When Wizard Activists say “Accio Books!”, Where do the Books go?
An introduction to Words Alive!
By Sara Mortensen
This piece is a part of our Accio Books series, exploring issues related to literacy, education, and libraries. To find out more about how to get involved and support Accio Books, visit thehpalliance.org/accio_books.
Since 2009, members of the Harry Potter Alliance have donated over 315,000 books to communities in need around the world through the annual international book drive Accio Books! In the past, recipient sites for these books have included the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda; the Brightmoor Community Center in Detroit, Michigan; Operation Breakthrough in Kansas City, Missouri; and most recently the Good Shepherd School in Masaka, Uganda.
The recipient site for the 2017 Accio Books campaign is Words Alive, a literacy nonprofit in San Diego, California. This partnership is particularly exciting to me: I am not only a member of the HPA volunteer staff but am also a staff member at Words Alive!
Words Alive was founded in 1999 on the belief that if you value reading and understand its fundamental connection to all aspects of your life, then you will be better equipped to thrive as a lifelong learner and productive member of your community.
Almost 20 years later, what started out as a book club for underserved teens has grown into much, much more. Today, Words Alive proudly serves 5,500 students and families monthly through three programs: Read Aloud, Teen Services, and Family Literacy.
Research consistently shows that teaching children reading proficiency before third grade is essential for ensuring their success as readers in the future. This is the impetus for the Read Aloud Program. In this program, trained volunteers read aloud each week to approximately 4,300 children from low-income backgrounds at Title 1-eligible elementary schools, Head Starts, Child Development Centers, and other early childhood education sites across San Diego County. This program ensures that these children receive the same reading experiences crucial to development as their more affluent peers.
The original idea for a book club for underserved teens has grown into our Teen Services Program. One part of this program, called the Adolescent Book Group, engages approximately 450 underserved teens in book-club style discussions, writing sessions, college and career readiness workshops, and an arts and literacy component, where students explore connections between art and text through an art project such as creating their own comics, photography, or making stop-motion animation films. The other part of Teen Services is the Westreich Scholarship Program, which awards 10–15 students from Teen Services with scholarship money in support of their pursuit of higher education. Students not only receive financial support, but an individually matched mentor to help them navigate the transition from high school into community college, trade school, or university.
Finally, the Family Literacy Program focuses on empowering parents from underserved communities with the confidence, techniques, and materials that lead to deepened reading engagement with their children. In this program, parents attend weekly workshops where they receive 10.5 hours of parent education on literacy development and learn how to be their child’s first and most important teacher.
Throughout all of these programs, we hope to inspire and help participants develop an enduring commitment to reading, become lifelong learners, and become advocates for themselves and their futures. A saying that we often repeat at Words Alive is this: when everyone can read, whole communities thrive. When the children in our community can read, they grow up living full, independent lives and have the ability to do everything from reading for pleasure to applying for jobs, understanding medical instructions, voting, traveling and navigating safely, and being successful learners in school.
In San Diego County, 450,000 residents lack basic reading proficiency and one in five adults are functionally illiterate. We know that illiteracy is preventable through programs that engage people in and advocate for the importance of reading; we have seen it happen first-hand.
There is another piece to this puzzle though: book ownership. Having access to books at home and at school is incredibly important to literacy development, yet low-income and underserved communities are disadvantaged in their access to book ownership as well. At the time of writing this article, Scholastic’s most recent Kids and Family Reading Report shows that the average home owns 104 kids’ books but this number drops to 69 books for families making less than $35,0000 per year.
Oppression is intersectional, meaning that institutional racism and classism work together to influence literacy and access to books. Low-income Hispanic and African American families experience more pronounced lack of book ownership than low-income white families. Advocating for literacy means working to make sure that all people have access to books and ample opportunity to develop strong reading skills — and it also means working to end issues that disproportionately harm communities of color, like unequal school funding, residential segregation, and the school-to-prison pipeline.
The books that are sent to Words Alive throughout the Accio Books campaign will help combat this lack of book ownership in the underserved communities of San Diego. Many of the children in our programs do not have any books of their own. The donations received from Accio Books will give them an opportunity to start their personal home libraries and may be among the first books they ever possess.
Words Alive is also planning on hosting the Apparating Library (the event where we will distribute the donated books back out in the community) at a local school in June as a way of bringing awareness to and preventing the “Summer Slide.” This is the idea that students tend to lose achievement gains that they made throughout the school year over the summer, and this trend is compounded for low-income families for reasons exactly like lack of book ownership. Studies have shown that having access to books over the summer prevents the “Summer Slide” when it comes to reading skills. With the support of the HPA and Accio Books, children in San Diego from underserved communities will be better equipped to avoid the “Summer Slide” this year.
Words Alive is thrilled to be the recipient site for this year’s Accio Books campaign. To everyone who hosts book drives and sends books to Words Alive — thank you. Your time, effort, and participation in Accio Books is impacting the lives of numerous children throughout San Diego County by helping them gain access to books and supporting their literacy development. Thank you and happy reading!
If you are interested in learning more about the work that we do, please visit www.wordsalive.org.
Sara Mortensen is the Office & Communication Coordinator for Words Alive and the volunteer Campaigns Department Manager for the Harry Potter Alliance. She is a part Ravenclaw, part Hufflepuff who is passionate about literacy, fan activism, and feminism. You can find her @saramrts.
