I’m still excited about yesterday’s launch event for Book A Brighter Future™, but I’m even more so now that the campaign has officially begun. Anytime in July and August, you can visit any Macy’s store in America and support RIF by giving $3 and getting a $10 off coupon for your next in-store purchase of $50 or more. This annual campaign began three years ago and has grown into our biggest private partnership raising more than $7 million thus far. It supports our Multicultural Literacy Campaign, dozens of local RIF programs, and many other RIF initiatives.
This year’s campaign promises to be the biggest yet and there are several ways you can help us:
Visit a Macy’s and participate.
Tell your friends directly about the campaign.
Help spread the word with other tools.
All of these resources can be found at the Book A Brighter Future website: http://rif.org/brighterfuture.
You will hear more from me as the campaign continues.
Happy Reading
Carol
July 1st, 2009
Martine Reardon of Macy’s and I pushed the button, rang the bell and signed our names to close NASDAQ for the day with RIF Board members (Barrett, Daumas, Rachal), Macy’s and RIF staff, and the wonderful children and chaperones from Harlem Academy! One of the Harlem Academy chaperones was even a proud former RIF kid. Thank you to all who were there, to all who joined us online…a great beginning for Booking a Brighter Future for children! Check here early tomorrow as we will direct you to a video of the ceremony…
Happy Reading!
Carol
Twitter: @RascofromRIF
June 30th, 2009
One of the fun perks of this job is that I frequently get to rally people at public events for the cause of reading. But today’s event where I will ring the closing bell at the NASDAQ stock exchange in New York City to officially launch our Book A Brighter Future™ campaign with Macy’s will be especially fun. I would never have dreamed as I grew up in that small town in south Arkansas, reading in a corner of the basement of the public library on many hot, summer days that I would be at a big city stock exchange many summers later ringing the closing bell!
You can watch the whole thing live at 3:30 p.m. ET at NASDAQ MarketSite.
Stay tuned for more news about the campaign tomorrow.
Happy Reading!
Carol
June 30th, 2009
At midnight tonight RIF will officially conclude the 2009 Read With Kids Challenge sponsored by US Airways. For the past three months, parents and other caring adults have been reading with kids and logging the minutes on our Million Minute Meter. The results have been overwhelming as more than 7,000 participants logged 10 million minutes read to children, far surpassing the initial goal of 5 million minutes read!
We couldn’t be happier with these results! We still have some final prizes to award—like the vacation for four to Walt Disney World® Resort and the lending library to go to a RIF program in honor of a winning team—but the most important prizes have already been given. Those are the precious minutes and hours that adult readers have given to the children in their lives. We encourage everyone to keep on giving. Stay tuned to hear more about how with our Summer Read for Change initiative. Also check the final results of the Read With Kids Challenge on www.readwithkidschallenge.com.
I want to thank everyone who participated—including our honorary team captains like Eric Carle, Jerry Seinfeld, Billy Crystal, Sandra Boynton, Russ Parr, Al Roker, Carmelo Anthony, and many more—for making this a huge success.
Happy Reading!
Carol
June 30th, 2009
I was drawn to this cover because the young girl does not look happy; and yet it is the Fourth of July…what has happened?
Submit your cover story here!
Happy Reading!
Carol
Cover Story is a feature every Monday on Rasco From RIF where I share with you the “face” of a book that has caught my eye or that readers have submitted. Cover Story does not discuss the content of the book. I hope you will share your favorite “cover story” with me now and then!
Twitter: @RascofromRIF
June 29th, 2009
In early June, Fuse 8 reviewed Margarita Engle’s Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba. I knew immediately it was a book I had to read both because of Elizabeth Bird’s description of the story told by this verse novel as well as finding myself drawn over and over to the illustration by Raul Colón on the book jacket. Sadness, longing…and yes, the reader learns “confusion” are all there in 13-year-old Daniel’s eyes. This illustration is an artistic masterpiece in itself and created for this reader the perfect setting and tone for reading the book.
As the book opens, Margarita creates the historical setting in her first lines:
Last year in Berlin,
on the Night of Crystal,
my grandfather was killed
while I held his hand.
Daniel’s parents saved their money and bought him a ticket for New York to escape Nazi Germany:
They had only enough money
for one ticket to flee Germany,
where Jewish families like ours
are disappearing
during nights
of crushed glass.
But in New York the ship was turned away, the same in Canada…later upon landing in Cuba, Daniel is amidst “Hundreds of refugees” crowded into an open space with workers trying to help each with “new clothes made of cotton.” Daniel meets a young girl Paloma who is tormented with the thoughts of what her corrupt Cuban father has done through his life. These two young people come to know David, who as a Jewish man had fled Russia years before; David’s wise counsel allows Daniel to find more meaning in this new place, in his new life without the parents he so loved to guide and protect him in Cuba where we are reminded by the book jacket itself “the Nazi darkness is never far away…” David shares with Daniel “Joy and truth both have a way/ of peeking through any dark curtain.”
Clearly music and rhythm as he learned from his musician parents play a significant role in Daniel’s life, and the reader hears his clear voice noting:
Music helps me forget
my loneliness.
Melodies feel like paths
I can follow
to find my way past
all the terror.
The book is easy to read as to length and vocabulary, and it will draw the reader—young and old—into a history lesson many will not find in a traditional history book. A special experience from the illustrated cover to the final words.
