reopening with the goal of providing regular, sustainable library access for students. Working in under-resourced schools, WePAC coordinates the stocking of library books, the staffing of each location with committed volunteers, and the programming of special events that connect kids with authors, illustrators, local professionals, and others able to speak to the excitement and power of reading, highlighting the importance of literacy skills for future success.
Created by James Patterson, ReadKiddoRead.com is an easy, hassle-free place where parents, grandparents, teachers, and librarians will find the very best books to turn their kids into lifelong, dedicated readers.
United Through Reading connects military families who are separated – for deployment or military assignment – by providing
the bonding experience of shared storytime.
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.
2010 Innovations in Reading Prize Winner
Free Minds uses books, creative writing, and peer support to awaken DC youth incarcerated as adults to their own potential. Through creative expression, job readiness training, and violence prevention outreach, these young poets achieve their education and career goals, and become powerful voices for change in the community.
2010 Innovations in Reading Prize Winner
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. 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.
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.
