(From left) Acting Executive Director Bruce Coffey, “One Richmond, One Book” Program Coordinator TaLees Owens and Lead Program Coordinator Chris Dudley in Read to Them’s office (Photo by Jay Paul)
A love of reading starts with a great book, Bruce Coffey says: “Rich and stimulating and well written. One that is engaging and fun to a wide audience.”
Coffey is the acting executive director of the nonprofit family literacy organization Read to Them, and the creator of its “One School, One Book” program, which enables entire schools — or districts or cities — of elementary school students and parents to read and explore the same book. The idea has grown in 20 years from a modest, one-parent initiative at Richmond’s Fox Elementary to a network of more than 3,000 schools nationwide.
“Principals sometimes say yes to this program, not just because it helps raise reading scores,” says Coffey, leading a tour of Read to Them’s child-lit-centric headquarters in the Bookbindery Building on West Broad Street, “but they soon realize that it also helps to increase parental involvement.”
The original spark was Oprah Winfrey. “I heard Oprah on the radio talking about a ‘city reads’ project in Chicago,” he explains. “This is like 2001. I thought that having a citywide conversation about a book was a great idea. ‘We can do that in a school,’ I thought, and we have a captive audience.”
Coffey, an eighth-grade history teacher at Sabot at Stony Point, created the program at Fox after Gary Anderson of the nonprofit Read Aloud Virginia contacted the school. Anderson, a local school psychologist, later founded Read to Them and invited Coffey to join the organization.
“They were just promoting reading aloud as a concept,” he says, “so I created a website and materials and gave presentations, and we marketed it and spread it among schools in Virginia and then schools across the country.”
The concept works like this: A school chooses a book— say Roald Dahl’s “The BFG” or Florence and Richard Atwater’s “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” — and acquires a copy for each student from Read to Them. The school also sends home a note to parents with a reading schedule.
“We want them to read a chapter every night at home, together,” Coffey says. “We want the reading done at home, and we want to create that needed synergy between home and school, because that enriches every school, not just every child.”
The books are accompanied by a packet of materials to help students better engage with the printed word. “We produce the packets ourselves,” he says. “It’s the most important part. It’s like a road map of what you can do with parents, or maybe the school can hold an assembly with costumes, or do a funny skit that we write that they can personalize to the school — stuff like that.”
The school or school system pays to participate in Read to Them’s programs, sometimes with help from regional grants or sponsors.
Students examine their books at Oak Grove-Bellemeade Elementary School during “One Richmond, One Book” in March 2019. (Photo by Garnette Ransone)
Jessica Carpenter, a reading specialist with Richmond Public Schools, has implemented the Read to Them program at three elementary schools. “When I was at [Oak Grove-Bellemeade], we read 15 books in six years,” she says. “Kids were excited. For the program to work, you need a good balance between what’s happening with the book at school and at home. And having that trivia in the package is really helpful to teachers because it gets the kids involved.”
In 15 years, Read to Them’s reach has gone from 50 schools to more than 3,000. In some locales, the read-alongs have grown to citywide, districtwide and finally statewide events — Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi have adopted the program. “Virginia Reads One Book” started in 2018, and last year, thousands of students around the state read “Cleo Edison Oliver, Playground Millionaire” by Sundee T. Frazier.
After years of attempts to get Richmond Public Schools fully on board, Read to Them last year started “One Richmond, One Book,” obtaining corporate sponsorships, bank contributions and foundation grants to help provide 13,000 books to elementary age students in all 26 schools three times a year. The program is happening again in 2020. “They read a book in October, one in March, and we give away a book to every student at the end of the school year,” Coffey says.
Read to Them has a deep list of hand-picked titles in its catalog, appropriate for different age ranges.
“The books are chosen by a team,” says “One Richmond, One Book” Program Coordinator TaLees Owens. “We usually come up with 10 books, and the team reads through them, and then we narrow it down based on feedback and interest among students, parents and school personnel.” In March, kids across Richmond will read “The Toothpaste Millionaire” by Jean Merrill, a book that helps to teach financial literacy.
Finding the right book for readers of multiple grades can be a challenge, Coffey says. “Can you read it aloud to a first-grader, who may not be able to read it themselves, but [is it] still stimulating enough for a fourth or fifth grader who can read it themselves at home? Can you explore it at school?”
Read to Them's hip and spacious office in the Bookbindery has a pingpong table and a Midway arcade game, but on one early December day, it’s all about work as the Read to Them graphics team huddles around a conference table crafting bookmarks, posters and web content. “Because of ‘One Richmond, One Book’, we’ve had the opportunity to go into the schools and pass out books,” says Graphic Designer LeeAnn Dancy. “Because it’s local, everyone in the office gets to be involved.”
Books that children read in elementary school have a lasting impact, stresses Emily Gerber, Read to Them’s advertising, design and content coordinator.
“I just did a packet for ‘Tuck Everlasting’ [by Natalie Babbitt], which I used to love, and revisiting it with adult eyes, and adult opinions, I realized that some of the themes are actually kind of heavy.” Gerber says that she was being taught and didn’t know it.
Carpenter, the reading specialist, transferred this past year to Miles Jones Elementary, where students in October read “The Lemonade Crime” by Jacqueline Davies as part of the “One Richmond, One Book” initiative.
“One of the things that really got me to buy into this program was watching the changes in the culture of reading,” Carpenter says. “I mean, having students walk around reading books, and to ask when the next books are coming in ... it’s been very exciting. I want kids to read.”
