One School, One Book: Everybody Reads

The nonprofit family literacy organization Read to Them, with its “One School, One Book” program, enables entire schools — or districts or cities — of elementary school students and parents to read and explore the same book. The idea has grown in 20 years from a modest, one-parent initiative at Richmond’s Fox Elementary to a network of more than 3,000 schools nationwide.

Finding the right book for readers of multiple grades can be a challenge, founder and executive director Bruce Coffey admits. “Can you read it aloud to a first-grader, who may not be able to read it themselves, but [is it] still stimulating enough for a fourth or fifth grader who can read it themselves at home? Can you explore it at school?”

My feature article on Read to Them, and their incredible success in getting kids (and parents) to read together,  is now online at the Richmond Magazine website. You can read it right here.

And for more on Read to Them, go here.

(Photo by the mighty Garnette Ransone!)