So last night was the annual benefit to raise money for Behind the Book, Inc., held at the Jewish Museum located on prestigious Fifth Avenue–very NYC.  I have been an active member of the Board of Directors for this organization for the past three years.  What I love about this particular charity is that it is filled with action oriented people who don’t just pretend to believe in literacy but are actually willing to roll up their sleeves and work for the cause.

Throughout my tenure as a board member, I have watched Executive Director, Jo Umans, work tirelessly to provide innercity kids with unique and valuable experiences that foster a love of reading.  From countless published author visits, classroom intensives surrounding the semesters’ literature, partnerships with various teachers and principals, as well as generously providing the necessary supplies, I have seen firsthand the synergy of belief in a cause and ceaseless action.

 Last nights, keynote speaker was Charles Blow, the op-ed columnist for the New York Times.  To summarize his speech, he basically described how books and literacy were his saving graces and the means by which he escaped the ills of poverty.  He also explained that the costs of our failing school systems were born by everyone.  That one child left behind is, in fact, your child left behind.  What was profound about his speech is that it brought me to a place where I thought intensely about living in NYC, a place where extreme wealth and abject poverty live next door to each other.  I also thought about the manner in which books and getting lost in reading shed light on some of the bleaker moments of my own childhood.  In short, I was made uncomfortable, and for that I am grateful.  As I glance over at my overindulged NYC brood and their bounty and think about the fact that they had amassed a children’s library worth thousands before they even took their first breath of life, I became sick at the thought that there are countless poor children who live in homes that do not have one age appropriate book much less a parent who reads to them on a regular basis, or any basis. 

The take-away for the evening was that I and every responsible New Yorker must do more, give more, and be more to our forgotten NYC kids.  The ones we shake our heads at, the ones we ignore, the ones we pity, the ones we owe!  I will try to live my life in way that keeps in mind the fact that this island we inhabit is only nineteen miles long and we choose to “occupy” it.  So, why not encourage literacy and education instead of the delinquency that a lack of educational and economic resources fosters?  In short, it makes for much better neighbors.

If you would like to support this deserving organization visit our site at www.behindthebook.org and give generously.  It’s cheaper than anti-depressants.

For years, I have worked with children and adults on writing, illustrating, acting, and producing their own shows. All of these creative endeavors have allowed me to see first hand how a person who shares their talents is a person that grows more confidant.

They start to speak up more, to share ideas, and to set higher goals for themselves.

Through Behind the Book, I’m able to work with children on writing and illustrating their own stories, thus building their sense of worth while at the same time improving their reading, writing, and thinking skills.

I work with the teacher and students for weeks on their projects. Work…that’s another important part of this process. These young people get a glimpse into what it takes to succeed. They begin to understand that most projects aren’t dashed off on paper and produced. They are worked on, changed, reviewed, discussed, and then worked on some more.

We discuss how most books are written over years, and that we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves if our story isn’t perfect the first day.

Personally, I was blessed with two great parents who supported creativity and believed in hard work. We all worked in the family business, my father’s veterinary practice. My father expected us to work hard, and he strived to make it fun. As we worked, we told stories, made up songs, and imagined what wonderful futures we would have.

I strive to bring these feelings to my students. That work and fun are not separate.

To me, the most important result of Behind the Book visits is the empowerment of young people. Through their hard work in writing, editing, and completing projects, students see that they can accomplish some pretty wonderful things. They improve their reading, writing, and thinking skills, feel better about themselves, and start to feel more self worth.

My hope for each of them is that they will start to speak up more, share their great ideas with others, and set higher goals for themselves.

Matt works with a fifth grade student in Behind the Book's Comic Making Workshop

Auburn’s not the first place people think of when asked to imagine Australia. Its suburban streets are lined with African restaurants and Chinese bazaars; in this densely populated Sydney neighborhood, far from the surfers’ beaches and without a kangaroo in site, you’re as likely to be greeted with a Somali ‘See tahay’ as an Aussie ‘G’day’.

Early one morning in June of this year, I watched as educators, community health staff, booksellers, performers and local government officers all descended on this multicultural suburb in the name of a unique Australian literacy scheme, Paint the Town REaD.

Marquees, balloons and banners sprouted throughout the neighborhood announcing a Community Reading Day, and a local mascot, Auzzie, led songs, dances and stories for young children and their carers.

