Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Why ALI?

I'm hanging out at my computer with my dog on my lap. She's gotten to where she pretty much overlaps my lap, but there are men on my roof tearing off all the shingles and the only way the dog can cope with the disturbance is to cleave tightly to me. So we're making it work.

I just got a phone call from my family nurse practitioner. She said, "Did you know that you're famous, like the President?"

I did not know that (nor have I, to my knowledge at least, previously been compared to Mr. Trump) but I did dream last night that I was shaking all the presidents' hands, starting with Reagan and G.H.W. Bush.

"Were you in heaven?" my husband inquired, when I told him about it this morning.

"No," I said, "I was at a Notre Dame football game."

Of course, in our house, that's pretty much the same thing.

I'm famous like the President according to my family nurse practitioner's young daughter, who is desperate to get some of my books signed by me, so what time will today's book signing run to?

It's from four until six, at Blackbird Bakery in downtown Bristol. I'll speak briefly at four, but will absolutely stay until at least six to sell books and sign them and chat with anyone kind enough to stop by. We're also selling cookies. Blackbird is stuffed with pastry goodness, as everyone in Bristol full well knows, but they did a special run of iced sugar cookies for us to sell in benefit of Appalachian Literacy Initiative, the reason for the whole shebang and my heart's most fervent cause.

I was just now, before the phone call but after the dog, looking through the notes I made for the speech that really sparked ALI. It was in fall 2016, and I gave a presentation at the Tennessee Association of State Librarians on the importance of diversity in children's books. I started off with racial diversity, and then spoke on economic diversity in literature, which I thought then and still believe to be another important issue. In Tennessee one-third of the schoolchildren live in families that get SNAP benefits (often called food stamps), but you almost never see SNAP benefits mentioned in fiction. If they are, it's that the family is too proud to accept them, or used to get them back when times were really bad. No one ever gets them now. That has always annoyed me, so I did some research, and then I went straight beyond annoyance into incredulity, and then to a sort of social justice awakening.

If you've read this far and you really want to know where I get my information, I'll refer you to Donalyn Miller and Colby Sharp's new book, Game Changer, which gathers all the research into one easy-to-find and read volume. Essentially it's this: the ability to read fluently is the bedrock to academic success. The ability is read fluently depends upon access to books. For a variety of reasons, children from low-income families have much less access to books than their higher-income counterparts.

Children from low-income families are 250% less likely to read fluently then their classmates from higher-income families. Poverty is the single greatest predictor of academic failure.

Access to books is a social justice issue.

I came away from that conference pleased by the success of the presentation but greatly troubled by the results of my own investigation. Over half the schoolchildren in Appalachia get free or reduced-price school lunch. Many of the schools themselves are poor beyond middle-class imagination. Many of these children don't have a single book in their homes, have never once had a single book to call their own.

Here in my office, my dog and I are surrounded by a couple of hundred books. There are more in every single room in my house. The laundry room has a bookshelf. I'm not kidding. It's full.

My friend Tracy Griffith, who has a farm deep in an old coal community, was equally troubled by the injustice of this. We met over and over, usually at Blackbird Bakery, to figure out what we wanted to do. Eventually we found our format: enroll classrooms in Appalachia. Let all the students choose books. Good, new, shiny-bright books. Fiction and non-fiction, graphic novels, funny novels, stories about dogs and gorillas and injustice. Trust the students to pick the books they needed. Let them keep the books forever, read them over and over until the shiny covers tore and dulled.

We've given away 2398 books this school year so far. Diary of a Wimpy Kid was pretty popular--151 copies--and so was Captain Underpants (101), but not as much as The One and Only Ivan (183) or Because of Winn-Dixie (178).

Those kids who ordered Because of Winn-Dixie are going to get a surprise. The books are in transit now--and the author, Kate DiCamillo, has signed bookplates to put in every single one. Authors are amazing. We've had support from so many: Kate and Katherine Applegate and Laura Amy Schlitz just to name Newbery winners. Publishers have given us free books. Our corporate partner, Parnassus Bookstore in Nashville, gives us steep discounts and accepts donations on our behalf. We JUST GOT our official 501(c)3 status (!!!!! retroactive to February 2018, so everyones' gifts were tax deductible) so we will be able to start applying for grants now, but for this year a whole lot of community members and friends, including every single one of our seven-woman board, has been incredibly generous with private donations, which was so amazing, especially since, at the beginning of this year, I made promises to schoolchildren I didn't have the funds to keep.

Anyway, I'm going on again, because I love this non-profit so much. I love giving books. I believe that what we're doing is important. I think we can change the world. Someone's world, at any rate. One child at a time.

Appalachian Literacy Initiative. We put books in children's hands.

So, if you get a chance, head down to Blackbird this afternoon. You don't have to buy anything. Just come say hi. If you can't make it but want to support ALI there are a bunch of other ways. Think of us fondly, at any rate. Think of a book you read when you were ten that opened your eyes and heart. Then find a way to give that book to a child.

If you’d like to support the work that we’re doing, you can mail a check to Appalachian Literacy Initiative at PO Box 3283, Bristol, TN 37625, or click here to purchase books on our wishlist from Parnassus Books, our preferred bookstore. You’ll receive 10% off with the code GIVEREADING, and Parnassus will ship the books to us free of charge. You can also purchase books from our Amazon wishlist by clicking here

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