Two years after the Wells International Foundation kicked off its partnership with the Houston Public Library with the first People and Pajamas read-a-thon, WIF founder and CEO Monique Y. Wells traveled from Paris, France to her hometown of Houston, Texas for the second iteration of this popular event.
This year’s read-a-thon took place from 2-5 PM on Monday, June 3, 2019. Fifty-five (55) persons (33 children, 10 adults, and 12 teens) took part in the fun. We considered this to be a great turnout, given that 85 persons (63 children and 22 parents) came to the inaugural, all-day event in 2017.
Every school-aged child in attendance was registered for the Summer Reading Program, which runs from June 1 through August 1, 2019. Children happily selected books from over 80 titles made available to take home so they can start or build a home library. Some of the kids were so excited to begin reading their selections that they didn’t even wait to get their books home!
WIF’s arts and STEAM education Strategic Focus Areas were also incorporated into the event, with kids personalizing bookmarks through coloring (arts) as well as manipulating “slime” that they watched library staff create before their eyes (STEAM education). As an additional nod to STEAM, a couple of the books read aloud featured “what animals like” and math and science lessons taught to a fictional minnow.
Funds from WIF’s Dow Chemical‘s Dollars for Doers grant supported the STEAM education activities for this event.
Dr. Wells grew up reading at the Johnson Neighborhood Library.
“I owe who I am, why I live where I live, and why I do what I do to the books I read in this branch,” she says.
Bloom Academy, a new charter school that was conceived to support elementary school children in the Sunnyside area where the Johnson Branch is located, set up a table outside the room where People & Pajamas was held. The school’s office manager manned the table to accept applications for enrollment and distribute t-shirts to interested parents and children. Bloom’s founder and principal, Courtney Sales, was one of the readers for the afternoon. WIF plans to supply Bloom Academy with new books for its student population of kindergarten and 1st grade students.
HPL is tracking the progress of children who participate in the Summer Reading program to determine whether their participation in the read-a-thon had an impact on their progress and completion of the program.
To see photos of the event, click HERE.
People & Pajamas is part of a growing Reading Never Stops literacy initiative that WIF is building in Houston. To support our organization’s work for this and other initiatives, click HERE.