Pre-schoolers and their parents flocked to the event, joining storytelling sessions at venues that ranged from the local police station to cafés, shops and even supermarkets. Amid music, dance and storytelling from the various cultures of Auburn, a great procession of adults and kids moved through the neighborhood to celebrate reading.

At one coffee shop, the manager, Vincent, read to children from a series of picture books. He was a consummate performer, engaging with the kids, making them laugh, talking through the pictures with them. Each group that came to that coffee shop adored his enthusiastic, heartfelt delivery.

After the session I got talking to the 25-year-old café manager. Vincent came to Australia from Taiwan at the age of 15, with hardly any English. After settling in Sydney, he developed his language skills and started to work in the café. He noticed that every day, local moms would arrive for mid-morning coffee with their babies in strollers.

As people at neighboring tables chatted over coffee, friendships formed between the diverse communities of Auburn. When Paint the Town REaD came to the suburb, Vincent was keen to use this natural meeting-place as a vehicle for the literacy skills that had brought him success in his new home – spreading the message to ‘read, talk and sing with your child from birth to kindergarten’.

Over the last few years, I’ve encountered literacy organizations from around the world, all dealing with the same challenges: engaging communities, sustaining child language development, and helping parents find the skills and confidence to support their children’s literacy.

Whether it’s Behind the Book’s author workshops in NYC, the one-to-one mentors of England’s Volunteer Reading Help and South Africa’s Help2Read, or the hospital-based initiatives of Reach Out and Read in the USA, all over the planet people are striving to give our children the opportunity to be literate for life.

The unique response of Australia’s Paint the Town REaD scheme is to engage whole communities in the issue of early literacy. Although inspired by research into child development, it’s a down-to-earth, grassroots movement which has spread across the country over the past 16 years.

Through ongoing events as well as annual Reading Days like the one in Auburn, Paint the Town REaD thrives on community – spreading the word throughout a town or suburb, so that it’s café owners, police officers, pharmacists, shopkeepers and high school students who all get involved and bring the scheme to life for parents, children and the community at large.

I’ve attended events like the inspiring 24-hour readathon for LitWorld’s World Read Aloud Day in Times Square before, but Paint the Town REaD goes beyond profile-raising. Vibrant one-off Paint the Town REaD events like Reading Day come with a year-round commitment to literacy in each town, until everyone from pre-school to the retirement home joins the commitment to ‘Read, talk, sing with your child from birth to kindergarten!’

High schoolers read with younger brothers and sisters, local businesspeople and public services donate their time to the cause of early literacy – and the whole community focuses on the goal of helping children become literate for life.

As organizations increasingly recognize that youth literacy development is as much about the whole community as the individual child, whether it’s New Zealand’s Literacy Aotearoa supporting parents who want to read to their children or Behind the Book implementing a whole-school approach to author-supported literacy workshops, Paint the Town REaD leads the way in demonstrating how an entire town can get behind the message of lifelong literacy from birth.

To find out more about Paint the Town REaD, read this interview with its founder Rhonda Brain, or download the Paint the Town REaD booklet here.

Dr. Matt Finch is a writer-educator and curriculum consultant for Behind the Book who has worked around the world from Shakespeare’s birthplace to Brooklyn and the mountains of Peru. Find out more at his site, http://booksadventures.wordpress.com/about/

Patricia McCormick

By Patricia McCormick

When I think of when I was the same age as my readers, I cringe.

I was on the debate team. I plastered my hair with Dippity Do, then rolled it in empty juice cartons. And in the summer, I sat in the sun, slathered in baby oil, reading every book in the Cherry Ames, Student Nurse series.

And while it’s tempting to make fun of Cherry Ames, I realized not that long ago that those books probably had a profound impact on me. As an awkward and restless kid stuck in the suburbs, those books at least presented the possibility of life beyond the cul-de-sac. They featured a young woman living away from home and pursuing her dream career. Based in England during WWII, she evacuated wounded soldiers; as a public health nurse, she cared for poor rural patients in Iowa; and on a temporary assignment at a ski chalet in Switzerland, she found intrigue – and a handsome ski instructor.

By today’s standards these plots may sound silly. But they were probably precisely what I needed as I struggled with my identity as good girl, raised in a strict Catholic family, yearning to break out of the confines of my family and my home town.

