Book fair wrap-up, community heros, and BIG thanks!
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We are finishing up our Book Up Summer book fairs with 122 elementary school partners across Washington state. This year we added 16 new schools in the Franklin Pierce, Renton, Columbia (Stevens County), and Mary Walker school districts to the program.
21,594 students self-selected 12 new books to keep and read this summer and beyond, at no cost to them or their families. That means 273,947 new books are on their way into homes of students that need them the most.
Thank you to our donors, our dedicated school partners, and our volunteers, for working together to give students the tools they need to become strong readers.
I was so impressed by the books that came home. My child said she chose them and she was quite proud of her selections. The quality of these books is quite high—great content, beautiful art, and relevant storytelling. I couldn’t be happier.
— parent of a first grader, Madrona Elementary, Highline
It takes many hands to bring over 200,000+ books to students across the state during our Book Up Summer book fairs. This year we were very fortunate to have more than 100 dedicated Page Ahead book fair helpers volunteer in Mount Vernon, Marysville, Edmonds, Seattle, Renton, and Spokane schools.
These generous volunteers donated more than 500 hours to help students choose, count, and label their new books with to take home. We are all very grateful for their time, efforts, and dedication to children’s literacy.
This spring, as part of their Kickoff to Summer Reading volunteer campaign, Amazon.com joined forces with Page Ahead to bring the powerful experience of building a home library to thousands of young Seattle Public Schools students.
In May and June, Amazon employees volunteered as Amazon Book Buddies to help Seattle students select 12 books to take home for summer reading and beyond. During that time, 233 Amazon employees volunteered 531 hours at 20 Seattle schools! Page Ahead and our partners in the Seattle schools are so appreciative of this incredible investment in our students’ future success!
Thanks, Amazon!
Read all about it: Page Ahead’s annual impact report for the 2021–22 school year is now available!
Find out about how the home libraries Page Ahead built for kids made a difference last year by visiting bit.ly/PA22report.
Thanks to our friends at the TRI STAR Team for visiting Page Ahead and highlighting our work on the show American Dream. They’re also helping us stock all the bookshelves you see in this video so we can distribute books to the kids we serve! If you’d like to participate in their online book drive, visit here to support their efforts to fill our shelves.
The Phinneywood blog covered Page Ahead’s efforts to build home libraries and stop summer slide.
June 20, 2019
Page Ahead executive director Susan Dibble speaks with the Seattle Times Education Lab.
May 14, 2020
The Federal Way Mirror reports on Page Ahead’s Book Up Summer program in Federal Way.
July 1, 2020
