This week Ronnie Bishop’s daughter, Zoe, got a fun surprise in the mail: “Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea.” It’s the first book in the “Narwhal and Jelly” series of graphic novels.
"She's actually read it before. We've gotten it out of the library before," Ronnie Bishop said. "When she got it in the mail, she was all excited to actually own her own copy of it."
Bishop then remembered Heber Valley Elementary sent home a letter with the second grader about a new program giving students free books over the summer.
"I thought the books would be getting sent home with the kids before the end of school. And then they weren't and then I just didn’t think about it," she said. "Then all of a sudden, it showed up in the mail. And I was like, 'Oh, this must be that book program that that letter was talking about.'"
The program is a partnership between the Utah State Board of Education and the nonprofit Kids Read Now. Over the summer, it will send four books to students in kindergarten through third grade at Utah Title I schools.
"Over the summer, most kids forget a whole lot of what they learned in the previous school year," said Leib Lurie, CEO and co-founder of Kids Read Now. "That's especially bad for low income families that don't get other things to do and other exposure to reading and learning over the summer."
To facilitate that summertime learning, Lurie said parents are encouraged to read the books with their children. And each book will come with a list of suggested activities to "build content connections with the book beyond just reading the words on the page."
"That may be: 'Curious George was a monkey, he got in trouble. Talk about a time you got in trouble,'" he said. "Or, 'He was from Africa. What other books have you read about Africa?'"
The $5 million, 5-year program is part of a 2022 bill aimed at improving early childhood literacy.
Lurie said the school board approved his bid in May, which didn’t leave much time to get the program up and running before the end of school.
Christine Elegante, a K-3 literacy specialist with the state board, said about 74,000 students were eligible for the program this year. But only about 52,000 are participating.
"We were a little tight on time this year. So not all of our [schools] were able to get into the program," she said.
And some of the schools that did, like Heber Valley Elementary, selected books for their students, instead of allowing the students to select their own.
Heber Valley principal Katie Cummings told KPCW the reason they found out about the program was because the school’s instructional coach heard about it on a podcast. So by the time they signed up, there wasn’t enough time to let the students select their own books. She said the students will be able to do so next year.
"Could we do a probably a better job at trying to get the word out? Absolutely," Elegante said. "And we plan on doing that."
She promised a much smoother process next year, which will allow more schools the chance to get on board and more students the chance to choose their own books. And Lurie said the state will be credited for the students who weren’t served this summer.
"They may choose to get those books in the fall," he said. "Or they may choose to just wait until the spring and do it again for next summer."
Despite the fact Zoe didn’t get to choose her books this time, her mother said she’s happy with what she got.
"She read it again, right away," Ronnie Bishop said. "She's a pretty avid reader."