When I visit classrooms now as part of Behind the Book, the books we discuss deal with much bigger, much darker issues. But the kids and their struggles are, in many ways the same.

When we discuss My Brother’s Keeper, it’s amazing how many kids step forward and talk about the substance abuse in their homes and neighborhoods. And when we read Purple Heart, I’m always struck by how many boys are struggling with how to define themselves as young men and how many girls are wrestling with secrets they keep to protect someone they love. Their honesty in sharing these issues with their classmates is downright inspiring.

But what really moves me is the reaction they get from their classmates. The compassion, the understanding, the comfort and the maturity that these kids show is always astonishing. Their teachers deserve a lot of the credit; they introduce books and creative writing in a safe and supportive environment. But I think what sets these school visits apart for me is how fiction can bring out the best in these students.

Patricia McCormick (second row, right) with an 11th grade class at Brooklyn Community Arts and Media HS

By looking at the plight of some fictional kid, they gain the distance to look at their own lives – but without the harsh judgment they often heap on themselves and others. By hearing that other students are struggling with the same problems, they feel less alone. And by being able to express their feelings – first in discussion, then in writing – they invariably open up a way to solutions.

Sometimes the solutions are vengeful or fanciful – I’m often stunned by the violence in their writing – but I believe that written catharsis lets off steam that might otherwise come out in less healthy ways.  Just as often, though, they conjure up scenarios – for themselves or for their fictional stand-ins – that are breathtaking in their creativity, hope and joy.

It’s a far cry from Cherry Ames, Student Nurse. But being with teenagers in New York in 2011 somehow takes me right back to those awful – and awesome years.

It was a magical time, when all things seemed possible. It was also an excruciating time, when nothing about me seemed right. It’s a time of life that stokes and feeds my fiction. And with such wonderful company, I dive back into all the torment, all the possibility of being a teenager.

I’ve written before about my early relationship with libraries and books. Both of my parents were public school teachers, but there wasn’t a tradition of buying books in my family. My father grew up in the Caribbean and developed an early dislike for reading after being forced to read by a grandmother who despised idleness. My mother grew up in a family that had little money and a lot of kids—with nine children to provide for, her parents ensured that everyone had a bible, but there wasn’t room in the family budget for novels or picture books. I recall having only one or two brand new books as a child, and in my “meet the author” presentations, I always tell students how much I valued the library card I received when I was about five years old.

Without the local public library and the library at my school, I wouldn’t have had many books in my life. As a teenager, things changed somewhat because my mother registered for a university course in British literature; when she had to withdraw from the course after suffering a stroke, I gained access to the books she relegated to a shelf in the basement. I discovered and fell in love with the novels of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and George Eliot. I went on to study British literature in college and later completed my dissertation on African American women writers at NYU. I also became an author myself, and I know that I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t been encouraged to read as a child.

I can easily imagine how thrilled I would have been if an organization like Behind the Book had come into my school when I eight, given me a book to call my own, and introduced me to the author and the illustrator. That would have been a life-altering experience for me; I grew up in Canada and didn’t meet (or even see) a black author until I came to NYC in my early twenties. And I know that without those free books, many of those children wouldn’t have any books in their home. Studies show that having books in the home improves a child’s performance in school:

Even a relatively small number of books can make a difference: A child whose family has 25 books will, on average, complete two more years of school than a child whose family is sadly book-less.

Having books in the home matters, but so does making reading a priority. Another study indicates that “leisure reading” also impacts a student’s success: “There are, in fact, solid correlations between how much reading teens do on their own and how well they perform in school.” Unfortunately, that same study shows that black and Latino teens spend less of their leisure time curled up with a book.

We don’t give away free gaming consoles in order to get kids hooked on video games. We don’t give away expensive sneakers or designer gear, yet many households in low-income neighborhoods still have these items. So why do we give away books?

Perhaps the answer to that question is this: even one book can change a child’s life. And book buying—like leisure reading—is a habit that takes time to develop. I’d like to see more parents buying more books for their kids—and for themselves. I’d like to see children begging their parents to buy the latest novel by their favorite author. I’d like adults everywhere to take the Birthday Party Pledge and commit to buying a book as a gift for every child in their life for one year. In the meantime, I’ll continue to support Behind the Book because I know that their mission “to excite children and young adults about reading” is the first step in creating future readers, writers, and book owners.