From caring hands to children’s shelves

Volunteers at the Children’s Book Bank distribute books to kids in need

Story and photo by Rebecca Ok
The Portland Upside
December 2009

Portland Head Start students take delight in exploring their bags full of community-donated books which they now proudly own.

A bell rings to announce the beginning of the lunch break. The once-quiet school halls erupt with the excited sounds of young children. In the gym, staff and volunteers from the Children’s Book Bank wait for the afternoon Head Start preschool classes to emerge from the blissful chaos in the halls. A few teachers arrive, their students following them in lines, for the special assembly. The students sit down in front of an impressive row of tote bags full of new and gently-used children’s books.

After a brief talk, the adults divide 60 bright-eyed students into four groups for story time with volunteer readers. Two of the volunteers, Tony McManus and George Josten of the Portland Timbers soccer team, read such children’s classics as If You Give a Moose a Muffin and If You Give a Pig a Pancake to the rapt preschoolers.

When story time is over, each student receives a tote bag filled with 15 community-donated books to take home. The children are given time to explore the contents of their tote bags. They pull out alphabet books and counting books. They flip through animal books and look in awe at complexly constructed pop-up books. They show their books to their friends, pointing out gorillas and princesses. They laugh at dogs wearing hats and cows in pajamas. Occasionally, a triumphant squeal can be heard, announcing the discovery of a hoped-for book.

The book delivery at the Clark Head Start site at the Creative Science School on Southeast 92nd Avenue was one of several the Children’s Book Bank made on October 20. On that day, this new and growing organization distributed 780 tote bags filled with 11,700 community-donated books to all eight Portland Public Schools Head Start pre-schools. More than just children’s books, the bags contained promises of a better future.

The October distribution culminates two years of work by the Children’s Book Bank. Founder Danielle Swope first became interested in improving literacy among low-income children while serving with Teach for America as a high school math teacher in the early ‘90s.
Danielle says she “was surprised to find that the most significant obstacle to teaching math was that my students’ reading skills were so limited.”

This experience, in addition to startling statistics regarding the barriers to education faced by low-income children, motivated Danielle to create the Children’s Book Bank in Portland.

Book distributions are the final step in the process of closing the book gap. The term “book gap” refers to the astonishing fact that in middle and upper-income neighborhoods, the ratio of books to children is 13 books for every child. In low-income neighborhoods, on the other hand, the ratio is one book for every 300 children.

Kindergarten teacher Melanie Reaves affirms, “the most important thing to do to ensure a child will be a life-long reader is to read aloud to them.”

The lack of age-appropriate reading material robs low-income children of the opportunity to develop pre-reading skills before entering kindergarten. The result, Danielle says, is that low-income children “arrive in kindergarten lacking the foundational literacy skills on which to build their future educations” and have to play catch-up with their middle- and upper-income peers.

In order to eliminate the book gap and its adverse effects, the Children’s Book Bank facilitates the collection of books that children have outgrown and the subsequent distribution to children in need.

In addition to containing promises of a better future, each tote bag of books represents the dedication of many community members. Book distributions are only one part of the process of getting books into the hands of low-income children. As a nonprofit organization, the Children’s Book Bank relies on the participation of a large network of volunteers to achieve its goal.

Volunteers are essential to every part of the process. They organize book drives in their schools, congregations, businesses, and other organizations. Individuals from the community donate the books their own children have outgrown. Groups of volunteers come to the book bank several times a week to clean, sort and bundle the donated books. By the time of distribution, each book has been touched by many caring hands from the Portland community.

According to Danielle, the Children’s Book Bank began with a small mission and a big dream.

“I only thought we’d be able to help a few children,” she says.

The October 20 distribution shows, however, how dramatically this young organization has exceeded even its own expectations. Community response has been so overwhelming that the Children’s Book Bank was able to help a few children and then some.

Allyson Yoshiwara, Portland Public School Head Start Educational Supervisor, reports, “the children are absolutely thrilled to have books they can keep.”

Such response has enabled the Children’s Book Bank to dream bigger. The organization hopes to expand distribution to other sites in the near future. Each book donated, each volunteer, and each child who goes home with a bag of books under his arm, realizes a part of the dream of greater educational success for low-income children in the Portland community.

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The Children’s Book Bank is located at 1728 NE Glisan Street, Portland, and online at http://childrensbookbank.org Contact them by email at info@childrensbookbank.org or by phone at 503-753-4809.

Rebecca Ok is a recent Reed College graduate seeking to make sense of post-college life through children’s literature. She can be contacted via email at rebeccao@childrensbookbank.org