How We Give Books

Book Harvest gives free, age-appropriate books to low-income children around the Triangle. Our emphasis is on letting the children choose the books themselves and on helping them build home libraries.

We distribute books to eligible children via three programs:

•  Books for Free.  BFF is our inaugural program, in which we stock "free book" shelves at sites which serve low-income children. In our first 15 months, children harvested more than 50,000 donated books from BFF shelves!

• Books on Break.  Children select ten books to take home and keep at the end of the school year. These books will help arrest the summer slide that plagues low-income children and that contributes to the achievement gap. We will run Books on Break in partnership with the Durham Public Schools and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools in the spring of 2012

• Book Babies.  Enrolled children receive ten books every six months from the time they are born until they start kindergarten. This infustion of 100+ books into their homes will help give them the emergent literacy skills they need to ensure that they are kindergarten ready and that they can succeed in school.  If we secure funding, we will launch a pilot of Book Babies in the fall of 2012, in partnership with visiting nurses from Durham Connects and research scholars from Duke University's Center for Child and Family Policy.

Tolearn more or to get involved with any of these three distribution programs, please email ginger@bookharvestnc.org.  Thank you!