June 27th, 2009
Hi, this is Henry Dunbar, RIF’s Director of Communications, here again to talk about some of our exemplary programs.
Rapides RIF of Alexandria, La., serves 3,552 children between the ages of 3 and 14 and has been providing children in need with free books for 13 years at 10 schools. Norvella Williams, a district-wide principal with special assignments, serves as the volunteer coordinator of the RIF book distributions, which have become community-wide projects that involve teachers and other school personnel, parents, and members of the local community. Some distributions have included Mardi Gras parades with special krewes for different book characters. Volunteers are eager to contribute to RIF events, knowing their time and efforts will be well spent as they help children discover the joy of reading and choosing a book to own. We are happy to name them the RIF Unit 3 Program of the Month for June.
RIF’s Programs of the Month initiative was launched to honor the ongoing efforts of local programs to fulfill the mission of RIF, which depends on programs like these to promote children’s literacy.
Henry Dunbar
June 25th, 2009
(From left to right.) Alan Yamamoto of Senator Daniel Inouye’s office reads with children part of the PACT RIF program. Former Hawaii Governor John Waihee, founder and president of Read To Me International and former first lady of Hawaii, Lynne Waihee, Stephen Leach, and Ricky Oshiro of Senator Daniel Akaka’s office. Parents and children from the PACT program participating in RIF activities.
Hello this is Stephen Leach, RIF vice president of government relations and community outreach, and I wanted to share with you the series of unprecedented events that RIF participated in last week.
Never in the history of RIF have we conducted two Congressional Reading Celebrations, a Regional Gathering, two conference presentations, and a vendor booth all in the same week until last week in Honolulu, Hawaii. Last week also featured the first bare foot RIF distribution in recent memory!
To honor the support and contributions of Hawaii’s U.S. Senators Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka, the Parents and Children Together (PACT) RIF program hosted staff from their offices to show their appreciation for all they do to support literacy and education. One of the events was held at a Buddhist temple where PACT staff meet weekly with local families, and as is customary in a temple, you must remove your shoes upon entering. RIF staff Rebecca Chrystal Armstrong, Cody Ruxton, Wendell Bassett, and I were all delighted to share in this tradition! Congressional staff members delivered a message from the Senators recognizing the partnership between RIF and PACT and thanked each organization for its work with local keiki (children) and ohana (families).
RIF, with the generous support of Macy’s, hosted a Regional Gathering at the exquisite Pineapple Room restaurant located at the Macy’s store at the Ala Moana Center. This event attracted more than 50 attendees, including a number of Macy’s employee’s, staff from Senator Akaka’s office, RIF volunteers, attendees from the Read To Me International conference, founder and president of Read To Me International and former first lady of Hawaii, Lynne Waihee and her husband, former Governor, John Waihee. We even had a parent and 2 year-old from the PACT program drive over an hour to attend the gathering! This truly represented a cross section of the entire RIF family!
RIF staff presented break-out sessions during the Read to Me International conference on Multiculturalism. In the Sponsor’s Pavilion, RIF had a booth with information about starting a RIF program and we conducted a raffle for a multicultural book collection.
Overall, an unprecedented and historic week of events for RIF staff and the keiki and ohana of Honolulu!
Stephen
Hanauma Bay, Oahu
June 24th, 2009
Children at the International Charter School RIF program enjoying their new books.
Hello, it’s Jonathan Hedgpeth again, and I want to share with you a tale of another noteworthy RIF program. Last Friday was the first distribution of the sixth service year of the International Charter School of Pawtucket, Rhode Island’s RIF program. The guiding ethos of this school is very interesting. As RIF program coordinator and librarian Maria Mendez Garcia explains it, they teach in two ‘strands.’ One strand is Spanish/English and the other is Portuguese/English. In these ‘strands’ students are taught in both languages. Over the past four centuries there has always been a modicum of cosmopolitanism associated with New England. As today, this has always been due, in large part, to its proximity to the sea and the shipping culture associated therein. Pawtucket has a very large Portuguese speaking population consisting primarily of Caribbean Creole and Cape Verdean ethnicities. The Spanish speaking populations have ethnic roots in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Bolivia.
RIF enriches these children’s lives immensely, primarily because these children do not have access to public libraries. So, the library at the school is the only one they know. They frequently check out books, but when they are told that they get to keep the book that they choose forever they become absolutely ecstatic. Book ownership is central to RIF’s mission. Furthermore, RIF’s contractual relationships to certain book vendors ensures that these children can enjoy books in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Variety, selection, and access to books that wouldn’t necessarily be found in the library are all major benefits of having a RIF program. And Maria asseverates that access to ‘native texts’ (as opposed to translated texts) is so important for young native speakers. Together RIF and this International Charter School, are getting their avowed goals accomplished. Those goals being Book ownership on the one hand and to make certain that no matter what language is spoken in their homes, these children will speak and read in more than one language.
Jonathan
June 23rd, 2009
Look at the varied brown faces. Will the poems inside share more with us about these faces?
Submit your cover story here!
Happy Reading!
Carol
Cover Story is a feature every Monday on Rasco From RIF where I share with you the “face” of a book that has caught my eye or that readers have submitted. Cover Story does not discuss the content of the book. I hope you will share your favorite “cover story” with me now and then!
Twitter: @RascofromRIF
June 22nd, 2009
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