Over 1,000 books read in two months!
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“I’ve read 80 books!” boasted 12-year-old Karim. “I think I’m leading the whole school.”
Karim has a reason to be proud. This school year he joined the UrbanPromise Book Club—and he hasn’t looked back yet. Every night he leaves school with an armful of books. And every month at Book Club he is ready to share his book reports.
“He used to want to play video games,” shared Karim’s mother. “Now he wants to keep pace with other students in the club. Even his younger brother is hooked on reading.”
For our executive director, Jodina Hicks, this is great news. Jodina birthed the Book Club earlier this year. “Reading transforms lives," Jodina said. “We’ve got to get our children excited about reading. It has huge implications for their futures.”
What started with a handful of children around Jodina’s desk last fall has now spread to the entire school. “We have more than 75 children involved in the program and, as of the end of January, the total books read was 1,048!” Jodina bragged.
Psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley make a startling observation: “By age three, the children of professional parents have vocabularies of about 1,100 words,” and children from parents of lower income have vocabularies of just around 525 words. Hart and Risley argue that “children’s IQ’s are correlated closely to their vocabularies.”
Harvard economist Ronald Ferguson further reports that between “1988 and 1992 the number of black 17-year-olds who said they read every day for pleasure dropped sharply, from 35-percent to 15-percent; and in the same period, test scores among black youth, which had been rising rapidly since World War II, reached a plateau, and by some measure, began to decline.”
Without a doubt, there is a causal connection between reading, staying in school, and academic success. Especially in communities like Camden—where students often arrive at our schools below grade level—it is crucial to expand their young vocabularies and reading comprehension.
With more students turned on to reading, I have a terrific problem. (I’m smiling as I write this!) I need more age-appropriate books to expand our library program.
That’s why I’m asking you to buy a book this month, and help underwrite costs associated with the operation of our reading programs.
I know I can count on your help!
Thank you in advance,
Dr. Bruce Main
President
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