The Children's Book Bank at SMART Reading

The Children's Book Bank at SMART Reading

About

The Children's Book Bank has merged with our organization. Get more information about the book donations program and how it helps students. The Children’s Book Bank at SMART Reading • Get Involved: • Building Home Libraries • School-Age Program • We Moved! In July 2022, the Children’s Book Bank merged with SMART Reading. The Book Bank’s work to fill children’s homes and lives with community-donated books is as strong as ever! The Children’s Book Bank at SMART Reading is located in Northeast Portland. We accept new and gently used book donations from the community, then organize volunteers to sort, clean, and distribute children’s books. In addition, we purchase supplemental books with diverse representation to better meet the needs of the children and families we serve through our Story Like Mine program. Cleaned and new books are distributed either through our Building Home Libraries program for PreK kids or free school-wide book fairs for older students. To distribute the new and gently used books, we join with literacy partners like schools, clinics, Head Start programs, and other organizations that support literacy development for underserved children and families. Since our founding, the Children’s Book Bank has distributed over 1,000,000 books to over 100,000 children in the Portland-Metro area. When our book bundles went home, 94% of children said that owning the books made them feel more special. Learn more below about Building Home Libraries and our School-Age program below: Through our flagship Building Home Libraries program, we provide children from birth through kindergarten with home libraries containing a collection of 14 age-appropriate books. We believe that giving children a bundle of new and gently used books—not just one or two—will increase the likelihood that they will find a book that will spark a love of reading and learning. The Children’s Book Bank carefully sorts books to create bundles with a range of age- and skill-appropriate [Google Places type: non profit organization]