By Jordan Meadows
Staff Writer
Book Harvest NC hosted its sixth annual Summer Block Party on Saturday at Durham Central Park, offering families across the region a free afternoon of books, live entertainment and community activities.
The centerpiece of the event was a collection of 15,000 free children's books available for kids from infants through high schoolers to take home and keep. The books are described as culturally inclusive and span the full range of childhood and adolescent reading levels. Families were encouraged to take as many as they want.
Beyond the book distribution, the afternoon featured live music, food trucks, magic performances by Happy Dan the Magic Man, custom poems written on request by the Poetry Fox, and activity booths from more than 40 local organizations and community partners, including Rootle PBS Kids, the Museum of Life and Science, the Bull City Wood-shop, Bull City Robotics and Weaver Street Market.
The block party is one of several initiatives run by Book Harvest, a Durham-based nonprofit founded in 2011 that has provided more than three million books to children and families across North Carolina. The organization sends newborns home from hospitals with starter libraries, stocks outdoor book boxes in communities, maintains reading materials in laundromats, and sends pre-K and elementary school students into summer break with books to keep.
Book Harvest frames its work around the belief that getting books into children's hands early is foundational to their long-term development.
"At Book Harvest, we know that literacy begins at birth, in the home, powered by parents and nourished by books," said Ginger Young, founder and CEO of Book Harvest.
Young announced a partnership last year with Blue Cross NC—also a Durham-based nonprofit—to distribute free Book Harvest children's books at community events for families across the state.
The organization has also been expanding its statewide reach through its Books on Break program. Last summer, Book Harvest partnered for the first time with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's 21st Century Community Learning Centers, bringing the program to 66 partner organizations at more than 100 sites across 47 counties. The effort put 76,120 brand new books into the hands of 6,920 pre-K through fifth grade students, each of whom selected ten books to take home in a specially designed backpack that also included a bilingual parent resource sheet on shared reading practices.
Book Harvest NC surveys found that 92 percent of parents felt the program motivated their child to read more over the summer, and 58 percent reported that many of the books were read multiple times; 99 percent of parents said the summer program supported their child's learning. Student excitement around book ownership emerged as the single most prominent theme across all surveys, cited by 67 percent of parents and caregivers in open-ended responses.
