All Readers Welcome: Supporting School Libraries

From an email:

About the Program

One of the Impact and Legacy Fund’s (ILF) flagship programs is All Readers Welcome: Supporting School Libraries. Every quarter, the ILF provides three underfunded schools with collections of books that school librarians may not be able to purchase using school funds. All of the books selected from the curated list tell the stories of communities and identities that have historically been underrepresented in children’s literature—and in the classroom.

Recent selections include:

• I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez
• Maizy Chen’s Last Chance by Lisa Yee
• When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller
• All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson
• Ironhead, Or, Once a Young Lady by Jean-Claude Van Rijckeghem and Kristen Gehrman
• The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera
• Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay
• Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
• And many more

Founded by ILF steering committee member and author Federico Erebia—and administered in partnership with Bookelicious—this literacy-building program has brought over 800 current books into 27 school libraries, reaching over 25,000 students across the United States. The ILF steering committee carefully selects each recipient based on their application which must demonstrate that their school library has a clear need for more diverse books—and a lack of funding to purchase those titles on their own. Once selected, school librarians choose their new collections from a wide range of books. 

With All Readers Welcome, we’ve stocked shelves in the following U.S. states:

• Arizona
• Colorado
• Indiana
• Massachusetts
• New Mexico
• New Jersey
• New York
• North Carolina
• Ohio
• Texas
• Utah
• Virginia
• Washington

Apply for All Readers Welcome

If you are a school librarian (or teacher in a school with no library), apply for All Readers Welcome via this Google form.

While our current group of selected schools is diverse, we prioritize schools that:

• Have a significant (20-100%) portion of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch
• Are in states with restrictions on which books librarians can or cannot purchase using school budgets 
• Serve a diverse student population, including bilingual classrooms
• Experience book loss
• Receive Title 1 Federal funding

If your school doesn’t meet any of these criteria, but you still feel there’s a strong need for diverse books in your collection, please apply anyway. We are always looking to support more kinds of school libraries. For more information about past recipients, please visit this webpage.

Support

If you want to support All Readers Welcome, please consider sending in a donation. Every dollar goes to purchasing books!

CLICK HERE to donate.