BOOKS TO GO for Tweens and Teens

By Daniele Berman, Operations Manager

If you’re familiar with Book Harvest, it’s likely you’re familiar with our programs for young children: our Book Babies program encourages kindergarten readiness by helping Medicaid-eligible families build home libraries for their children from birth all the way until they start school, and our Books on Break program combats “summer slide” by ensu

On August 14 and 15, we held our first ever BOOKS TO GO for Tweens and Teens event. Roughly mimicking the Books on Break model of a pop-up bookshop, we filled our volunteer workspace with over 11,000 books for middle and high school students, and we inv

Over the course of the six-hour distribution, 32 excited attendees selected 5,226 books to distribute to the kids they serve!

We asked attendees to share with us their plans for distributing the books. They varied widely: from giveaways at orientation or the first day of school to classroom book clubs and free bookshelves to prizes for raffles and accomplishments, all had big plans for the best ways to give the books to the kids who needed them. “The kids were SO excited to learn that the books they chose were theirs FOR KEEPS!” shared one educator after completing her distribution.

Based on the success of this pilot program and the feedback from attendees, we plan to schedule additional BOOKS TO GO for Tweens and Teens distributions at other times during the year. We’re excited to have this new way to reach kids in our community with all the wonderful resources we have to offer!