Several years ago I was running a booth at a literacy conference for my publisher, Townsend Press, and I kept meeting middle school and high school teachers. Once they saw that we carried adult materials, they couldn’t wait to talk to us. But why were they so panicked? It turned out they were desperate for materials for teenagers who couldn’t read.
“We get kids from Brazil,” one of them told me. (This was in Western Massachusetts, home to a large Brazilian immigrant community.)
“They can’t read Portuguese or English. They’re teenagers. We have a tiny window to reach them before they give up and drop out.”
The problem: teenagers won’t work with baby books, and there were no books at the reading level of these teenagers that weren’t baby books.
This is insane! Why don’t we face facts and have a vast library of books at all levels for these adolescent and teens?
Why won’t someone do something about this?
Enter Louise Baiglemen, who has done something. This former teacher saw the need up close, and she got to work, creating Storyshares, a literacy organization that aims to ignite a love for reading in adolescents and teens—by providing engaging and exciting books at both their reading level and their maturity level. I’m pasting in some of the titles here.
Their mission statement reads: Storyshares empowers older striving readers to rediscover the joy of reading by offering a curated library collection designed just for them.
I’m thrilled to have discovered Storyshares, and was delighted to talk to Louise about her work. I can’t wait to share her titles with my students!
To learn more about Storyshares go to https://www.storyshares.org.
You can also watch her excellent TED talk, which we discuss in our conversation.
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