DisruptED TV Magazine

End Book Deserts

By Dr. Molly Ness

One of the end goals of schooling today is for our students to embrace reading as a lifelong pursuit, turning to books to inform, delight, and entertain. This ambitious goal is only possible, however, if children have access to high-quality, inclusive texts. Sadly, too many children today live in book deserts — high-poverty geographic areas that lack reading material. The term ‘book desert’ was coined in 2010 by Unite for Literacy, who point out the lack of book access as an issue of social justice and inequity.