Jlolysia Smith, center, looks in amazement after seeing she and a classmate picked the same book during the BOOKKIDS giveaway Tuesday at Nina Otero Community School. The nonprofit, along with Communities in Schools New Mexico, gave away 4,000 books.
Students from teacher Valerie Gonzales’ kindergarten class browse and choose books they want to keep during the BOOKKIDS giveaway Tuesday at Nina Otero Community School.
DeAnza Lucero, center, tells a student from teacher Renee Butler’s prekindergarten class how many more books he is able to get during the BOOKKIDS giveaway Tuesday at Nina Otero Community School.
Jlolysia Smith, center, looks in amazement after seeing she and a classmate picked the same book during the BOOKKIDS giveaway Tuesday at Nina Otero Community School. The nonprofit, along with Communities in Schools New Mexico, gave away 4,000 books.
A line of preschoolers stretched across a classroom at Nina Otero Community School on Tuesday morning.
Before them sat hundreds of books — from childhood classics like Goodnight Moon to board books for young children — in neatly stacked piles. Two tables with yellow tablecloths held stories in Spanish, while books in English perched on a long table with a blue tablecloth.
“Good morning, little readers! It’s good to see you,” said Debbie Maloney, co-founder of local literacy nonprofit BOOKKIDS.
These were the rules: After receiving a paper bag from volunteers, each child could take home five books of their choosing inside that bag. Maloney held up her hand to demonstrate the number of books each student could select.
As if someone shouted “Go!” the rush began. The youngsters surged toward the collection of stories, sliding books across tables and into their paper bags. Nearby volunteers used their fingers to help the students count up new additions to their home libraries. Boxes of hundreds more books for different grade levels sat along the edges of the classroom, ready to replenish the tables’ supply.
This — groups students arriving in the classroom every 30 minutes to select five age-appropriate books to take home — is what Maloney has planned for the week.
In partnership with Communities In Schools of New Mexico and Santa Fe Public Schools leadership, BOOKKIDS will distribute more than 4,000 books, purchased through donations to the nonprofit, to Nina Otero students in pre-K through eighth grade, at no cost to the students or their families.
The idea behind BOOKKIDS came from concern about literacy among public school students, Maloney said.
Students from teacher Valerie Gonzales’ kindergarten class browse and choose books they want to keep during the BOOKKIDS giveaway Tuesday at Nina Otero Community School.
Research shows literacy is a cornerstone of learning and a bridge to understanding, but two-thirds of New Mexico students don’t read proficiently at their grade level, according to Public Education Department data. Nearly 70% of students in kindergarten through second grade fall short of early literacy proficiency.
Maloney said to increase those literacy rates, “children need at-home libraries, and a lot of these children don’t have reading material at home.”
Communities In Schools data confirms this, said Yesenia Bermejo, the organization’s site coordinator at Nina Otero. Communities In Schools, which provides basic needs and case management services at schools across the district, conducts a needs assessment at the end of each school year to guide service provision the next year.
Most students, when asked if they had books at home or someone to read to them, said no, Bermejo said.
Maloney said BOOKKIDS, founded in 2017 as part of Communities In Schools before becoming its own organization in 2018, is intended to combat that problem by reaching the most vulnerable children in Santa Fe and encouraging them to read free books of their own choosing.
“It’s about access. It’s about giving kids the choice. And I think it’s also about implementing this lifelong learning mentality,” Bermejo said.
“Just because they’re in interventions doesn’t mean that they can’t be at the same level as their peers,” she added. “It doesn’t mean that they can’t go to college. Those types of conversations, some of them have never had.”
DeAnza Lucero, center, tells a student from teacher Renee Butler’s prekindergarten class how many more books he is able to get during the BOOKKIDS giveaway Tuesday at Nina Otero Community School.
Schools are selected for the book distribution based on the percentage of students reading below grade level, learning English and accessing free school lunches, as well as the presence of a Communities In Schools site coordinator at the school, Maloney said.
Maloney and her team of volunteers move from school to school with their boxes of books. In a few weeks, the organization will distribute books at Aspen Community School.
As her class of kindergartners loaded books into their paper bags, Valerie Gonzales asked students what kinds of books they chose and how many they added to their paper-bagged collections.
Gonzales said she hopes the students’ budding home libraries will inspire a lifelong love of learning and reading.
“I hope that that it shows how great books are and that they can either buy books or go to the library and get more books. It’ll spark an interest,” Gonzales said.
The students, meanwhile, sat in chairs along the back of the classroom, their noses buried in new books.
“I guess you guys all have homework: reading books,” Gonzales said to her students.
