Family Literacy Grants Help 12 Libraries
Center for the Book helps kids in rural southern states with reading and writing
By Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2004
The Fentress County Library in Jamestown, TN, will use its grant to create an outreach program this spring for the nearly 100 preschoolers who attend local Head Start agencies, says Library Director Leslie Pullins. Myra Ziegler, director of the Summers County Library in Hinton, WV, says she's already contacted reading specialists at the local middle school and decided to use the grant to improve the reading scores of many students in grades 6–8 who read at a second-grade level or lower. Ziegler plans to invite the students' parents, many of whom are illiterate, to the library for read-aloud and book-discussion sessions beginning in February 2004.
Projects in other states, including Texas and Arizona, will attempt to boost the literacy levels of teens who have been in trouble with the law by providing mentors who will model good reading, writing, and other academic skills.
Reading Powers the Mind is funded by a $409,000 grant from the Viburnum Foundation, which closed last summer and gave its remaining funds to the Center for the Book.
